The Confrontation Reignites
In March 1947, after extensive lobbying at home and abroad, Sa’adeh was finally re-admitted into Lebanon. It is claimed that in giving assent to Sa’adeh’s return, President Khoury expected to draw political capital from the SNP in the general elections which were scheduled in May of the same year.1 However, upon his arrival, Sa’adeh foiled this plan by declaring all previous agreements between the SNP and the Lebanese government null and void. In a clean break with the political atmosphere of the day, he again questioned the meaning of Lebanon as an entity and its recently-acquired independence:
The Lebanese entity! What is the real meaning of the Lebanese entity? Is it an iron mould in which thought in Lebanon can be placed to implode into itself? Or is it a sphere of safety, a point from which thought can proceed to diffuse brotherhood throughout the whole nation, to spread unity and unify ranks, and to unite the whole nation on a single future from which we refuse to deviate even by one hairbreadth.
What is it that the Lebanese desire from their entity? Is it to have light all for themselves while the surrounding region can remain enshrouded in darkness? If there is light in Lebanon, it is only to be expected that this light should spread itself out throughout the whole of natural Syria. Could we accept that we Lebanon could have a light without all compatriots in our nation having a share in it? That can never be. [Pointing to the masses] This is the Lebanese entity and this is the authentic expression of the sublime feelings and the grand aims embodied in the Lebanese soul. Anything other than this is baseless. It does not represent Lebanon or the will of the Lebanese people at all.
The Lebanese entity depends for its legitimization on the will of the Lebanese people. In all its positions, the party has demonstrated that, on this issue, it places the will of the people above every other consideration. The fact that the party was ready to cooperate with the Lebanese Administrations in everything touching on issue of sovereignty, even in times when it disagreed with their internal policy, clearly shows that the party does not want to impose anything on the Lebanese people.2
Contrary to the assumption sometimes made about him, Sa’adeh did not consider the Lebanese State, even after its independence in 1943, as an enemy. It is clear from the aforesaid that he was concerned about post-independence rather than the destruction of the state. Those who had the opportunity to work closely with him deny that his attitude toward Lebanon was one of simple denunciation.3 Rather, they describe him as a person who detested Lebanese confessional (or consensual) politics, but not Lebanon. He was against the system, not against the country. He saw the interests of Lebanon better served in union rather than separation and foresaw great tribulations for Lebanon under sectarian separatism.4 Despite that, he supported the independence movement in Lebanon in so far as independence served larger national aims. He preferred an independent Lebanon to the mandate but not a separate Lebanon to a unified Syria.
Meantime, Sa’adeh’s diatribes against the state of independence in Lebanon were judged both by the government and Lebanese nationalists as distasteful. He was summoned to appear before the Sûreté Générale to answer “a few questions,” although the real objective was to denigrate him. For the next two months Sa’adeh was to stand at the very centre of one of the longest disputes with the central state. Acting on the advice of his aides, he fled to the mountains above Beirut and skillfully turned his indictment against the government. From his “hideout” within walking distance of security forces tracking his movement, he issued a public statement clarifying the substance of his speech:
I declared in my speech that I regard the independence that this entity has obtained as a preliminary step that must be built upon to make it an effective force, not an isolated weakling. But the provocateurs turned my views around to make it sound as though I meant that your entity is the preliminary step. There is a world of difference between what I said and what these provocateurs have claimed.5
Consequently, Sa’adeh found himself sucked into a whirlpool of activity and involved in endless meetings and writing editorials, appeals, manifestos, and giving press interviews. The officer-in-charge of the manhunt, Farid Chehab, staked Sa’adeh’s office from “a house on the opposite side”6 but refrained from arresting him “because I was convinced that it was in Lebanon’s best interest not to arrest him at that stage. His arrest, according to my assessment of the situation, would have created problems of which Lebanon stood in no need.”7 The political leadership in Lebanon had other ideas, but it was not very daring. A statement issued by Sa’adeh to the French News Agency in Beirut on 6 March was suppressed, but little else was done to ensnare him. Sensitive to voters’ response, the government must have become increasingly aware that pursuing Sa’adeh any further could irritate the general public. Yet it did not want to be seen as losing ground or defeated.
The tit-for-tat game between the authorities and Sa’adeh lasted until the May elections. Putting the dispute with the government on hold, Sa’adeh spared no effort to participate, devoting most of his time and resources to the election campaign. He did not run for election himself but his supporters took part in most constituencies. In issuing the Policy Platform for the elections, Sa’adeh chose to widen the usual debate on reforms to focus on policy objectives that looked more broadly to issues concerned with independence and state building. He re-affirmed his commitment to Lebanon “as a sphere of safety for the strugglers and battlers”8 but refused to put local issues ahead of Syria’s national concerns. The door on compromise slammed even tighter.
Far from showmanship, the elections turned into one of the most fraudulent elections in Lebanon’s history.9 The SNP under Sa’adeh failed to win any seats but was consoled by the wide public denunciation of the results. In the light of the rigging, Sa’adeh declared the next day that the elections were “a mere exercise to maintain a group of irresponsible and totally individualistic politicians in power.”10 The comment was not taken lightly by the government, which renewed the search for him with a large reward for his delivery “dead or alive.” Not many Lebanese were enthused by the offer and took it as a mere public relations exercise to deflect attention away from the rigging controversy.
