Antun Sa’adeh has the dubious distinction of being the first and last political figure to be executed in independent Lebanon. A committed ideologue, Sa’adeh was positioned to the left of mainstream Lebanese politics and the confessional system, which he considered too impractical and slow to forge an independent national life.1 His life was tinged by a spirit of rebellion, which led him to scorn all half-measures and vacillation and which influenced the intransigence with which he later stuck to his program of national revival. But “rebel” he was, and as rebel, we may be sure he paid the price that always goes with such independence of thought and action.
Admired for the broadness of his intellectual sweep, his single-minded concentration on the national cause, and his commitment to rational principles, Sa’adeh was destined for a personal tragedy. But no one, including his political detractors, envisaged that it would be through the death penalty. Many expected him to die in cold blood or to live the rest of his life on the run or in exile, but not to be executed behind closed doors in Star Chamber style.2 Many more expected the State, in the longer run, to triumph against him but they never imagined that it would be without any physical or moral restraint. This was an intolerable breach of faith.
In order to understand how Sa’adeh came into circumstances that cost him his life, it is necessary to recreate the “rebel” before our eyes, placing ourselves, as far as possible, in his intellectual environment, and to touch upon the salient features of his relationship with the Lebanese State. During the last half-century this relationship has been normally discussed – or more often simply alluded to – primarily within the context of the political development of Lebanon. Because of this, the existing secondary accounts are strikingly inconsistent in the information they provide. They have given rise to an amazing variety of conflicting theories and evaluations. Here, however, we study the relationship as an internal affair involving complex relations among all the players who participated directly or indirectly in it. We explore its evolution phase by phase, and the central issues at question are taken as a whole and considered within a wider context than that of traditional scholarly interest in modern Lebanon.
At different periods in its history, Lebanon or Mount Lebanon before 1920, a mighty range which begins northeast of Tripoli and extends approximately to a region east of Sidon and Tyre in the south, has held an important position as a shelter for minority and persecuted groups, including its historic Maronite Christian majority, the monotheistic Druze, and local Shi’a Muslims. Other sects that are known to have settled in the Lebanon region are: Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Jacobites, Syrian Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Nestorian Assyrians, Latins (Roman Catholics), Protestants, Sunni Muslims and Jews. These sects co-existed, often with antagonistic interests, but could not mold into a unity of any measurable degree. Like “outright castes,”3 each sect managed its own internal affairs and personal status laws independent of the other sects.
In the mid-1800s, as nationalism penetrated the Syrian environment, this arrangement came under close scrutiny. Functionally, nationalism and sectarianism are opposites: nationalism is a collective spirit in which the relationship of the members of a nation is, theoretically, an equal relationship between citizens; sectarianism, on the other hand, refers (usually pejoratively) to a rigid adherence to a particular sect or party or religious denomination. It often implies discrimination, denunciation, or violence against those outside the sect. Moreover, as exclusive communities, sects “defy the environment in which they grow”4 and their members tend to possess a strong sense of identity that limits “one’s contact with others and the kind of occupation that was open to the individual.”5
With the advent of nationalism, Mount Lebanon found itself at a new crossroad in history. It became the stage for a major literary revival spearheaded by a small but active intellectual stratum willing to question the existing order of things. And so, amidst the pervasiveness of a sectarian mentality, various nationalist tendencies began to appear with fresh concepts and universal claims about how the region should be organized. Chief among them were:
By the turn of the twentieth century those tendencies were clashing over whether Lebanon’s identity was to be considered from a pan-Arab (or pan-Syrian) or a narrower nationalist Lebanese perspective. Although Lebanese Christians were the first intellectuals to promote a sense of pan-Arab (or Syrian) identity, they grew alienated from the movement after pan-Arabist theoreticians, for whom the very concept of historical Lebanon was increasingly anathema, began holding sway. Many felt that Lebanon’s identity could only be understood within the context of greater Syria and eventually a larger pan-Arab framework. The dividing lines eventually coalesced roughly around sectarian groupings, hampered by a rigid and static stratification, and the national identity of Lebanon remained undecided.
On September 1, 1920, against a background of intense national confusion, the French High Commissioner in the Levant, General Henri Gouraud, surrounded by a hand-picked audience of local religious and political leaders, declared the birth of Grand Liban (Greater Lebanon).The new entity, in addition to the pre-war mutassarafiyyah (governorate), included new areas and towns that were inhabited by a majority of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. It increased the Sunni Muslim population of the new state by eight times, the Shi’a Muslims by four times, and the Maronite Christians by only one-third of their original number in Mount Lebanon. The inclusion of such significant new population groups was deemed necessary for economic viability, but it brought with it serious problems. First, Greater Lebanon engulfed two areas unequal in their level of capitalist development and their access to services and resources: the more advanced area of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, constituting the center, and the less advanced areas of northern, eastern, and southern Lebanon, constituting the peripheries.6 Second, the new entity was created against the wishes of a significant number of its population. A large number of the center’s residents were Christians, and many of them, particularly Maronites, were advocates of the new state. A good number of the peripheries’ residents were Muslims, and many of them, in addition to a good number of Christians, leaned toward reunion with a Syrian/Arab nation. The different concentrations of sectarian communities in the center versus the peripheries also meant that Christians, predominantly of the center, had better access to resources while Muslims, predominantly of the peripheries, had less. This access also varied with class differences, with the upper classes of various religious affiliations in both regions having much better access to resources.7 Third, the inclusion of a substantial Muslim element undermined the new entity because the overall Maronite community slumped to about thirty per cent of the population. The French may have done that in order to weaken the Syrian Arab national movement in Syria and, simultaneously, to secure long-term Maronite dependency on them.
