Whether you support the idea or oppose it, and despite those who insist on dissecting ants, Greater Lebanon remains, first and foremost, a legitimate historical, social, economic, and above all, cultural project. More than that, it is one that stands apart regionally and globally.
Yes, it was largely a Maronite–Druze creation. So what? But its benefits extended to everyone. Between becoming the Switzerland of the East and becoming Assad’s Syria, the better option hardly requires a committee to decide.
It is equally true that a majority of Sunnis and Shiites at the time preferred the Umma over the Republic. But history does not stand still. Over time, Lebanon’s Muslims gradually evolved into three broad political camps.
The Republican Camp
The first embraced Lebanon as it was. They did not suffer from the obsession over who founded the Republic. They cared about what it delivered. They saw in it an alternative to Islamism, militarism, and nationalization; a framework for intellectual, social, and eventually economic progress; and a tangible vehicle for building normal citizenship for everyone. They were labeled isolationists, archaic, or simply “political Maronites.”
The Conditional Camp
The second remained socially conservative. They accepted Lebanon only if it reflected their own tastes, or, at the very least, remained permanently tethered to the Arabists chain. One foot in Lebanon; the other wandered the infested barren fields of the region. If comfortable with their sectarian identity, they embraced pan-Arabism. If embarrassed by it, they discovered socialism. They became known as “nationalists.”
The Rejectionist Camp
Then there was the third. They rejected Lebanon altogether. Their objections were, and are still, built on a cocktail of religious supremacy, racial mythology, ideological fantasies, and historical fiction.
An explosive cocktail of Islamists, ranging from the Iranian mullahs to the Muslim Brotherhood to ISIS, happily sharing the stage with Arab, Persian, and Syrian chauvinists. Those wishing to appear sophisticated simply sprinkled some fashionable left-wing or woke rhetoric on top: “Lebanon is an imperial invention.”
Meanwhile
Despite inevitable mistakes, none fatal, more than two-thirds of Christians remained committed to Lebanon, whether Greater or smaller. The remaining third oscillated between dhimmitude under whichever Muslim sect happened to be in fashion, or embracing a nervous form of Christian supremacy remarkably similar to that of the third Muslim camp, but speaks French.
As for the Druze, Kamal Bayk managed to lose their compass somewhere inside an endless maze of conspiracy theories. Walid is still trying to locate the exit.
Excellent. So why, after more than a century, has the Republic never quite worked?
The answer is surprisingly simple.
The third Muslim camp, joined by its much, much, smaller Christian counterpart, and enabled by Druze loss of political compass, proved willing to work with virtually any regional autocrat who had stolen enough money from his own people to finance his regional “imperial” ambitions.
It successfully captured, and ruled over, the second camp by appealing to its sectarian and ethnic instincts against Jews regionally, and Maronites locally. Then spent decades eliminating physically and politically, the first Muslim camp, along with most Christians.
Its proposition was never to agree on a joint Republic’s identity and direction with the other. It was always: “Either the Republic looks exactly the way I want it to, or I will destroy it.”
And unlike most political slogans in Lebanon, this one came with implementation.
A Problem and a Solution
The uncomfortable truth is that the greatest responsibility lies with the second Muslim camp.
For decades it flirted with the third while denouncing the first, until the third eventually swallowed both. It reduced them to servants, and whenever one objected, the punishment was either political assassination, or the more traditional variety.
Today, the opportunity for the first camp remains exactly where it has always been, wide open.
The second still has every opportunity to abandon its sectarian reflexes and rediscover the Republic, not because it is politically convenient, but because it is morally necessary. Its natural partner was always the first camp, never the third, whose relationship with morality has always been anything but close.
To be completely frank – and secular, Lebanon’s decline accelerated the moment the first Muslim camp was defeated within its own community and the second aligned itself with the third during the Republic’s wars.
The result has been decades of systematic attempts to destroy both the Republic and the homes of everyone living inside it.
That should embarrass everyone.
It Cannot Continue
Since 1920, the Muslim “partner” in the Republic has never consistently respected the Constitution, the National Pact(s), or the law itself.
Agreements are accepted when circumstances demand them, only to be abandoned as soon as circumstances seem to permit. Every time. Without exception.
The future of the Republic therefore depends on one historic decision, and it belongs entirely to the second Muslim camp.
It must decide, now, not later, whether Lebanon itself comes first, or whether Lebanon remains merely a temporary address in service of someone else’s project.
There is no meaningful middle ground anymore.
And finally, enough with the imaginary favors. If anyone has earned the right to remind others of what they contributed to preserving the Republic, it certainly is not those who spent a century trying to undermine it.
Eli Khoury is the publisher of NOW and is a co-founder of the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation. He is on Twitter @eli_khoury.