Undeterred, Sa’adeh hit back in characteristic fashion with a public proclamation that amounted almost to a declaration of war:
In this difficult hour and amidst this great chaos, salvation is still possible. But it depends on your willingness to partake in it. Don’t be deceived by falsehood! Salvation will not come about by voting out a group of selfish politicians and voting in another group of selfish and reactionary politicians. Salvation comes when the self-seekers and reactionaries in power step down and, equally, when the self-seekers and reactionaries who covet power for themselves are defeated.11
Tough and frank, the rhetoric stirred the curiosity of many sophisticated listeners and erudite cynics, but it didn’t give Sa’adeh any more than valuable coverage in the local press. The government responded with a barrage of propaganda reminiscent of French days. Its newspapers in Beirut began to smear Sa’adeh as a British agent and to publish false reports about his location, claiming at one point that he had secretly slipped away to Jordan.12 Rumors also circulated that his grip over the SNP was waning. Others claimed that Sa’adeh was planning an armed attack on the government. Still calm and politic, Sa’adeh coped with the renewed attack on his person not too differently from the way he had dealt with earlier clashes with the French.13
The psychological war between the two sides persisted for several more months. Neither scored any stunning victories but within the wider spectrum of opinions, including those of loyalists, Sa’adeh clearly edged ahead for standing firm on what he believed in. There is no record that he ever lost his temper and he seldom refused invitations to speak. The government, too, refused to buckle and kept the pressure up. It was left to independent mediators to work out a solution acceptable to both sides. A breakthrough was finally achieved in October whereby the government agreed to withdraw the warrant of arrest against Sa’adeh in exchange for a formal pledge from the SNP leader to uphold the sanctity of the Lebanese entity within its existing borders. Although the pledge failed to meet the President’s demand for “unconditional loyalty,” it served its purpose, and the bickering subsided.14
Early in November 1947 a confrontation with the government was averted at the last minute after Sa’adeh agreed to cancel a planned demonstration against the partition of Palestine. Unable to resist the temptation, the following day he issued a carefully conceived statement against the government:
We never thought that the Lebanese government would stand as a stumbling bloc between the nation and its cause on this day. However, it appears that private considerations were more important and more precious than the nation’s cause. The government, it seems, has preferred to gamble with the nation’s cause than give up its exclusive stance and witness in the flesh the masses rallying behind the social national renaissance. We declare right here that this stance [of the government] will not in any way influence the ongoing struggle between us and reaction, which wants to keep the nation steeped in its feudal decadence.15
Following the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, Sa’adeh stepped up his oratory against the “selfish reactionary regimes” of the Arabs. He shaped his rhetoric according to the exacting requirements of the situation and, matching words with deeds, placed his followers in a “state of war” for Palestine. Conscription started promptly and weapons were sought from various quarters to arm the fledging militia. This caused grave apprehension in Beirut and raised the prospect of having to deal with a combative SNP in the event of defeat. Under the banner “No Arms to the Social Nationalists,” the government blocked the flow of military weapons to his followers and tried to silence him by banning his newspaper al-Jil al-Jadid. However, Sa’adeh continued to repeat, rephrase, adapt, and supplement his political articles using sympathetic newspapers like Kul Shay to get his message across. He met repeated thrusts from the government, but he refused to budge from his ideological position vis-à-vis the Lebanese state. In October 1948 he harked back to his homecoming speech likening the independence of the country to life “behind the great wall that surrounds the complex of the prison erected by foreigners.”16 He added sarcastically, “The foreigner has never left us. He has merely backed away just like when a cat backs away from a mouse to entertain itself: as long as the mouse is within sight of the cat it remains under its control.”17 Soon afterwards, intelligence reports of an SNP plan to overthrow the regime by force began to reach the Premier’s desk. The so-called plan clearly did not imply operative or concrete ideas, but Sa’adeh’s warlike oratory created grave concerns.
Believing in the reality of the plot, the government tried to shut out the SNP.18 Its effort was frustrated by Husni az-Zaim’s rise to power in Syria on 30 March, 194919 which caused an immediate schism between Sa’adeh and the Khoury regime. False news reports that the Syrian coup was masterminded by SNP officers in the Syrian Army sent cold shivers throughout the Lebanese Establishment. The suspicion deepened after Zaim announced a reform program for Syria based upon but by no means identical to Sa’adeh’s reform doctrines.20 No doubt the ex-SNP Akram Hourani had a strong hand in the way it was devised but few knew that. The timing of the coup was also crucial. It came hot on the heels of rumors that Fawzi al-Qawakji, the field commander of the Arab Liberation Army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, had plotted to link up with SNP army officers in Lebanon and Syria as part of a wider assault on Arab regimes.21 “In this way,” explained Taha Hashimi, “Qawuqji believed that the movement will result in the unification of the Arab countries and the establishment of a republic. Then he will attack the Jews and push them out of Palestine.”22 Suddenly, the prospect of an SNP takeover in Lebanon seemed very real.
The temperature of the Lebanese regime would have shot higher if it had known what Sa’adeh was planning. On April 10, following the announcement of Zaim’s reform program, Sa’adeh secretly instructed the party’s Damascus Chapter (mounafadhiyyah) to contact Zaim and offer him “all the material and moral potentials at [the party’s] disposal.”23 Despite concentrated intelligence monitoring of Sa’adeh, the overture was not picked up by the Lebanese government or by the press in either Lebanon or Syria. A week or so later, a two-man SNP delegation turned up at the Presidential palace with a memorandum but it was not allowed to meet Zaim in person.24 The memorandum was carelessly, or perhaps deviously, bundled away by the staff and the matter ended there. Three weeks later another opportunity arose. On 9 May, a Syrian army intelligence officer entered southern Lebanon in broad daylight and killed a Lebanese civilian suspected of spying for Israel. His subsequent capture and imprisonment by the Lebanese sparked a crisis and led to the closure of borders between the two countries.25 While the local Syrian and Lebanese press traded accusations, Sa’adeh set up a legal taskforce inside the party to review the incident. Its key findings and recommendations, published in al-Jil al-Jadid on 22 May, came out strongly in favour of the Syrians because, at the time of the incident:
At other times, that might have gone unnoticed, but now the situation had become too critical. On reading the report, Zaim’s senior adviser Sabri Qubbani sent him a copy of al-Jil al-Jadid in hopes of catching his attention. A self-confessed Arab nationalist, Qubbani was a moderate, pragmatic bureaucrat who admired the discipline and dedication of the SNP and its leader. Although he monitored his duties and assumed, as much as was possible, an impersonal role, the pressures of increasing responsibilities, burdensome decisions, and Zaim’s disrupting behaviour motivated his sensitive reserve. When he realized that the SNP legal document had failed to strike a responsive chord with Zaim, he proceeded physically to set up a meeting between Sa’adeh and his leader:
I walked in on Zaim in his office in the General Staff. He was agitated, fuming with rage. He said, “Riad, that son of a . . ., is stalling the release of Tabarah. I swear I will turn his life into hell. I will seize every Lebanese vehicle and turn Lebanon upside down. Pack your things right away. I am sending you over to Beirut with a letter to so-and-so.” I said, “Excuse me, but I don’t see how these measures can be practical. No one will benefit from this rupture and conflict with Lebanon except the Jews. What’s more, negotiations with the Lebanese are still in progress.26
In his recollections, Qubbani mentioned the event with a tremendous sense of pride and gratification. Speaking for the most part from the third-person point of view and casting his questions in a nonpersonal vein, he proceeded to ask Zaim: “Did you read the party’s legal memorandum that I sent to you? Were you to ask our leading legal experts to explain our point of view, we would not be able to come up with a memorandum nearly as good as theirs.”27 Then he dropped a sweetener: “Had you taken any interest in the SNP,” he told Zaim, “we wouldn’t have this Tabarah crisis today.”28 Appearing surprised by this demonstration, Zaim responded with a counter-offer, “Is it possible for meet to see Sa’adeh in person tomorrow?” Qubbani retorted “Let it be the day after tomorrow, Friday, for it will be a holiday and you will have ample time to discuss matters with him at length. You can meet him in your private home away from prying eyes.”29 And so it was. Sa’adah arrived in the Syrian capital on Friday morning after secretly crossing the Syrian-Lebanese borders. He was flanked by party officials. But Zaim’s impulsiveness got the better of him and the meeting had to be rescheduled:
At exactly seven and a half in the morning, on Friday 27 May, I was climbing the stairs of Zaim’s house. I was alone . . . When he opened the door for me I found him standing upright and dressed in full military uniform, holding his gloves and cane, as if he was ready to leave. I greeted him with astonishment on my face, “Where to? We have a meeting with Mr . . . He looked at his watch and said, “Right, true. I have half an hour left; hurry and come back along with him. I am leaving to the front with the ministers at exactly eight.” I said, “Allow me to remind you, sir, that Sa’adeh is not like other men, and that this historical meeting may have an impact on the policies of Syria, if not the entire Middle East. It would be inappropriate to meet with him in a rush. Let’s hold the meeting tonight at eight in the evening after you have completed the tour at the front.30
Qubbani was decidedly embarrassed, but his crusading momentum was too great for him to stop without first accomplishing at least one meeting between Sa’adeh and Zaim. With Syria on the brink, he opined that a meeting between the two men was essential not only to their own survival but also to the vital interest of Syria. At Sa’adeh’s temporary residence, Qubbani launched into a tirade against Zaim and spoke at length about his obnoxious and dubious character. Describing Zaim as “a man not like other men”31 he cautioned Sa’adeh about Zaim’s polemical excesses and his inclination to leap hastily to foolish conclusions: “I do not think you have met anyone like the coup leader; he is one of a kind, peculiar and impulsive. Words such as nationalism, patriotism, doctrines and principles have never found their way to his heart or carved out a space in his mind.”32 Then he dropped an important piece of advice: “To succeed in your mission, I hope you will listen to his nonsense and bragging no matter how long it takes . . . From the start parade your strength and the strength of your party, for he believes in power only, and respects only those with forceful appearances.”33 The oration was quite dramatic but Sa’adeh remained “calm and cheery”.34 Like others now and then, he found it difficult to imagine that such a man could be so obnoxious. Zaim, with his dash and reform mind, fit his image of a statesman much more readily, despite his long-time ill-concealed pattern of misconduct. Sa’adeh, therefore, chose to remain more broadly focused on the positive side of the regime.