The initial main challenge for Greater Lebanon was to create a sphere for the two large religious groups and several other religious communities to live and function side by side. In 1926, a Lebanese Constitution was drafted under French supervision to pave the way for the Lebanese republic and its transformation toward a Western parliamentary democracy. Under the Constitution, all Lebanese were guaranteed the freedoms of speech, assembly, and association “within the limits established by law.” There were also provisions for freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, as long as the dignity of the several religions and the public order were not affected. A structure for the electoral system, legislative and executive institutions in addition to the juridical and bureaucratic structure, was also provided by the new constitution, but it was based on a confessional political representation that followed a ratio of 60% to 40% between Christians and Muslims.8 The purpose was to give Lebanon a political framework where the different confessional groups in an already polarized and sectarian society could coexist and follow a “national” consensus. However, many Muslims saw the Constitution as an expression of Lebanese independence and Christian and French colonial domination. In fact, Muslim representatives at the Constitution draft meetings made it clear that they were against the very idea of expanding the limits of mostly Christian Mount Lebanon to create Greater Lebanon incorporating Muslim areas and insisted that the record show their reservations. On another level, the Constitution combined two contradictory facts: the implementation of a Western political system based on equality and universal suffrage was one wanted fact, while a deeply rooted sectarianism in both Lebanese political and social culture was another actual fact that counteracted the former goal.9
Another problem was this: By superimposing Lebanon’s confessional-style politics on a democratic agenda, the new constitution, with tacit French approval, enabled a limited group of Christian families in Mount Lebanon and Beirut and Shiite and Sunni feudal landowner families in the coastal cities to usurp power for themselves. Cooperation among these families took place only in terms of a common interest that strengthened their own positions and increased their wealth. No space was given in this structure for those politicians or groups who aimed to transform the country into a democratic, pluralistic and fair society. From time to time political parties did appear but they were basically thinly disguised political machines for a particular confession or, more often, a specific zaim (political leader). Lacking traits common to parties in most Western democracies, they had no ideology and no programs, and made little effort at transcending sectarian support. Moreover, the absence of real political parties, in the sense of constitutionally legitimate groups seeking office, led to a new form of political clientelism, based upon but by no means identical to the older feudal system. It reduced the political process to one of squabbles over patronage rights.10
As a result, Lebanon became again a centre-stage for old divisions and disagreements over national identity. Two distinctly “nationalist” camps formed: a Christian Maronite camp that advocated for an independent Greater Lebanon within its existing “historical and natural boundaries;” and a mainly Muslim pan-Syrian Arab camp calling for “either complete unification with Syria, or some sort of federal system respecting a ‘Lebanese particularism’.”11 Both camps put on an “ideological” show – the unionist tendency even organized a campaign of civil disobedience to promote its cause – but the rivalry soon fizzled out into political jockeying for power and prestige. As soon as “Muslim politicians had come to realize that, whereas they might be of first-rate importance in Lebanon, in a Greater Syria they would at best be second-rate next to political leaders from Damascus and Aleppo”12 they sought a face-saving accommodation within the Lebanese system. Likewise, most Lebanese nationalists began to recognize the need for the nascent state to co-operate with its Muslim hinterland and began a process of national reconciliation that involved greater inclusion of Muslims into the political process. That process was suspended with the outbreak of World War II.
In September 1943, elections for a new chamber were held amidst domestic division over Lebanon’s “republican” identity. In the ensuing debate, the Lebanese nationalists portrayed themselves as against any foreign influence, be it French or Arab. While paying lip service to the need for friendly relations with neighboring states, they continued to stress the Phoenician (i.e., non-Arab) origins of the Lebanese. For their part, Lebanon’s Arab nationalists were careful not to push too hard for Arab union on the grounds that it could incite violence and thus provide the French with an excuse to perpetuate their occupation. Two months after the elections, a deal was struck between the contending parties to enable Lebanon to gain full independence. This would take the form of what would come to be called the National Pact (almithaq al-watani), an agreement between two prominent communal leaders, the Christian Beshara el-Khoury and the Sunni Riad el-Solh.
Under the National Pact, Christian leaders accepted that Lebanon was a “country with an Arab face” while Muslim leaders, who had abandoned the idea of union with Syria, agreed to recognize the existing borders of the newly independent state and relative, though diminished, Christian hegemony within them. The traditional division of labour between Lebanon’s various confessional groups was upheld with the presidency being reserved for a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the house a Shia Muslim. The ratio of deputies in parliament was to be six Christians to five Muslims. These arrangements were meant to be provisional and to be discarded once Lebanon moved away from confessionalism. The Pact did not specify how and when this would happen. Matters were made worse by the fact that the agreement was never officially written down and the meeting between the two men was more or less a private affair. What the two sides actually committed to would be the subject of bitter disagreement for years to come. According to el-Khoury, as recounted in his memoirs, the agreement was a push for complete independence. The Maronite community would not appeal to the West for protection while Lebanon’s Arabists would not push for a federation with the East. However, whereas el-Khoury saw independence from France as the end game, el-Solh saw it as a prerequisite step towards a pan-Arab union. For el-Solh, the pact meant that the Arabists would agree to the legitimacy of Grand Liban and would pursue their objectives for Arab union through democratic means. Both sides agreed that independence meant self-determination; it was the manner in which that independence would translate into concrete policy that would become problematic.13
Following independence on 23 November, 1943, it seemed that the National Pact had established Lebanon on acceptably stable foundations. The Lebanese political system displayed a modicum of unity and was successful in providing a basis for considerable freedom and prosperity. That it could do so depended upon it being asked to do very little. Whereas other parts of the Near East witnessed an expansion of government activity and, in some case, praetorian intervention, during the same period in Lebanon the government remained modest and civil. The Lebanese economy ran with a minimum of government control and with considerable success. Socially, Lebanon seemed to be heading in the right direction following the religious solidarity displayed during its charge for independence. Back then, in a first for Lebanon, the Maronite Archbishop and the Grand Mufti of Lebanon took a united stand against the French. A dispatch to the New York Herald Tribune stated on November 16, in the midst of the crisis: “For the first time in many years Moslems and Christians are united against the French.”14 And further “The most interesting aspect of the present disturbances is that members of all religions and sects are united.”15
With Beshara el-Khoury and Riad el-Solh at the political helm, the Lebanese had strong reasons to celebrate. Beshara el-Khoury was an exceptionally gifted organizer and orator. He had been in the political game almost from the proclamation of Greater Lebanon in 1920, when he was appointed as secretary-general of the Lebanese government, and was widely respected and supported by Lebanon’s economic and cultural circles. Though a self-confessed supporter of Greater Lebanon, el-Khoury displayed remarkable flexibility in politics and understood Lebanon’s unique social blend far better than his nearest rival, Emile Edde. He rose to the highest office in the state by forging closer relations with the Muslim community or, more precisely, with the Sunni elite, and by publicly acknowledging Lebanon’s Arab character and regional reality. Riad el-Solh, on the other hand, was a prominent Syrian Arab nationalist and one-time member of the short-lived Syrian National Congress under King Feisal. An urban notable from a well-established Sunni family, Solh was twice banished from Lebanon, in 1920 and again in 1925, for resisting French rule. His forceful personality, political astuteness, and outspoken views were the main mark of his personality. Solh was widely respected within the Sunni Muslim community in both Lebanon and in Syria, but it was his involvement in the Lebanese national quest in 1943 that finally turned him into a national zaim, at least in the eyes of his followers.
