Lebanon
To Clear the Minefield
Irene Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
With the February 1998 news that the Clinton administration was preparing unilateral military action against Iraq, sectors of the US public seemed shocked by this unnecessarily violent turn in foreign policy. Gendzier’s scholarly sleuthing uncovers important clues for solving this puzzle and, in company with other literature, prompts us to think about constructive alternatives.
Secularism and Personal Status Codes in Lebanon
Marie Rose Zalzal is secretary general for Tayyar al-‘Ilmani (Movement for Secularism) and a practicing lawyer in Abu Rumana, Matn, Lebanon. Part of a research project on the impact of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990) on women, the interview was conducted by Suad Joseph on September 29, October 6 and December 19, 1994 and updated on February 11, 1997.
What is the Tayyar al-‘Ilmani?
Never-Never Land
Just north of Metula, there is a hill in Israel that offers a breathtaking view of the northern Galilee, the upper Jordan valley and southern Lebanon. Also within view from this hill, about ten kilometers north of Metula — in what Israel calls its “security zone” and the Lebanese call territory occupied by Israel — is a well-defended stone building known as Khiam prison, the largest interrogation and torture installation in Lebanon. While the South Lebanon Army (SLA) directly manages the installation, it is but a subcontractor, an unskilled worker who takes orders directly from the big boss — the state of Israel.
Disappearances
Some of the cases are old but certainly not forgotten. The most recent inquiry that I received about a “disappearance” in Lebanon came in April 1997 from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The caller was a Palestinian whose brother, Rushdi Rashid Hamdan Shihab, “disappeared” in Sidon in October 1987. “At 10 am, he left his car with a mechanic at a gas station, saying that he would return in the evening to pick it up,” his brother said. Shihab, the father of three who was 42 at the time, did not return to the station that evening. And he was never seen again in Lebanon. Family members traveled to Jordan and Syria, seeking information about his whereabouts, but came up with nothing solid.
Skirting Democracy
The practice of selecting political representatives by voting is not new to Lebanon. The parliamentary framework of modern electoral life in Lebanon was established in the 1926 constitution. Elections were held regularly during the French Mandate period, except for interruptions during World War II. Throughout the Mandate period, two thirds of the parliament was elected on the basis of universal male suffrage (women first voted in the 1950s); the remaining one third was appointed by the French authorities. The practice of appointment ended at independence in 1943.
Myths and Money
“The price of prosperity has already been paid,” read an ad that Lebanon’s Investment Development Authority ran in the summer of 1996. “Now is the time to harvest.” The ad also mentioned, euphemistically, that the price had been “a period of unrest.” The message was meant to convince international investors that Lebanon has reemerged as a stable location for big finance and capital. At the same time, it reflected the feeling of many Lebanese that the civil war (1975-1990) had been due to external, regional, rather than internal, domestic circumstances, and that Lebanon therefore ought to be compensated for all the suffering.
Palestinians in Post-War Lebanon
As Lebanon’s elite strategizes post-war reconstruction and national reconciliation, the future of the Palestinian community in the country hinges on the outcome of the Arab-Israeli peace talks, particularly the multilateral talks on refugees. [1] Popular sentiment holds that “peace” will not produce the conditions for return or compensation. In the meantime, Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon face insurmountable odds, including poverty, unemployment and political disenfranchisement.
The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon
On February 15, 1996, 13 squatters were killed in Beirut when the building they were living in was brought down by demolition workers for Solidere, Lebanon’s reconstruction and development company. Solidere, a brainchild of Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, claimed it was a mistake; the dead were carted off, destitute migrants with no place in the government’s vision of the revitalized cosmopolitan city center. Brushing off criticism that reconstruction is proceeding too fast, the prime minister insisted that Lebanon today is the site of “a struggle between good and evil.” The alternatives facing the nation, he insisted, are clear: either the “will to progress” or “the will to despair.”
From the Editors (Summer 1996)
From June 4-14, tens of thousands of officials and experts from around the globe will gather in Istanbul for the Second UN Conference for Human Settlement (Habitat II), the last of the global UN summits. The non-official NGO gatherings should take the occasion to scrutinize how the attending states have addressed the right of their citizens to adequate shelter.
Cooke, War’s Other Voices
Miriam Cooke, War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (Cambridge, 1988).
“We Discovered Our Nation When It Was Nearly No More”
Elias Khoury is a Lebanese novelist, writer and critic. A lecturer at the American University of Beirut and the cultural editor of the Beirut daily al-Safir, Khoury is also a frequent contributor to literary and cultural journals throughout the Arab world. An English translation of his second novel, Al-Jabal al-Saghir (Little Mountain), has just been published (University of Minnesota, 1989). Barbara Harlow spoke with him in Austin, Texas, in November 1989.
Could you articulate some of the changes that you’ve seen over the last decade and a half, particularly as a writer working in the midst of the civil war?
“No Forum for the Lebanese People”
Forty years of history and the issues appear to be remarkably the same: national identity, the confessional system, electoral reform, the viability of the state, economic reconstruction and ideological realignment. What is Lebanon? Does it exist? Can it survive? The questions are not new. More than four decades ago, British and US officials were pondering the very same questions.
World War II was over. Lebanon celebrated its formal independence on December 22, 1943, but it was not until 1946 that the French were persuaded to abandon their occupation of the country. In the interim, French pressure to hold on to its privileged status led to conflict not only with Lebanese nationalists but with British forces.
‘Akkar Before the Civil War
The plain and mountains of the ‘Akkar are the northernmost part of the Lebanon, beyond Tripoli and the Koura region to its south and east. Partly because of the insistence of some influential Maronites, and with misgivings on the part of only a few French critics at the time, it was included in le Grand Liban in 1920 by the French League of Nations Mandate authorities, along with the Bekaa Valley and what is now south Lebanon. ‘Akkar’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population (in one of the most thinly inhabited areas of the country) led some to fear that its incorporation would lead to later problems of confessional balance since it was also the hinterland of the Sunni and nationalist city of Tripoli, whatever its advantages as a granary.
Class Formation in a Civil War
The state is the cohesive factor in a social formation. But what happens to the social formation where the state disintegrates? This is not a mere polemical question if we consider the Lebanese experience.
It Was Beirut, All Over Again
It was Beirut, all over again,
it was Beirut on the radio
El Salvador on TV
it was Sabra & Shatila
in the memory
it was Usulutan in the heart
It was Beirut, again,
when we thought Beirut went
to rest, but Beirut will not sleep
until El Salvador sleeps
and San Francisco will
not eat
until Eritrea eats
and El Salvador
will not die
It was Beirut all over again
in Managua, in Antigua,
in the shantytowns of
Marseilles,
wherever the radio blares its
sounds
and I mean everywhere
in this electronic age
and the caveman suffers
in the belly of El Salvador
War in the City
Nothing stays new for long in the torpor of Beirut, where everything is worn out by so much violence. If the word “ruin” suggests a comparison with the remains of ancient Tyre or Pompeii, it shouldn’t be used to describe Beirut, not even the blasted remains of the central city. The age and monumental character of the ancient ruins exclude human presence, and we view them from the distance of time, but the decay of Beirut is happening right before our eyes.
“Everyone Misunderstood the Depth of the Movement Identifying with Aoun”
Mansour Raad is the pen name of an Arab journalist who recently left Beirut and has followed the Lebanese war closely. Joe Stork spoke with him in Europe in late November 1989.
Who is Gen. Aoun and what does his “war of liberation” represent?