That evening the meeting between Sa’adeh and Zaim went ahead, oddly enough, without a hitch. After a brief stint, Sa’adah launched himself with an oration on the coup but the immediate focal point of his address was the apparent corruption and ineffectuality of the traditional regimes. For the moment, the pressing objective for Sa’adeh was to try to win Zaim’s favour and to build a rapport of some sort with him. According to Qubbani, who met both men separately after the meeting, the discussion was concise, constructive and free of ceremonial niceties.35 Zaim did not attempt to emotionalize the issues or claim too much for himself (probably because the Front tour that day had tired him out) and Sa’adeh walked away satisfied by the positive and unusually conciliatory tone of the Syrian leader. Contrary to press reports, which appeared several days later, the question of armed revolution was not raised during the meeting. Nor was there mention of a coup d’état in Lebanon, as was widely rumoured. The two men agreed to combine their resources against the Lebanese government, but no definite program for accomplishing this objective was laid:
Sa’adah pledged to prepare the people and to stir up public opinion against the Lebanese government, enlisting for this purpose the power of his party and its potentials. In return, the coup leader vowed to support the party at the international and the Arab League levels and across natural Syria. Furthermore, the two parties agreed that Lebanon should remain a republic until such time the vital foundations of the two countries – single foreign representation, a unified military defense system, and the consideration of both countries as a single economic cycle – have developed sufficiently [for a union].36
The meeting was secret and discreet, as intended. All three, Qubbani, Sa’adeh, and Zaim understood its essential value and, indeed, vowed to respect its secrecy. However, Zaim’s egocentricity shot up quickly and he began to boast about the meeting to his foreign minister, Adel Arslan.37 The following day, Arslan turned up in Beirut to give Solh the lowdown. The Lebanese Premier reacted aggressively to the point of hysteria and quickly sought to contain the situation. That took two forms: internally, he moved rapidly to reconcile his de facto party, an-Najjadah, with its antithesis, the Phalange, in a bid to create a common front against the SNP; and, externally, he appealed for help to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and started, for the first time, to send positive signals to Zaim to draw the Syrian leader away from Sa’adeh. By his own admission, Solh also convened an emergency session of the Security Council (majlis al-amen) in Lebanon to debate the future of the SNP and the kind of punitive action to take against its adherents.38
The mounting distrust between Sa’adeh and the Lebanese government exploded at Jummaizeh on 9 June, 1949. The details are not altogether clear. It started when Sa’adeh turned up at a building in the Jummaizeh district of Beirut, to which the editorial offices of the SNP newspaper Al-Jil Al-Jadid had recently moved, just as a Phalange meeting was getting underway in a café situated on the opposite side. Yussef Salameh, who was at Sa’adeh’s side, recalls:
We climbed the short stairway to the first level, taking everyone by surprise. Sa’adeh then walked into a vacant office after asking everyone there for a short intermission in order to write an article for the forthcoming issue of the newspaper. Hisham [Sharabi] and I waited with the others in the sitting area, which was spacious. About half an hour later we heard a loud roar from the café on the other side of the street. A party member, who was waiting in the room with us, was quick to point out that the café was owned by a Phalange sympathizer and that pictures of Pierre Jummayel adorned its front-windows on all sides. A few minutes later the clamor increased and with it the level of defiance and abuse.39
No sooner had Sa’adeh finished his weekly article than an SNP military officer pulled up in front of the building accompanied by five armed men. They lined up in military fashion and gave him the party salute as he walked back to his car. Intimidated, the throng of armed Phalange sympathizers gathered in front of the café and on the main street opened fire and stormed the building. In the confusion that followed, several members of the SNP were injured, but Sa’adeh escaped unharmed. According to Hisham Sharabi, the Lebanese Gendarmerie arrived belatedly on the scene and arrested the SNP members instead of the attackers!40 The printing press owner, Michel Faddoul, recalls that his brother “called the fire brigade, the police, the local gendarmerie office for help, but in vain because the lines were down on orders from the Prime Minister, Riad Bey.”41
As news of the incident spread, SNP adherents gathered at Sa’adeh’s house “I remember Sa’adeh walking down the stairway of his house calmly, deliberately, and with a wrinkle on his forehead. I remember him making his way through the large crowd in the front garden and around his house with the smile of a confident man.”42 The incident confirmed the existence of a government plot against Sa’adeh and the SNP, but the government denied the allegation despite massive press criticism. Soon afterwards, the Lebanese Premier inadvertently announced to the press that “the government had made all the preparations to dissolve this party [SNP] and had fixed the deadline for the previous Saturday. But the Jummaizeh incident which took place the previous Thursday, that is 48 hours before the deadline, forced us to bring the dissolution order forward and to promptly begin the process of purging.”43
There are still many questions that have never been fully answered regarding the incident at Jummaizeh, particularly the question was it premeditated? One view is that it was a spontaneous clash but the government capitalized on it for its own good:
. . . the government may well have wanted to exploit the tension between the Phalanges and the PPS [SNP] in order to work for the elimination of the latter. But it must be remembered that the Phalanges, though generally cooperating with Khuri, were opponents of Sulh. So were the leaders of the PPS who, ever since the advent of Za’im, had blamed Sulh for conspiring against them. At that particular time, the Phalanges were also critical of Khuri, accusing him of having used the government to throw its weight against their candidates in Beirut in the 1947 elections (and even once before, in the 1945 by-elections in the Biqa). Moreover, in the wake of the June incident, the government had some fifty Phalanges men arrested. The regime’s relations with the Phalanges became even more tense after a second major incident, which occurred on 18 July 1949, this time involving the Phalanges and a group of communist port workers in Beirut.44
The alternative view is that the government had foreknowledge of the incident and possibly direct involvement in its planning and execution. It rejects any overtly political interpretation of the incident as highly speculative, particularly where unconscious motivations may have played a larger than usual role. Pointing to the government’s disproportionate response to the belligerent parties, proponents of this view see the incident more as a sequence in an unfolding cycle of violence and suspicion rather than as an isolated event. It was part of a general pattern in which the conspiracy was orchestrated by the government “which withdrew its security forces from the place at the zero hour, according to information leaked out by concerned parties.”45 Naturally, a panicking government that has already decided the fate of its adversary is not one that would wait around patiently for a pretext to emerge to make its move: it creates the pretext.