Upon assuming the country’s leadership, both Khoury and Solh sought to portray themselves as state-builders. The tone of Solh’s first cabinet statement, on 7 October 1943, speaks volumes:
The Government which I have the honour of heading and which emanates from this Assembly, regards itself as the expression of the people’s will. It is answerable before the Lebanese people alone, and its policy will be inspired by the country’s higher interests. Emanating from the Lebanese people alone, we are for the people first and foremost. It is for the purpose of making this independence and national sovereignty a real and concrete fact that we have assumed the responsibility of power.16
In practical policy terms, the Solh statement contained a number of proposals and ideas aimed at strengthening the “country’s laws and public functions:”17
However, the statement is best remembered for its reference to the sectarian problem in Lebanon:
One of the essential bases of reform is the suppression of sectarian considerations which are an obstacle to national progress. These have injured Lebanon’s reputation and weakened relations among the various elements of the Lebanese population. Furthermore, we realize that the sectarian principle has been exploited to the personal advantage of certain individuals, to the detriment of the nation’s interests. We are convinced that once the people are imbued with the national feeling under a regime of independence and popular administration, they will gladly agree to the abolition of the sectarian principle, which is an element of national weakness.
The day which will witness the end of the sectarian regime will be a blessed day of awakening. We shall strive to make that day as near as possible. It is only natural, however, that the realization of this objective should call for a few preparatory measures in every field. These measures will require the close cooperation of everyone, so that the realization of this important national reform may receive the full approval of all the citizens without exception.
What has been said of the sectarian principle applies also to the regional principle which, if carried out, would divide the country into several countries.18
This movement, however, never occurred; instead of its purported state-building purpose, the independence regime cemented the sectarian divide in the country and helped to aggravate rather than disentangle issues of conflict regarding the character of Lebanese polity. It also reinforced the sectarian system of government begun under the French Mandate by formalizing the confessional distribution of high-level posts in the government based on the 1932 census’ six-to-five ratio favoring Christians over Muslims. Viewed from this perspective,
The National Pact . . . consecrated the traditional ‘Lebanese way’, and thus incorporated the defects of the old order into the new. This blocked the emergence of an efficient and functional administration; worse, it inhibited the various components of the population in their incipient identification with the new state. In the short term, a fairly stable equilibrium was thus ensured, but this was only made possible by sacrificing the prospects of stability in the long run.19
Once the regime turned confessional all the precepts of strong and responsible government went amiss. The state became an arena for competing interests and parochial benefits overtook the national welfare.
Many earlier proposals for securing Christian-Muslim co-operation, based as they had been on the Sarrail model of individual equality in a secular state, were reduced by the regime to a singular approach which endeavored to secure co-operation on a strictly confessional basis. The outcome was unsalutory: sectarianism became even more entrenched; the principle of balancing, which created multiple power centers, frequently inhibited the political process; basic philosophical differences between the sects widened; and bickering among elites, not only between Christians and Muslims but also among sects within each religious group, spread like wildfire.
Also during this period, the political system of zuama clientelism was institutionalized and expanded. This impaired the efficiency of the central bureaucracy and fostered widespread communal disenchantment owing to the system’s basic discriminatory nature. Like sectarianism, zuamaism hindered the emergence of a sense of national as opposed to parochial loyalty and turned the state into an arena for petty squabbles and power contests. As a result, corruption and nepotism reached an intolerable level and a steady gap in access to resources opened up, polarizing Lebanese society even further:
Although Khoury had professed himself defender of the constitution during the French Mandate, after independence he revised it to secure another term in office. He portrayed himself as the president of all the Lebanese, but under his reign his family, relatives, and friends, and the Maronite community as a whole, strengthened their hold over the administration, the judicial system, the army, and the intelligence services. He perfected what may be defined as a method of “control and share” – integrating the feudal bourgeois elites of the Sunnis, Shi’is, and other communities into the political and economic systems in return for their support of the status quo. This may have provided Lebanon with a more stable political system, as those who benefited from it had a vested interest in maintaining it, but it led to widespread corruption.20
Both Khoury and Solh were culpable. The pair swept to power in 1943 with a great deal of public credit and a broad base of popular support but turned out to be anything but state leaders. The people gave them a clear mandate to lead Lebanon into a new age: instead, they exhibited none of the necessary leadership principles and ideals of good governance. They offered the country a clear political agenda, but carried to fruition only what was deemed to be beneficial to their own political survival: the Constitution remained basically unchanged; nothing was done to cleanse the national administration; no population census was undertaken; and the electoral law was reformed to suit their own political ambitions. Only in foreign policy can their regime claim some credit, but that was only because the regional and international challenges to Lebanon in those years were hardly problematical.
