March 08, 2005


Here’s the deal in Lebanon: between 500,000 and a million Lebanese turned out to tell Bush and Chirac they don’t want Syria out of their country, not because they particularly love the Syrians but rather because they are deathly afraid of what will happen if the Syrian military leaves. "Hundreds of thousands of pro-Syrian demonstrators have gathered in Beirut to denounce what they see as Western interference in Lebanon," reported al-Jazeera earlier today < http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4A02EB97-5B87-4F28-8B
91-523CCAA3FE92.htm > . "No to foreign interference," banners read. "Beirut is free, America out," protesters chanted.

"Syrian forces are credited with helping end the civil war that tore Lebanon apart," notes Reuters < http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyI
D=7840996&pageNumber=2 >. "Christian, Muslim and Druze militias fought each other. Battles also erupted within rival communities. About 150,000 people are thought to have died."

Such encapsulated history lessons do not get to the bottom of why there was a civil war in Lebanon—and why there may be another one if Syria departs.

In 1975, when the civil war began, the Christian Maronites refused to share political and economic power with the Muslim majority. "Although the two warring factions were often characterized as Christian versus Muslim, their individual composition was far more complex," writes Ayman Ghazi < http://www.ghazi.de/civwar.html >. "Those in favor of maintaining the status quo came to be known as the Lebanese Front. The groups included primarily the Maronite militias of the Jumayyil, Shamun, and Franjiyah clans, often led by the sons of zuama. Also in this camp were various militias of Maronite religious orders. The side seeking change, usually referred to as the Lebanese National Movement, was far less cohesive and organized. For the most part it was led by Kamal Jumblatt and included a variety of militias from leftist organizations and guerrillas from rejectionist Palestinian (nonmainstream PLO) organizations."

It must be remembered that Syria basically intervened in Lebanon to prevent the defeat of the Christian Maronites. "Syria involved itself initially to protect Christians from defeat at the hands of the Muslims. President Asad of Syria had been duped by Henry Kissinger and the Israelis into believing that if he, Asad, did not enter the war to rein in the PLO and the Muslims, then Israel would have to go in and do the job itself, a prospect Asad found terrifying. Kissinger played skillfully on Asad’s fears and succeeded in dividing the Arabs further to the benefit of Israel." (See Ted Thornton, Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-1989: http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/civil_w
ar_in_lebanon.htm .)

In 1980, when the Muslims took action against the Christian Maronite Phalange Party militia — the Phalange < http://countrystudies.us/lebanon/85. > began as a fascist party inspired by the Nazis in 1936 — the Israelis intervened on the behalf of the Phalange, shot down two Syrian helicopters, and the Syrians responded by introducing SA-2 and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon; this escalation threatened to turn the Lebanese civil war into a regional conflict.
Two years later, on June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to wipe out the PLO—obviously, the PLO and few Palestinians would not have been in Lebanon if Israel had not ethnically cleansed them over the preceding three decades—and encircled west Beirut and began a three-month siege of Palestinian and Syrian forces in the city, resulting in 12,000 killed and 30,000 wounded (see Abdulhadi Khalaf, Invasion and resistance: Beirut 1982, Baghdad 2003: http://www.lebanonwire.com/0304/03041410DS.asp ).

Israel and the United States worked hand-in-hand in the effort to kill thousands of Lebanese. "The US government backed Israel to the hilt," writes John Rose < http://www.doublestandards.org/rose1.html >. "Immediately before the invasion, General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister and the man most responsible for the prosecution of the war in Lebanon, visited Washington where he informed US Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger that Israel must act in Lebanon. Pentagon figures reveal a massive surges of military supplies from the United States to Israel in the first three months of 1982. Delivery of military goods was almost 50 per cent greater than in the preceding year."

Rose’s account makes mention of the Israelis targeting hospitals, a brutal tactic since taken up by the United States in Iraq. "In the first bombing of Beirut in June, a children’s hospital in the Sabra refugee camp was hit and the Gaza Hospital near the camps was reported hit. 'There is nothing unusual’ in the story told by an operating room assistant who lost both hands in the attack. 'That the target of the air strike was a hospital, whether by design or accident, is not unique either,’ reported William Branigan in the Washington Post. The Acre Hospital was again hit on 24 June, along with the Gaza Hospital and the Islamic Home for Invalids where 'the corridors were streaked with blood."

In order to understand why millions of Lebanese fear the Israelis and Americans, it is worth quoting Rose at length:

As the battering of Beirut reached new heights of savagery, the popularity of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin soared to record heights. A mid-August poll showed that 80 per cent of Israelis supported the invasion of Lebanon (it was supported by the Labour opposition in the Israeli parliament) and 64 per cent approved the decision to go beyond the 25-mile zone—at which the early propaganda had said the Israelis would stop.

(…)

The Israeli opposition Labour Party did nothing to stop the invasion of Lebanon. With just two exceptions, Labour voted with the ruling Likud party to support the invasion. This fitted exactly the mood of Labour supporters, 91 per cent of whom backed the war.

(…)

In the period immediately following the bombing of Beirut on 12 August, the United States government became heavily involved in the arrangements concerning the evacuation of the PLO from the city. An American peacekeeping force was sent in with the dual responsibility of overseeing the departure of the PLO and safeguarding the remaining civilian Palestinian population.

(…)

Shortly after this, the Israeli Defence Forces moved into Beirut and the massacre of Sabra and Shatila began … The American government, like Begin and Sharon, did not actually have their fingers on the triggers of the guns, but their complicity cannot be in doubt. [Fascist Phalange militias, at the behest of Sharon, were the ones who had "their fingers on the triggers of the guns" at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, killing between 700 and 800 people.]

"The Lebanese are stunned," Robert Fisk reported in January < http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles442.htm >. "They know that the regional tour of the US neo-conservative deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, with his demands for a Syrian withdrawal and the disarmament of the anti-Israeli Hizbollah militia, is part of Israel’s agenda in Lavant. A weakened Syria, along with a pliant Lebanon without any anti-Israeli forces on its border, is almost as pleasant for Washington and its Israeli friends as an emasculated, American-dominated Iraq."

As well, as in Iraq, sectarian and ethnic violence in Lebanon works in the favor of Israel and the United States — once again imposing, as the French did before them, the colonial rule of divide and conquer, and thus, as Zbigniew Brzezinski said of Asia, preventing collusion and maintaining security dependence among the vassals — and this is precisely what will happen after Syria departs. Millions of Lebanese know this and that is why they poured in the streets in record numbers, demanding Israel and the United States keep their hands off Lebanon. Syrian troops in their country are a secondary matter entirely.