Following the incident at Jummaizeh orders went out to security forces to track down Sa’adeh. The government justified its action on the ground that Sa’adeh was preparing a massive armed coup against the regime. It gave no further details about the plot except to say that the SNP leader had “a systematic plan” to stir up internal riots as preparatory to a military takeover. Recently acquired documents reveal a more somber view of the so-called plan.46 At any rate, Sa’adeh escaped before the Lebanese Gendarmerie arrived at his house and arrested whoever was there. He spent the next few days moving about the Lebanese capital until he made his way to Alley in the Shouf. At some point in this escapade he received a signal from Zaim to come back to Syria. The details are unclear. The message was conveyed to him through Major Toufiq Bashur, a senior officer in the Syrian army and a personal friend of Sa’adeh, who in turn enlisted the help of a party member, Najib Bulus, to reach the SNP leader. Bulus later recounted:
As I drove to Beirut I noticed a Lebanese Security vehicle following me from a distance. In Beirut I contacted comrade Elias Saad, a relative, and asked him to meet me at once . . . the meeting took place at Café Mansour. Again I noticed a Lebanese Security Patrol near my car. I asked Saad to find out for me Sa’adeh’s whereabouts. A short time later he returned with an answer but forgot to bring with him the password that I would require to state to see Sa’adeh. I said to him “stay put to deceive the security patrol outside. I will leave from the Café’s backdoor.”47
Bulus goes on to say:
I took the first taxi to al-Hadath and got out at mid point in the street where the building was situated. When I approached the entrance the guards called out “stop, stop.” I said “Long live Syria. I am comrade Najib Bulus. I am here to see Sa’adeh.” When the guards asked for the password I replied, “I don’t know it.” But Sa’adeh, who knew me, heard my voice and instructed the guards to let me in. I found him sitting in a small and shabby room. He asked me “What news do you bring me?” I conveyed to him the message that I had been asked to deliver by Major Bashur. He said “Are you certain it was Major Bashur who gave you this message?” “Yes,” I replied. He then said: “Inform the Major that I agree to the meeting and to start making arrangements.” He thanked me and implored me to take care on the way back.48
Sa’adeh arrived in Damascus on 14 June. Several conjectures have been offered as to how he crossed into Syria but the most widely accepted one is that when he arrived at the Lebanese border checkpoint the driver occupied the attending officers with the necessary paperwork while Sa’adeh slipped across on foot over a side hill. Once the car crossed into the vacant stretch that separates the Lebanese checkpoint from the Syrian checkpoint, Sa’adeh strolled down to the main highway and climbed back. The attending officer at the Syrian checkpoint turned out to be an SNP member and instantly passed the vehicle through.49
Sabri Qubbani was among the first to welcome Sa’adeh. “He was sitting in a private section of the room with two army officers. The three of them, dressed in khaki shirts and khaki pants and with hair unkempt, appeared to be in a state of emergency. They were sitting around a large table covered with pieces of paper and letters.”50 Although outwardly calm, Sa’adeh was akin to a volcano waiting to erupt. Two days later, Zaim scheduled an evening meeting at his private residence but later changed it to the General Staff Office. Qubbani attributed the eleventh-hour venue change to Zaim’s desire “to parade his power and supremacy at work before Sa’adeh. He wanted to lure Sa’adeh into his den where the military police, armed with Tommy Guns, cram the place, on the stairs and behind doors so that if he hollers the walls would shudder at his thunderous voice.”51 Qubbani knew Zaim like the back of his hand and keenly shared his thoughts with Sa’adeh. While waiting their turn to see Zaim, he made several crucial observations to Sa’adeh which the latter took with him to the meeting.
Predictably, Zaim put on a remarkable act to impress his guest. “Welcome. Thank God you are safe”52 he said before launching into a tirade against the Khoury regime. Sa’adeh was more cautious. He assured the Syrian leader that all earlier reports of an SNP plot to overthrow the regime in Lebanon were idle talk and that the weapons confiscated by the Lebanese army in the previous days “were ordinary weapons of the kind you would expect to find in Lebanese villages.”53 Describing the occasion as a “historic meeting,” Qubbani also confirmed that the two men discussed security arrangements, including the flow of arms and ammunitions, but insisted that it was strictly for deterrent purposes:
Sa’adah did not want to raise weapons in the face of the Lebanese regime. The idea never even occurred to him, and so he never prepared for that day . . . Five hundred guns with their ammunition were enough to stop [the Lebanese regime] from pursuing its virulent campaign against the party without even needing to use them.54
Contrary to the impression sometimes given in the press and other publications, Sa’adeh’s primary concern was to break the cordon around his supporters in Lebanon, not to topple the regime. The thought of party members made homeless, jailed and atrociously tortured in Lebanon troubled him every step along the way. His words to Qubbani are revealing:
My only concern right now is for the party members who have been banished or arrested and the torture they are enduring. Some have their lost their businesses and had to close down for the sake of their beliefs; others have fallen while trying to escape with party documents containing members names and other matters. I hope to God we succeed and triumph after all the enormous sacrifices we have made.55
Already an independent report published by an-Nahar immediately after the Jummaizeh clash had adjudged his party’s ammunition and weapons cache as hardly regime-threatening.56 Yet, the Lebanese government continued to insist that this one shortcoming did not diminish the value of the remaining evidence, which was ample to prove Sa’adeh guilty.
Meanwhile, Zaim responded to his guest with outlandish offers of “weapons and ammunition on a large scale as soon as a truce with the Jews is signed.”57 He vowed to remain a loyal friend “to the very end”58 and indeed presented Sa’adeh with his own personal pistol as a token of their friendship. As the two men rose to their feet, Zaim offered his guest the protection of his security guards but the SNP leader politely declined the offer. Instructions then went out to Qubbani to act as a liaison officer with Sa’adeh and to Colonel Ibrahim al-Husseini, Zaim’s Chief of Security, to look after the logistics.