Lebanon under the Khoury-Solh regime returned to its old political habits. Old and new wounds remained unhealed and social grievances became more acute than at any time before. Some of those grievances were directed at the regime itself; others at the political system; and others still at the political status as a whole. The Lebanese split yet again on national identity: those who felt uncomfortable with Lebanon’s “Christian” character rejuvenated their call for pan-Arab unity; others felt that Lebanon was marching to a political tune which was too Arab and too Islamic for their liking:
This tradition [of Christian tolerance] – let it be stated very bluntly – is now in mortal danger. There are two movements at work in the Lebanon today. The first is that traditional spirit which we have just described and which is cherished by the great majority of the Lebanese population. The second movement may be quite accurately described as the invasion of the Lebanon by Pan-Arabism, as represented by the present Lebanese Government headed by the Prime Minister, Riad As-Solh, a Sunni Moslem from a minority group in the Lebanon, who for the last twenty-five years has worked – against the will of almost the entire Lebanese people – to include Lebanon in an Arab-Islamic union. As long as France with its traditional support of Lebanese Christianity held the Mandate over Lebanon and Syria, the pro-Moslem forces had no chance: Their opportunity came during the War, when with the active connivance of Major General Sir Edward Spears, representing Britain in the Levant, the French lost their hold over Lebanon and Syria. A pro-Moslem Government was then propelled into office in the first elections held in the unmandated Lebanon, and almost without the awareness of the great majority of the Lebanon, the country was swung into the orbit of Arab League policy.21
For clarity, it should be said that internal dissatisfaction under the independence regime was not entirely sectarian. On the contrary, the most serious and most articulate challenge to the State and to the regime came from secular groups and secular individuals from various political persuasions. Chief among them was Antun Sa’adeh. He was, and had been from earlier times, the Knight in shinning armor in the secular crusade not only against the State but also against everything it represented.
Born in 1904 into a middle-class family with an intellectual background, Sa’adeh cast himself as a clear-thinking maverick willing to tell his people harsh truths. In the pursuit of this goal he exhibited great independence in thought and action and was principled and committed to one theoretical line all his life. His intolerance of inconsistency, his passion for scientific facts and his belief in deductive reasoning reflected an absolute faith in the omnipotence of reason.22 Yet, he is often remembered mostly for his towering personality and charisma:
To most people who met him, friend and foe alike, the impression which Antun Sa’adeh left was that of a man of unusually strong character and striking personality. He possessed a great deal of will power and was extremely intelligent with a deep insight for politics. Though his formal schooling ended before he completed his high school education, he was widely read and highly cultured. Furthermore, he commanded the respect of many of those who met him and exhibited all the qualities and attributes of leadership.23
In addition to these personal and intellectual qualities, Sa’adeh possessed remarkable leadership and fighting qualities that he was to display over and again. Writing many years later about his special relationship with Sa’adeh, Hisham Sharabi noted, “When he said, ‘The blood that runs through our veins is owned by the nation and it must be produced whenever the nation demands it,’ he meant it, literally.”24
Sa’adeh belonged to a generation which cultivated the imagination more intensely and deliberately than its predecessors. However widely the majority of its members differed in character, aim, and historical environment, they resembled each other in one fundamental attribute: they criticised and condemned the existing condition of society. The problem is they disagreed about the effectiveness of the proposed means of improving that society, about the extent to which compromise with the existing status quo was morally or practically advisable, about the character and value of specific social institutions, and consequently about the policy to be adopted with regards them.25 The problem, also, is that their disagreements were nationalistic in tone but sectarian in essence.26 Sa’adeh, however, came to be wholly out of sympathy with these attitudes. He believed that human history is governed by laws which cannot be altered by the mere intervention of groups actuated by this or that ideal. From this arises the first fundamental difference between Sa’adeh and his contemporaries: national and not sectarian interest should be the benchmark of political action. Yet Sa’adeh could not at any time be classified into any of the existing currents: certainly he was in no sense a Lebanese nationalist or a pan-Arab. He believed that the right framework for national activity was Syrian nationalism based upon but by no means identical with earlier nineteenth-century notions of it.27
To prove his point, Sa’adeh studied nationalism.28 He appealed, at least in his own view, to reason and practical intelligence and insisted that all that the people needed, in order to know how to save themselves from the chaos in which they were involved, was to seek to understand their actual condition. Next, Sa’adeh attempted a powerful critique of established situations during which he took direct aim at the zuamas:
The greatest calamity befalling Syria [he wrote in 1925] is the zuama who have none of the qualifications for leadership. They are men who, if the truth is to be said, lack all political, military or economic knowledge . . . and if they happened to discuss a substantial national problem, they do this like children.29
With this attitude, common to the vast majority of revolutionaries and reformers at all times, Sa’adeh came to espouse a radical view of change. The term he used for that is nahda, a notion of change not only in the institutions and power structure of society, but also in its ideological foundation, and the beliefs and myths that stem from it. In other words, the crucial issue for Sa’adeh was not to substitute one government for another, or to speed the forthcoming birth of a new system that society could produce in its present condition. Nor was it a question of giving society an additional impetus to speed up its progression towards the realization of goals to which it was clearly progressing. The issue for him was that of changing the whole life of a nation whose development had stopped long ago, and whose objective potential for movement in new directions had shrunk and dwindled away to almost nothing.30
Once again Sa’adeh inveighed against the status quo in his country arguing that its institutions were unsuitable to the task of national revival and that, therefore, an alternative arrangement was required for that purpose. He had in mind a highly disciplined political party operating outside of and, if necessary, in opposition to the existing structure. The Syrian National Party (later the SSNP),31 which he secretly established in 1932, was consciously designed with that objective in mind. Sa’adeh then raised the political stakes by bravely exposing worrying trends about the state of thinking amongst his political opponents. His tone was furious and often brutal. His critique of religious and sectarian “nationalism” was particularly scathing. Sharp, lucid, mordant, realistic, and astonishingly modern in tone, it poured ridicule on what he considered to be naively personal and communal interpretations of nationalism. Sa’adeh also rejected the class-reductionist interpretation of Marxism by defining nationalism as a state of mind for all social forces in which the nation is a “stake” for the various classes.32