On the surface, the meeting was both constructive and businesslike. It was much more relaxed and well-intended than the first meeting and provided a promise for further progress. Sa’adeh got his wish and the promise of Syrian support against the Lebanese regime and Zaim gained an ally and relative bargaining strength vis-à-vis his Lebanese foes. The outlook for Sa’adeh looked even rosier as the deal concretized:
I bid [Sa’adeh] goodbye and headed straight to Lieutenant Colonel al-Husseini. He was a very hard man to catch . . . The moment I phoned him, he dropped everything and the two of us headed in his car to Sa’adeh’s headquarters. Every now and then I would point the driver in the right direction . . . It turned out, by sheer coincidence, that Sa’adeh’s headquarters was situated not far from the Colonel’s own house. On the way, I briefly explained to al-Husseini the gravity of the mission and the importance of the party and the scope of its movement as well as its impact on the future of Arab unity and national duty, which is an incentive for us to extend help as far as we possibly can . . . I left, confident that things were moving steadily toward the target we all held in common.59
While the SNP looked hopefully for new revelations which it supposed would finally yield decisive proof of its innocence, Sa’adeh took the offensive yet again, with a sensational new expose that poured more fuel on the raging fire.60 More than that, Sa’adeh now sought to re-draw the battle lines with the Khoury regime: “At this stage in the war that the Lebanese Government has declared, trampling over the most sacred principles of national life, I dare the government to accept the following challenge: to pick out a time and place for a single decisive battle between the power of the [Syrian] National Party and that of the government and its sectarian allies using all the weapons kept with its army but allowing the officers and regular soldiers to choose between fighting or not fighting the [Syrian] National Party.”61
The expose was widely circulated among party members in Syria and Lebanon. Smuggling it into Lebanon wasn’t difficult62 and brought with it swift retaliation from the Lebanese government. The government took the statement “as evidence that the party’s strength was intact and that its campaign against it had failed to undermine the party or sap its power.”63 Predictably, the security forces of the state were unleashed on suspected SNP pockets resulting in the arrest of many more. In the process one party member was reported killed and the house of another was burned to the ground after it was ransacked.
Critics were not amused. They adjudged the renewed drive against the Syrian nationalists as a potent ingredient of the government’s failure to contain Sa’adeh and questioned the utility of using strong-arm tactics while Zaim was courting Sa’adeh. The press was equally disappointed and ruthlessly disparaged the government. Al-Sayyad wrote:
The plan was supposed to be carried out with precision, and Antun Sa’adeh was supposedly heading the list of those to be arrested, especially given that he had been under close surveillance from the moment the Security Council had decided [to dissolve the SNP]. Yet what took place was, in every sense, inexplicable. Antun Sa’adeh, George Abdul Massih, and other party cadres have managed to escape, despite the secrecy that was maintained and Sa’adeh’s presence in Beirut, and at Al-Jumaizzah in particular, the night he fled.64
An-Nahar dropped a bigger bombshell by reporting in bold print that the government had been unable to find a single pertinent document implicating Sa’adeh in a plot to overthrow the regime.65 The so-called plot apparently amounted to little more than consultations with Lebanese army officers in broad daylight, hardly a plan to overthrow the regime.
To a large extent, it consisted simply of encouraging public discontent to force the regime to step down.66 Less helpful was the booty seized from SNP offices: a short instructional manual “on what course of action party members should follow in the event of a military coup or a revolution.”67 No weapons of significant value or quantity were discovered.
Suddenly, it seemed necessary to do something if the pretense of central authority and that of government righteousness were to be maintained. Official and private investigations went on fitfully, but neither turned up much.68 Incredibly, no effort was made to consider alternative solutions even as both sides traded invectives. The persistence and passion with which each side maintained its arguments now mattered just as much as the arguments themselves. With Sa’adeh on the offensive and local critics not far off, the government came up with a novel idea reminiscent of the famous bordereau in the Dreyfus Affair in France almost fifty years before. It made the incredible claim that Sa’adeh was an Israeli collaborator and that, in exchange for Jewish support, he had passed very important and sensitive military information about the Arab campaign in Palestine. In the political context of the day, it was a most sensational allegation. The government made the denunciation public with all the fanfare of an espionage scandal claiming that it had crushing proof. On June 20, it published the text of a letter containing specific instructions from Sa’adeh to his aide-de-camp in Haifa, Muhammad Jamil Yunis, to contact the Israelis and ask for financial and military assistance. The next day the Public Prosecutor gave the claim a cloak of judicial legality by formally charging Sa’adeh with subversion. The indictment against Sa’adeh contained three astonishing claims:
Now the Sa’adeh case created an enormous uproar, with the many anti-SNP newspapers and politicians screaming about treason. Even those who did not scream much about the SNP were generally still strident about the treason and its irresolute prosecution. They knew little about the charges and the evidence, but this did not matter: loyalist newspapers daily published further details of supposed evidence, retelling as factual the rumours then current. When rumours did not suffice, fresh stories were invented by the ever imaginative press. Outside government circles, the publication of the letter caused a stir and led to speculation about its authenticity. Making the most of so sensational a story, the popular daily an-Nahar published an elaborate review of the indictment. It found no single item of substantial evidential value in it and doubted if the relevant documents, especially the supposed treaty between Sa’adeh and the Israelis, could be produced.70 The paper stopped short of dismissing the letter as a hoax, if only for the sake of circulation. Other newspapers and public forums then entered the fray and the issue became an occasion for attention-getting for the government.