Behind his assault on the prevailing political doctrines stood more complex emotions connected with his own self-image as the redeemer of Lebanon. As early as 192133 he had posed the question of whether Lebanon’s interest would be better served by preserving its independent entity or by absorbing it into a union with Syria. And as far back as then the answer was a foregone conclusion: Lebanon is an invaluable part of Syria, no different, certainly no less important, than the rest of the country. A separate Lebanon thus represented one of those demands that Sa’adeh was either reluctant to accept, or unable to fulfil. After the Syrian National Party was founded, he would again break ranks with the Christian Lebanese by denying the sovereign impenetrability of Lebanon’s frontiers. “It is clear,” he asserted, “that the Lebanese question can only be sectionally justified. The Lebanese question is not based on the existence of Lebanon as something independent, or on the existence of a separate Lebanese homeland, or even on an independent Lebanese history. Its only basis is religious party partisanship and theocracy.”34
Such pronouncements aroused feelings of atavistic insecurity among the Lebanonists, who felt that Lebanon had a special mission in life and that in order to fulfil this mission Lebanese political independence must be preserved at all costs. In 1936 a campaign was spearheaded by the Jesuit newspaper al-Bashir in coordination with Bkirki, the fortress of Lebanese Christian nationalism, to deter Sa’adeh from pursuing his political objectives. While portraying themselves as the true patriots and creative defenders of Lebanon, its architects sought to project Sa’adeh as a traitor who had not been adequately socialized to comprehend the moral principles and realities of the socio-political order. The campaign was relatively successful but did not in the least shake Sa’adeh’s belief in his own views. The SNP leader went into damage control explaining that neither Lebanon’s destruction nor its merger with Syria was part of his intention. Emphasizing the difference between Lebanon as a “political question” arising from a religious motive and Syria as a “national cause” he stated:
Our Social Nationalist ideology is a social thing and the Lebanese entity is a political thing and we do not confuse the two. If utility or political conditions required that the Lebanese entity needed to become an actual, physical entity, the question from this aspect remains a purely political one and there is no justification to turn it into a national issue. Because of this, those who consider the Social Nationalist Party a party that exists solely to demand Syrian unity err or misunderstand its cause. Those who try to panic the ultras among the Lebanese by saying that the party wants to annex Lebanon to Syria are deliberately making false propaganda.35
Later, Sa’adeh was able to point to numerous factual errors in the Lebanonist nationalist discourse. “If the [Lebanese] Christians refer back to their scripture, the Bible,” he asserted in reference to the Phoenician thesis, “they will find that it is defined as the Phoenicia of Syria, not the Phoenicia of Lebanon.”36 Again, “The Maronites, they being part of the Syrian people that is centred in the interior of Syria, are Syriac rather than Phoenician in their original tongue and in culture and blood.”37 With clever use of their deficient historical knowledge of Maronitism, Sa’adeh was, in fact, able to question the Lebanonist discourse as a whole. In several simply and beautifully written accounts, he laid bare the anxieties of Lebanese particularism in a world where impassioned nationalism had managed to flourish.38
Alongside his well-reasoned critiques of Lebanese particularism, on another front in 1936, Sa’adeh opened fire on the political establishment and showed that its world-view would lead to national suicide. His targets, again, were the zu’ama,39 who had worked their way back into the system and were presenting themselves as “national leaders”:
Some people took up the leadership of the popular dissatisfaction and exploited it in order to obtain the positions they sought, and they bolstered up this leadership by the remains of family power derived from the principles of a bygone age – principles which consider the people as herds to be disposed of by certain families, dissipating the interests of the people for the sake of their personal power. And when these so-called leaders found that the family and the home were not sufficient in this age to uphold leadership, they resorted to certain words beloved by the people – the words of liberty, independence, and principles – and they played upon these words, words which are sacred when they indicate an ideal for a living nation, but which are corrupt when they fire a means for assuming leadership and a screen behind which lurk ambition and private aims.40
Sa’adeh then opened merciless war on the ruling elite and the “opportunists” in the state who were endangering the whole future of the national movement and who aimed to produce only servile entitism. As soon as he was finished with the Christian Lebanonists, he began a series of articles which took the struggle right up to the political establishment with all the explosive power of original and genuinely revolutionary thought:
There is a limit that every government has to stop at as regards the determination of general and ultimate destiny, which is the destiny of the people and not the government. Any government that attempts to bind the destiny of the people to its own destiny is a government in breach of state interests . . . the Lebanese government has developed into an intelligence bureau and ordinary Lebanese can no longer feel safe in his home, or work, or community.41
This conception meant, in fact, that the entire edifice of the Lebanese political establishment was corrupt; it meant, as well, that those who were in charge of it were corrupt and thus lacked credibility. Sa’adeh was able to analyse the Lebanese political establishment, its theoretical foundations and system of clientele and patronage politics, no longer as an irrational jumble of accidents, nor as the fulfilment of definite ideas and notions, but as a systematic politically explicable development sustained by leaders soaked in opportunism and self-interest. Ultimately, this fight on two fronts, the clear demarcation of the line of nationalist activism from opposing tendencies, and at the same time concrete explanations of practical tasks, would earn Sa’adeh many enemies. He was derided and denounced on all sides, not merely by direct opponents, but also by the majority of the politically inexperienced masses that he aimed to educate. That would include the pan-Arabists of Lebanon and the francophone Lebanese nationalists, who saw him as a threat to the integrity of Lebanon and to the basic political and ideological foundations of the state.42 The real charge against Sa’adeh, however, was left to the state, which reacted with indignant rage.
Sa’adeh’s political debut in November 1935 presented an instant problem to the political establishment in Lebanon. His vision of a Syrian nation, independent and sovereign, clashed directly with its effort to solidify the Lebanese entity within the French-created 1920 demarcation lines and as a separate state from Syria. It could not have come at a worse time for the central authorities, who were on the verge of a crucial victory brought on by the readiness of the Lebanese Syrian unionists43 to join the political system after years of boycott and intransigence. There had been the occasional attempts to exclude these “unionists” from the political process but in general, these attempts, which the French initiated after the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925, “did not neutralize the apparatus of the state in relation to [them], but instead tried to neutralize and marginalize them in relation to the state.”44 With Sa’adeh the converse was applied: the French-Lebanese political leadership did not attempt to neutralize and marginalize Sa’adeh in relation to the state, but instead attempted to neutralize the apparatus of the state in relation to him. They did this by utilizing the legal system to frighten Sa’adeh into submission, thus illustrating to the general public the presumptive willingness of authorities to play by the legal rules. However, it soon transpired that the challenge he posed to them was not a mere spontaneous idiosyncratic deviation by a resentful individual, but a calculated act that was both organized and part of a program of resistance.