Meanwhile, Sa’adeh considered the matter so urgent that he drafted a reply and dispatched it to the Arab News Agency, which in turn cabled it to its Cairo office for broadcasting on Arab radio stations and for circulation to affiliated newspapers.71 The dispatch was not published, most likely at the behest of the Egyptian government.72 Eventually, the Damascene daily al-Alam published a shorter version of it with a supplementary foreword from Qubbani “to divert attention away from Sa’adeh’s location.”73 Its content was robust, declaring in the most categorical terms the letter as a gross forgery.74
As the Lebanese debated the treason charge against Sa’adeh, directed towards confirming or refuting the authenticity of the purported letter, Solh actively sought ways to clear the air with Damascus. He enlisted the help of Saudi Arabia and Egypt and began to make positive overtures to the Syrian leader.75 With their suspicions already aroused by the presence of Sa’adeh in Damascus, the Saudi and Egyptian governments reciprocated by bringing their own pressure to bear on Zaim.76 The man entrusted with the task of swaying Zaim was Muhsin al-Barrazi, the then Syrian ambassador in Cairo. He returned to Syria at the behest of King Faruq to coordinate the talks. Barrazi was Solh’s brother-in-law. A gullible dupe and a facile manipulator of words, he was close to the ruling families in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Mohammad Fadhel Jamali in his Experiences in Arab Affairs describes him as “the one who feeds the Egyptian papers with the help of Saudi money.”77 Barrazi was prolific in his new role. Within days of his arrival he managed to draw Zaim away from the Greater Syria concept and into the Egyptian-Saudi bloc. The Damascene newspaper, an-Nasr, in its issue of 22 June, quoted the Syrian leader as saying:
I want to make it clear that the Greater Syria project has become out of date for two reasons. First, the rapid progress and the industrial and agricultural improvement which Syria will enjoy shortly will open a deep gap between Syria and the Hashimite governments. Secondly, I have decided to join the Saudi-Egyptian camp because those two kingdoms have demonstrated extreme friendship, assistance, and nobility toward new Syria. It is my opinion that this strong unity between Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be a strong front against the Greater Syria project.78
This was no doubt a crucial setback for Sa’adeh. Again he solicited Qabbani’s help to “get some explanation for things that no longer seemed to make sense to him”79 but to no avail. Zaim procrastinated in order to avoid any more meetings with him: “No sooner than I would broach Sa’adah’s request [for a meeting] he would change the topic and ask me to put off the whole thing until after the referendum.”80 The resulting break in communication with the regime created all sorts of problems for Sa’adeh, which Lieutenant al-Husseini further exacerbated by breaking off all contacts with the SNP. Al-Husseini’s silence added ominous undertones to the situation. The crisis really hit home when Zaim issued his orders to dissolve all political parties in Syria ahead of the plebiscite on 25 June. Despite repeated requests to spare the SNP from the dissolution order, in acknowledgement of previous commitments, its offices across Syria were shut down and its members were subjected to serious transgressions: “News arrived from some provinces that local authorities there have gone to extremes in pursuing party members and bearing down heavily on them. Even members’ private houses were raided and shut down.”81 Zaim “had turned into a totally different man.”82
Unbeknown to Sa’adeh, Zaim was all that time in the Lebanese town of Shtura trying to thrash out a secret deal with his Lebanese counterparts, Khoury and Solh. According to an-Nahar, Sa’adeh was an item on the meeting’s agenda, but the paper gave no further details.83 However, “it has been variously suggested that the Lebanese Premier, Riyad al-Sulh, ‘bought’ him from Za’im and that Egypt was induced to put pressure on the Syrian dictator to hand him over.”84 Andrew Rathmell, in his Secret War in the Middle East, posits the issue in a somewhat inverted manner:
The SSNP has always claimed that Egypt’s King Faruq first encouraged Sulh to move against the SSNP and then pressured Za’im to hand him over. The reason, the party argues, was Sa’adah’s opposition to the armistice accords with Israel. In this view, Sa’adah ‘paid . . . the price of the Israeli-Arab armistice accords’. Although Sa’adah’s opposition to the armistice talks may not have been the motive, it does appear that the SSNP’s accusations are accurate. The Egyptian establishment’s hostility to Sa’adah is shown by the fact that even two years after Sa’adah’s execution, the Egyptian commentator Muhammad Heikal sought to blacken the party’s name by claiming that Sa’adah had agreed with Israel in 1948 to mount a coup in Lebanon.85
Curiously, after the plebiscite, Zaim asked Qubbani never to “bring [Sa’adeh] here. He should never appear in public. The Lebanese are seriously demanding him. I deny that he is in Syria, but they have spies planted everywhere. I hate to create a crisis now that they have agreed to release Tabarah and reluctantly to recognize me and my government.”86 It was an oblique admission that the deal with the Lebanese had included Sa’adeh, but it proves that Zaim was disinclined at that stage to give him up. Perhaps he was buying time to force Sa’adeh out of Syria.
While Zaim procrastinated, his newly-appointed Prime Minister, Muhsin al-Barrazi, struck hard. Al-Barrazi cancelled all previous commitments to Sa’adeh “due to delays in Syrian-Israeli truce talks”87 and issued a ministerial directive to Syrian newspapers via the publications department to launch into the SNP.88 Sa’adeh was placed under tight surveillance and al-Barrazi’s private security unit started to collect background information and intelligence data about the SNP. This information, according to Qubbani, was passed on to the Lebanese government without Zaim’s knowledge.89 Al-Barrazi also aroused questions in Zaim’s mind about the danger that Sa’adeh represented and the risk he ran to his own regime by arming the SNP.
The situation took another turn for the worse when the local security forces rounded up SNP members in the northern Latakia district ahead of a planned party assault on Lebanon. Sa’adeh was in the Syrian capital at the time working on a plan of action against the Lebanese regime and grappling with recent developments. By all accounts he was privy to everything around him but resisted all appeals, from inside and outside the party, to change trajectory. Finally, on Saturday, 2 July, he broke his silence to Qubbani:
The situation we have reached is appalling because your friend [Zaim] has broken his promises to us. We are fighting a life-or-death battle here. For us to remain hand-tied toward the extermination measures taken against us in Lebanon would only mean the end for us. Let us die honourably if death is our only way out of this crisis.90
Words like these infuriated and frustrated Qubbani more than invective and lies possibly could. But he was not able any longer to assist because he had resigned in protest against al-Barrazi. A plea for help formed Sa’adeh’s last words to him:
For the last time I plea with you to call your man, Husni, to discuss the situation and make him understand that if it were not for his promises to us, we would have taken a different course in our war with the [Lebanese] government. I am asking you this even though I know you have resigned from your job and no longer associate with him. But human lives are being spent and any help could make a difference.91
Qubbani’s only recourse was the Deuxième Bureau. “Don’t bother,” he was told. “It is useless. Yesterday, the Premier issued orders to the police to keep tabs on all party members in Damascus and to locate Sa’adeh. The plan to help Sa’adeh is now history.”92 Qubbani quickly passed the information on to the party secretariat in Damascus and pleaded with him to relocate Sa’adeh to another part of the city “just in case”.93
In retrospect it does not seem difficult to perceive, when one is familiar with the details in question, that the logical course for Sa’adeh was really to flee the Syrian capital. Why he did not change tack or hold back remains a mystery to this day. The silence is curious but it has not prevented many analysts (including those far removed from his outlook) from assuming without warrant that Sa’adeh was overcome by his altruistic nature. The theme of self-sacrifice does indeed resound through his writings: “life is but an honourable stand;” “the blood that flows through our veins is not our property but the property of the nation and therefore must be produced at any point it demands it;” “we all must die, but few will die for the sake of a belief.” However, altruism only dogmatizes the matter and sheds hardly any light on objective factors. Even if the explanation is only partially true, it does not mesh well with Sa’adeh’s strong beliefs in human struggle. Therefore, the answer lies somewhere else and more directly in the mixed signals that Sa’adeh continued to receive from the Syrian regime. To illustrate: while the cleansing of his supporters in Latakia was taking place, at the other end the Syrian military was providing his supporters with logistic and hardware equipment: “On one occasion . . . [Syrian] gendarmerie and army vehicles [of the Syrian army] even took part in helping the nationalists transport weapons from the mountains to the borders.”94 The fact that Zaim did not personally attempt to intimidate Sa’adeh is also crucial: it may possibly have given Sa’adeh the impression that, in spite of everything, Zaim was merely procrastinating because he was under pressure.