In 1936, a public statement entitled the “Blue Declaration,” issued even as a Syrian delegation was in Paris negotiating with the French Government for the conclusion of a Franco-Syrian Treaty, raised the stakes between Sa’adeh and the authorities even higher. In the “Blue Declaration” Sa’adeh re-affirmed his faith in Syrian nationalism and again questioned the integrity of Lebanese separatism:
The Lebanese question is a complimentary part of the broad Syrian cause. It is therefore impermissible to treat it as an independent issue. Just as the Syrian delegation in Paris has no right to represent the Syrian cause in its broad sense and, conversely, the right to represent the Lebanese question, likewise sectarian desires in Lebanon are not entitled to that right.45
The authorities responded by encouraging the growth of confessional parties, notably the Phalanges Libanais46 and the Najjadah.47 Sa’adeh became the object of a character assassination and was smeared as a treasonous tool of European Fascism. One newspaper, al-Masa’, continued to publish slanderous reports about Sa’adeh based on unconfirmed reports about his activity until incensed SNP members gave its owner “a good lesson.”48 The French were not amused and charged Sa’adeh with inciting rebellion. In the last week of February 1937, government security forces clashed with his followers at a political rally in the Lebanese mountain town of Bekfeyya. In retaliation, the government arrested Sa’adeh for a third time on a charge of inciting the people against public order.49 But with parliamentary elections looming, the Lebanese Prime minister freed Sa’adeh after obtaining from him an agreement to respect and uphold the existence of the Lebanese state. Actually, Sa’adeh gave that agreement on the condition that Lebanon’s statehood would remain a matter for the will of the people to determine. The French accepted this condition to pacify him while dealing with more urgent problems brought on by Alexandretta’s transfer to Turkey.
In the ensuing period of “peaceful coexistence”50 between Sa’adeh and the authorities, the SNP leader was allowed, for the first time, to issue a newspaper and to speak more openly about his political views. The authorities allowed this to happen because they thought that compromise might work better with him than confrontation: they were wrong again. Sa’adeh turned his newspaper, an-Nahda, into a forum against the French Mandate and its “stooges” in Lebanon and Syria and forced open a long-delayed and still unfinished debate about Lebanon’s future. Though not instantly anti-France, the paper moved quickly in that direction.
Early in 1938, the French again swung the cleaver in Sa’adeh’s direction. With war in Europe fast approaching, the general suspicion that Sa’adeh was on the Nazi payroll picked up again. The evidence was clearly lacking but Sa’adeh’s anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary tendencies, his focus on discipline, youth and nationalism, the cult of leadership and the swastika-like emblem of his party provided enough material to condemn him as a Nazi agent. The well-rehearsed accusation was trotted out, but only as an overture to a deadlier assault on him.
The intensity and sometimes ferocity of the conflict had a telling effect on Sa’adeh. He continued to work steadily and unobtrusively among the young intellectuals and the few groups in the country that shared his concern for the national interest, but his hold over public opinion remained marginal and indecisive. At some point in 1938 Sa’adeh caught wind of a government conspiracy against him and planned his escape. Some in Lebanon alleged that Sa’adeh’s physical extermination was intended, but the Lebanese authorities denied that. Nonetheless, as a precaution, the Supreme Council in the party advised Sa’adeh to leave the country, which he did clandestinely in 1938.51 Two days later, government security forces raided the headquarters of his party, confirming what the party had suspected all along.
The outbreak of the Second World War brought immediate changes in every sphere of life, in Lebanon as well as Syria. Various measures were taken to ensure the safety of the two states and bring them under tight control. In Lebanon the French High Commissioner, General Weygand, dissolved the Chamber, dismissed the ministry, suspended the Constitution and delegated the administration to a Secretary of State directly responsible to the President of the Republic.52 Moreover, suspect organizations were dissolved and some of their leading members were arrested: some were sentenced by military tribunals to exceedingly long terms of imprisonment on charges of subversion and conspiracy. Sa’adeh’s supporters and top aides were among the arrested. They were exonerated of the charge of subversion but indicted on the lesser charges of operating without a permit and causing public disorder. Sa’adeh was sentenced in absentia to ten years imprisonment and a further ten years of exile. The sentence was upheld in 1940 by the Vichy-appointed High Commissioner in Beirut.
After the Allied takeover of Lebanon and Syria was completed in 1942, the new Free French administrator brought new persecution against Sa’adeh’s followers as part of a general drive against independence-seeking movements. As a result, in the 1943 presidential campaign the SNP broke away from its original policy of neutrality in Lebanese electoral politics and sided with Beshara Khoury: Emile Edde was seen as a symbol of French influence.53 In exchange Khoury promised to release all SNP detainees if elected to the Lebanese presidency. Khoury did become President in 1943 but before attending to that promise, he was arrested by the French High Commissioner, along with Premier Solh and government ministers, for attempting to annul France’s special privileges in Lebanon. In the ensuing struggle, Sa’adeh, who was now domiciled in Argentina serving out an imposed exile, instructed his followers from abroad to support the Lebanese government.54 For its part, the government, on its reinstatement some days later, released all political prisoners and allowed the SNP, along with other parties, to resume political activity: the issue of Sa’adeh’s return was deferred, though.
The new direction freed the government from an important responsibility and reinforced its reputation as democratic and forward-thinking. This is not to suggest that goodwill was exclusively or even mainly the reason behind the government’s action: (1) the government lacked both the strength and the adaptability of the French to engage the SNP; and (2) its army, which was still officially tied to the Troupes Speciales du Levant,55 was small and ill-equipped to deal with political disturbances. Moreover, using repression as a domestic policy tool after the SNP had given formal expression to its attachment to Lebanese independence would have undermined the government’s image and furnished the French with an excuse to stay longer in Lebanon.
With these objectives clearly in mind, the Lebanese leadership in 1945 reached a formal compromise with the SNP whereby they agreed to legalize the party in exchange for a pledge from the latter to work within the framework of the National Pact.56 As a complementary condition, the SNP leadership was required to tone down the party’s pan-Syrian rhetoric and turn the party into a “Lebanese” organization. The deal advanced in great strides so much so that by 1946 the SNP looked almost indistinguishable from other Lebanese parties and nothing like the SNP of the previous decade. Outwardly:
The word ‘Syrian’ was removed from the party’s name. It was now called the National Party.
The flag of the party was modified and its colours changed.
The party’s head office in Beirut began to exercise greater autonomy from its branches in Palestine and the Syrian Republic.
The party’s manner of salute was toned-down.
Inwardly, the party was “directed more toward the domestic problems of independent Lebanon than to the national problem as defined by Sa’adeh.”57 It capped off its transformation with a direct attack on the Greater Syria Scheme:
The Greater Syria scheme is a threat to the independence of the two states in the region it seeks to unite [namely Syria and Lebanon]. It relinquishes the territories of Cilicia and Alexendretta, consecrates sectarianism in Lebanon and seeks to turn the country into a religious safe haven for a particular group. Conversely, it endeavours to establish a Jewish home in the heart of a dear sector, which has struggled hard to defend itself from the alien Jews. In addition to all of this, the scheme calls for a system of government that it is inimical with the foundations of modern civilization and its concepts, as well as with all the values that every open-minded person cherishes.58
For a political party that had so signally struggled for Syrian unification, the declaration was a clear ideological reversal: it showed how far it had been Lebanonized within a period of a mere two or three years. Sa’adeh’s initial reaction to this development was surprisingly mild and cautious – the proverbial calm before the storm. He tried in vain to dissuade the perpetrators from going further down that path and constantly affirmed his position that no circumstances should deflect the party from its national objectives. His appeals fell on deaf ears. Though still officially the party’s undisputed leader, Sa’adeh refrained from taking disciplinary action against the deviationists so as not to give the government an excuse to extend his banishment. The strategy did not proceed entirely smoothly, but it spared the party the pain of an internal split.
1 It is customary to associate Sa’adeh with right-wing politics on account of his commitment to nationalism and extreme dislike of traditional electoral politics. That much is true. But Sa’adeh was also a strong advocate of Leftist reforms, the kind that promotes intervention in favor of egalitarianism, and gives little or no authority to tradition. Most Lebanese regard him as neither left nor right but definitively anti-Establishment.
2 In modern usage, the Star Chamber is used, metaphorically or poetically, in reference to legal or administrative bodies that exercise strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings. It is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings. On Star Chamber see William Hargrave, A Treatise on the Court of Star Chamber. Legal Classics Library, 1986; and Samuel Rawson, Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. London: Camden Society, 1886.
3 Sofia Antun Sa’adeh, The Social Structure of Lebanon: Democracy or Servitude? Beirut: Dar An-Nahar, 1993: 10.
4 Manochehr Dorraj, “The Political Sociology of Sect and Sectarianism in Iranian Politics: 1960–1979.” Journal of Third World Studies. Volume 23, No. 2 (Fall 2006): 95–117.
5 Simon Haddad, “Christian-Muslim Relations and Attitudes towards the Lebanese State.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 1 (April 2001): 131.
6 See Sami A. Ofeish, “Lebanon’s Second Republic: Secular Talk, Sectarian Application.” Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 21 (Winter, 1999): 97–117.
7 Ibid.
8 Even though Articles 7 and 12 provide for equality of civil and political rights and equal access to public posts based on merit, Article 95 affirms the state’s commitment to confessionalism, but without setting forth how it is to be applied.
9 Ladan Madeleine Moghaddas, Civil Society and Political Democracy in Lebanon, MA Thesis, Jönköping (January 2006): 42.
10 See S. Khalaf, “Changing forms of political patronage in Lebanon” in Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J. (eds.), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies. London: Gerard Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1977: 185–205.
11 David Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon: Political Rights in Islamic Law, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004: 104.
12 Philip Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–1945. Princeton University Press, 1987: 58.
13 Some Lebanese dispute the existence of the National Pact and have labelled it as “a created legend.” See Hala Kilani, “National Pact: myth or reality?” Daily Star, Beirut, 21 November, 2002.
14 New York Herald Tribune, New York: 16 November, 1943.
15 Ibid.
16 Eugenie Elie Abouchdid, Thirty Years of Lebanon and Syria (1917–1947). Beirut: The Sader-Rihani Printing Co., 1948: 81.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 83.
19 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000:
103.
20 Meir Zamir, “From Hegemony to Marginalism: The Maronites of Lebanon” in Bengio, Ofra and Ben-Dor, Gabriel (eds.), Minorities and the State in the Arab World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1999.
21 G. Akl, A. Ouadat, E. Hunein (eds.), The Black Book of the Lebanese Elections of May 25, 1947. New York: Phoenicia Press, 1947: 3–4.
22 On Sa’adeh’s distinctiveness see Mustapha Abdul Satir, Shu’un Qawmiyyah (National Issues). Beirut: Dar Fikr, 1990: 29–45.
23 Nadim Makdisi, The Syrian National Party: A Case Study of the First Inroads of National Socialism in the Arab World, unpub. PhD. Dissertation, American University of Beirut, 1959: 15.
24 Hisham Sharabi, Images from the Past: An Autobiography. Beirut: Dar Nelson, 1989: 121.
25 See Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–1945. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987.
26 An interesting depiction of that era can be found in Edward Selim Atiyah, An Arab Tells his Story: A Study in Loyalties. London: J. Murray, 1946.
27 Sa’adeh recalled this phase in his life as follows: “When I began to give serious thought to the resuscitation of our nation against the background of the irresponsible political movements rampant in its midst, it became forthwith certain to me that our most urgent problem was the determination of our national identity and our social reality. Although there was no consensus of opinion concerning this problem, I became convinced that the starting point of every correct national endeavor must be the raising of this fundamental philosophical question: Who are we? After extensive research, I arrived at the following conclusion: We are Syrians and we constitute a distinct national entity.” A. Sa’adeh, al-Muhadarat al-Ashr (The Ten Lectures). Beirut: SSNP Publications, 1978.
28 Ibid.
29 Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 1. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 124.