Despite the explosive nature of the situation and Zaim’s impulsiveness, in early July 1949, Sa’adeh proclaimed a revolution against the regime in Lebanon. The revolution was planned by two junior army officers, neither of whom had any experience in revolutionary warfare. A large map of Lebanon was produced by the officers to evaluate the surrounding topography and to determine the appropriate targets and other details of the attack including troop strength, armament, etc. After deliberating with Sa’adeh, who shared their sense of urgency and devotion to military affairs, they came up with a plan that proved well beyond the party’s capabilities.95
On the same day, at a session of the party’s top cadres, a military revolutionary committee headed by Sa’adeh was formed to oversee the revolution. Sa’adeh, though, had relatively little to do with the actual mechanics of the insurrection. That was left entirely to the military officers who quickly surrounded themselves with a core of reliable nationalists. Logistically, the plan consisted of specific practical targets: the Rashayya Fortress in the Lebanese South; gendarmerie precincts on the outskirts of Beirut; and the seizure of key highways to isolate the country’s provinces from each other. Abdullah Qubarsi records in his autobiography that Sa’adeh’s optimism was aroused by the expectation of widespread support for the revolution inside Lebanon once it got underway:
Under no circumstances could I envisage that Saadeh foresaw victory by taking over some police precincts or cutting roads off here and there. He most probably thought that these actions would inspire his allies . . . [and] the forces opposing Beshara al-Khuri and Riyad al-Sulh to rally around the uprising. Saadeh was banking on the chance that the anger of the people will erupt with the mere declaration of the revolution.96
By now Sa’adeh was borne aloft by a force greater than himself. As a first step, on 4 July, 1949, he issued a communiqué reflecting the urgency of the situation. It contained a chronology of events and a statement of objectives. Comparatively little is known about how Sa’adeh worked on this communiqué, but it is known that he used the occasion to deliver a few appropriate remarks. He emphasized that the revolution was purely an act of self-defense directed not against the people of Lebanon but against the ruling clique: “Those who currently exercise power over the Lebanese people through methods of terror, rigging of elections, and violent intimidation of the emerging political forces that embody the principles of a new social life . . .”97 Sa’adeh also made it clear that the revolution did not aim to affect the status of Lebanon as an independent entity but only the system of government and its confessional underpinning. He thus carefully avoided any mention of unity with Syria.
In preparing the document Sa’adeh followed his usual habit in such matters using great deliberation in arranging his thoughts and molding his phrases mentally. He scolded the government for the Jummaizeh incident and other acts of foolhardiness, defended himself against the various charges, and warned the people of harsher conditions if they failed to rise up. The objectives of the revolution were most clearly formulated in seventeen points:
On the day of the uprising, armed units of the SSNP attacked a number of gendarmerie posts near the Syrian-Lebanese frontiers, in southern Biqa’ (Rachaya and Mashghara) and in the mountains over Beirut. Their mission was to seize weapons before the main contingent, led by Lieutenant Assaf Karam, moved in to occupy those areas. Hisham Sharabi, who was at Sa’adeh’s side, described the mood as follows:
Although Sa’adeh was speaking about the revolution as though it was certain to succeed, still in the statement which he issued just before the proclamation of the revolution he indicated that it was the “first social nationalist revolution”. Was he expecting that the uprising might fail and that it would be followed by a second revolution in the future? Was he discreetly grasping that the revolution was a mere adventure set off by despair and that it was very unlikely to succeed? I believe that he did indeed understand all of that. But, nonetheless, he did not reveal any worry. He kept on speaking in a very confident way and laughing merrily, as though he did not have a worry in the world.99
Only hours into the uprising, things went horribly wrong. The SSNP units that engaged Gendarmerie posts seized only a few weapons and were outnumbered by a larger and better-equipped force. In view of the large number of SSNP members thought to be hiding in the Lebanese village of Bshamoun, a special task force was sent there to prevent them from linking up with other rebels. In the ensuing engagement, the officer commanding the force, Captain Tufic Chamoun, was killed. Several members of the SSNP were injured and considerable numbers arrested.
The collapse of the uprising was imminent. There was a clear lack of planning and a grave deficiency in personnel: the participants were small in number, ill-equipped and inexperienced in military warfare. With the exception of one or two field officers, the insurgents were mostly irregular recruits and civilians who probably had never been in a military situation all their life. It soon became apparent that the Lebanese Government was being alerted in advance of their plans through Muhsin al-Barazzi, who passed the information to his brother-in-law Riad Solh in Lebanon. Rightly or wrongly, some blamed the collapse of the revolution on faulty weapons. In reality, the fundamental problem lay in Sa’adeh’s tenacity and in his exaggerated optimism that the uprising would destroy the inertia of the local population. On balance, he had neither the resources nor the time to communicate and coordinate with the general population in Lebanon, so much so that most Lebanese remained oblivious to the uprising.100
The collapse of the uprising placed Sa’adeh at the crossroads of life. He had several options, but each option was as problematical as the next one. Surrender was one option but it went against his character. Fleeing was another, but that would amount to dereliction of duty: “I confronted Sa’adeh with the [travel] documents in my hands and suggested that he should leave ash-Sham [Syria] at once because his life was in danger. I stretched my hand out expecting him take them from me but he refused to even look at them. Instead he looked at me and said: “Do you really expect a leader who has called a revolution and whose supporters have answered his call and are staring death in the face in search of martyrdom, to abandon them for the sake of his own personal safety?”101 Persons close to Sa’adeh later claimed that he didn’t think that the Syrian President would dare double-cross him in the presence of his Chief of General Security, Major Adib Shishakli, who was a Syrian nationalist at heart.102 The third option for Sa’adeh was to seek political asylum in Syria or to confide in Zaim. Sa’adeh decided to have one last crack at Zaim.
As late as 3 July, Muhammad Baalbaki of the Beirut daily Kul Shay, overheard Sa’adeh saying “Zaim is different [from Muhsin al-Barrazi]. He has expressed to me his readiness to adopt the views of the party . . . and he is helping us.”103 It was scarcely a good reason for optimism. With Egypt and Saudi Arabia breathing heavily down his neck, Zaim was in fact under more pressure than at any time before to rein in Sa’adeh. He was battling on two fronts, Husni al-Barrazi and now King Farouk’s private emissary, Brigadier General Muhammad Yusuf, who arrived in Damascus at the beginning of July with instructions to twist Zaim’s arm.104 The Brigadier’s mission was to convince the Syrian leader that Sa’adeh was a British mole stirring problems to facilitate Hashemite and British expansion over the Eastern Mediterranean and that, if Zaim didn’t comply, the Lebanese government would seek foreign military assistance to stop his rebellion.105
There also are, or there seem to be, good grounds for believing that Zaim was under a different kind of pressure from his personal friends and staff:
One day Captain Ibrahim al-Husseini turned up at my house and said: “We are in a morass and I have fears about its consequences.”