30 Adel Beshara, Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the Political Philosophy of Antun Sa’adeh. Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1995.
31 Sa’adeh renamed the party to the Syrian Social National Party to underpin its philosophical outlook as ‘social’ or ‘societal’ oriented. It is not to be confused with ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ which, in Arabic, translate into ishtiraqqiyah as opposed to ijtima’iyah. See Aboud Aboud, The S.N.S.P. Sydney: An-Nahda, 1982: 31.
32 Nicos Ponlantzas, State, Power, Socialism. London: New Left Books, 1978: 115.
33 Antun Sa’adeh, “al-wihda al-Suriyya” (Syrian Unity), al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 1. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 4–16.
34 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Muhadarat al-Ashr (The Ten Lectures): 183.
35 Antun Sa’adeh, Marahil al-Mas’alla al-Lubnaniyah (The Stages of the Lebanese Question), 2nd ed. Beirut: Fikr Publications, 1991: 40.
36 Quoted in Inam Raad, Antun Sa’adeh wa al-In’izaliyun (Antun Sa’adeh and the Isolationists). Beirut: Fikr Publications, 1980: 54. The Phoenician thesis postulated the existence of a distinctive Lebanese national essence persisting from the Phoenician era to the present.
37 A. Sa’adeh, “The Maronites are Syriac Syrians,” al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 16. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 164.
38 See volume 3 of his Complete Works.
39 On Lebanese zuama politics see Arnold Hottinger, “Zu’ama and Parties in the Lebanese Crisis of 1958.” Middle East Journal (1961): 85–103.
40 A. Sa’adeh, al-Muhadarat al-Ashr (The Ten Lectures): 38.
41 A. Sa’adeh, Mukhtarat fi al-Mas’allah al-Lubnaniyyah (Selected Works on the Lebanese Question). Beirut: Dar Fikr, 1978: 44.
42 Inam Raad, Antun Sa’adeh wa al-In’izaliyun (Antun Sa’adeh and the Isolationists). Beirut: Dar Fikr, 1980.
43 Raghid Solh, “The attitude of the Arab nationalists towards Greater Lebanon during the 1930s,” in Nadim Shehadi and Dana Haffar Mills (eds.), Lebanon: A History of Conflict and Consensus. London: I. B. Tauris and Co Ltd, 1988: 152.
44 Ibid., 152.
45 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 2. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 214.
46 A Lebanese nationalist party which endeavoured to establish a degree of organization and cohesion which older groups of Lebanese nationalism had not for the most part possessed. The party described itself as “a patriotic youth organization” and defined its aim as “the establishment of a Lebanese nation, conscious of its duties and rights in an independent and sovereign state.” In practice, however, the majority of its adherents, like its leader, Pierre Jumayyel, were Maronites educated by the Jesuits. See The Phalanges Libanaise, Statutes, 1 July, 1938, Article 1. See also I. Rababi, “The Phalanges Libanaise: Its Aim and Organization,” a speech delivered on 5 February, 1939.
47 A predominantly Moslem organization with Pan-Arab doctrines. Although in principle open to members of all religious communities and purporting to be a “national” organization operating above daily party politics (Articles 6 and 7 of the Najjadah Basic Principles (1937) forbid members of the organization from participating in national elections even in their personal capacities before resigning from it), in practice the Najjadah became the anti-thesis of the ‘Phalanges Libanaise’ among the Lebanese Muslims. Politically, the Najjadah did not oppose the existence of Lebanon as a separate national entity but, convinced that “Lebanon has the same duties and rights as all the other Arab countries,” it tried to link it in the general movement for Arab union.
48 The Syrian Bulletin, no. 215.
49 Oriente Moderno, Vol. XVII, 1937: 231.
50 Labib Z. Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis. Harvard: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1969: 58.
51 Sa’adeh travelled overland to Jordan during which he met King Abdullah. The meeting was brief and fruitless apparently due to a personality conflict between the two men. Sa’adeh then crossed to Palestine and from there to Cyprus in the first leg of a long journey that would take him to Europe and South America. See John Daye, Sa’adeh wa Hisham Sharabi (Sa’adeh and Hisham Sharabi). Beirut: Dar Nelson, 2004: 31–32.
52 Albert Hourani, Syria and Lebanon: A Political Essay. Beirut: Librairie Du Liban, 1968: 230.
53 Gibran Jreige, Haqa’iq Ain al-Istiqlal: Ayyam Rashayya, 4th edition. Beirut: Dar Amwaj, 2000: 22. It is claimed that the party played a decisive role in getting el-Khoury elected to parliament for the Maronite seat in Mount Lebanon in view of its popularity in that constituency.
54 In fact, the only fatality in Lebanon’s independence campaign was one Said Fakhr ad-Din, a partisan of Sa’adeh. In 1946, the Lebanese President, Beshara el-Khoury, issued a decree (K/9377) in which he recognized the SNP member Said Fakhr ad-Din as a martyr and awarded him the Medal of National Struggle (Midaliyat al-Jihad al-Watani). Ibid.: 33
55 See N. E. Bou Nakhlie, “Les Troupes Speciales: Religious and Ethnic Recruitment, 1916–1946.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Nov. 1993): 645–660.
56 An unwritten agreement between el-Khoury and el-Solh, the National Pact aimed principally at consolidating Lebanon as an independent state within a power-sharing arrangement between the various sectarian groups. The main principles of the Pact were: (1) Lebanon was to be a completely independent state; (2) the Christian communities were to cease identifying with the West and, in return, the Muslim communities were to protect the independence of Lebanon and prevent its merger with any Arab state; (3) that Lebanon, though an Arab country, can still maintain its spiritual and intellectual ties with the West; (4) Lebanon, as a member of the family of Arab states, should cooperate with the other Arab states and remain neutral in conflicts among them; and (5) public offices should be distributed proportionally among the recognized religious groups. See Farid El-Khazen, The Communal Pact of National Identities: The Making and Politics of the 1943 National Pact. Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1991.
57 Labib Z. Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis. Harvard: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1969: 61.
58 Fayez Sayegh, The Greater Syria Scheme. Beirut: The Syrian National Party Information Bureau, 6 December, 1946: 26.