Husseini was Zaim’s right hand man and Chief of the Deuxième Bureau in the Army and the Head of the Military Police. Husseini added: “Antun Sa’adeh is in Zaim’s protection, but I think that Zaim intends to hand him over to the Lebanese authorities.” I was truly astonished. How on earth could Zaim think of this after he had assured Sa’adeh, gave him a house in Damascus to live in, and regarded him as a political refugee! I replied: “This is just not possible.”106
The author here is Nadhih Fansah, Zaim’s brother-in-law and private secretary. When Fansah turned up for work the next morning, Zaim was there to listen and to reply to his queries. “Deport him. Give him travel clearance to another country of his choice,” Fansah supposedly told him. “Great idea”, responded Zaim. “I will ask him to go to Argentina where he has a substantial family and a strong party base.”107 Elatedly, Fansah dashed over and kissed Zaim: “I repeated to him not to cause a shameful blot to be recorded against his administration by handing Sa’adeh over to the Lebanese State.”108 Both Fansah and Colonel al-Husseini repeated the waning to Zaim that day: “Husni, do you swear by your military honour that you will not hand Antun Sa’adeh over to the Lebanese authorities?” “By military honour,” he replied.109 The belief today is that al-Husseini also pressed Zaim to dump Sa’adeh in advance of a 25,000 pound reward that the Lebanese government had set aside for Sa’adeh’s capture.110
On the morning of 6 July, al-Husseini turned up at Sa’adeh’s command centre to convey a message from Zaim. It was a request for an evening meeting at the presidential palace. Projecting a relaxed attitude, Sa’adeh responded in a conciliatory spirit but did not give his guest a definite yes or no answer. Sensing a problem, al-Husseini quickly responded with a trumped-up story about how Zaim had finally agreed to bolster the insurgency with an additional three hundred soldiers from the Syrian Army. That sent Sa’adeh’s mind into a spin.
Earlier that day, and possibly even before, confidential reports had reached the SNP of a plot to surrender Sa’adeh to the Lebanese authorities. They came from three principal directions: (1) Sabri Qubbani; (2) the Syrian diplomat and poet Omar Abu Riche;111 and
(3) Major Tufic Bashur, Commander of the Fourth Battalion in the Syrian Army. Bashur twice met Sa’adeh to dissuade him from meeting with Zaim, but was unsuccessful. After the first attempt the Major pleaded with the SNP to “persuade Sa’adeh to leave the country at once because treason is about to unleash its venom”112 but Sa’adeh ignored the plea. The second meeting was more melodramatic:
When we (Sa’adeh, Sobhi Farhat, Bashir Moussali and I) got there Sa’adeh and the Major went into the main lounge room alone while the rest of us stayed outside. They emerged from the meeting Sa’adeh first followed by the Major with tears in his eyes. Then, in a trembling voice, the Major cried out: “Please, persuade him to flee. You mustn’t leave him to die like this. Muhsin al-Barrazi, Riad Solh and King Farouk are conspiring against him.”113
Sa’adeh annoyingly ignored the warning. At once he let it be known to everyone that the meeting would go ahead as long as he could see a “one in a million”114 chance of regaining the Syrian leader.
At twilight, Sa’adeh asked his chauffeur to refuel the car for a relaxing drive. Contradictory assertions have been made about his intentions, one account alleging that he was planning to abscond to Jordan after realizing the hopelessness of the situation. But the opposite assertion has been made, from a very different point of view, that he was merely using up the time to reflect before the meeting with Zaim.115 We believe that the latter suggestion carries more weight than the former116 but even if it is accepted it is not easy to prove. According to his chauffeur, Sa’adeh did not utter a single word during the one-hour drive. When they reached the outskirts of Damascus Sa’adeh stopped the car and asked the driver to turn back.
At ten sharp, an army jeep with al-Husseini at the wheels rolled up to collect Sa’adeh. As he made his way to the waiting vehicle, Sa’adeh removed his pistol, the very same one given him by Zaim during their second meeting, and handed it over to one of his aides, saying: “It is not proper to meet the President armed and whilst I am under his protection.”117 His private secretary, Mustafa Suleiman, offered to come along with him, but al-Husseini shoved him aside. “You, my son, stay here,” and then he took off.118 Stunned and confused, Sa’adeh’s chauffeur quickly jumped into his car and followed them with a party officer at his side.
The Presidential Palace was only a short distance away. It was a warm summer evening and everyone was going about their business as on any other day. Apart from the troops bivouacked in and around the Presidential palace, no unusual activities were reported. During the day Lebanese security vehicles had whizzed in and out of the Syrian capital, but by nightfall they had all but disappeared from public view.119 Al-Husseini entered the Presidential Palace in the normal way and walked Sa’adeh to the main chamber. The moment Sa’adeh stepped inside he was surrounded by the presidential guards from all sides. Minutes later, Muhsin al-Barrazi walked in from the other end of the chamber to utter his infamous words: “You have a score to settle with Lebanon, go take care of it.”120 Outside the Palace, Sa’adeh’s chauffeur and his companion were overpowered and arrested on Al-Husseini’s orders.
Sa’adeh was handed over to two Lebanese emissaries, the Chief of General Security Farid Chehab and a senior officer in the Lebanese army whose identity is still unknown.121 The pair asked the Syrian authorities for a two-hour intermission to organize the extradition from the other end. Then they left to Lebanon to deploy extra security forces along the Beirut-Damascus highway in anticipation of the handover. Sa’adeh spent those hours at a gendarmerie post on the Syrian side of the borders with Lebanon. At two in the morning, he was whisked across the border by Syrian intelligence officers, some fifteen of them, and handed over to Farid Chehab who in turn handed him over to the Lebanese army.
The small convoy made its way through the still of the night without visible security or military measures. The operation was carried out in complete secrecy from the point of view of the Lebanese government. At a certain point in the Bekaa valley, near Anjar, the convoy confronted “a pile of rocks in the middle of the road which was not there on our way to collect Sa’adeh.”122 It was a false alarm. Farid Chehab’s recollections of the incident are telling: “I thought the party may have caught wind of the mission and had set up a deadly trap for us. There were only two cars on the road, mine and the jeep. I checked my pistol and then got out to investigate. There was no movement. So we steered the cars toward one side of the road and drove on.”123
When the convoy got closer to Anjar, the driver of the army jeep signaled to Chehab to stop. He got out and walked toward Chehab and said “I have orders to liquidate him. What do you think?” Chehab curtly answered him: “I strongly disapprove. We are not killers. This is not proper behaviour towards the State.” He instantly replied: “I agree.” It later transpired that the Lebanese army officers in the convoy had been instructed to kill Sa’adeh on the route on the familiar pretext of attempting to escape.
President Khoury tacitly conceded to the existence of the plot, but placed the onus of responsibility squarely with the Syrians. He claimed that President Zaim had agreed to hand over Sa’adeh on the condition that he (i.e., Sa’adeh) would be liquidated on the way to Lebanon.124 Yet Khoury conceded that the Syrian President did not raise a single objection when he broke to him the news that Sa’adeh was still alive: “Finally, at six Husni Zaim picked up the phone. I said ‘I am grateful for your assistance to Lebanon on this night. The man [i.e., Sa’adeh] is under arrest and will be tried in a military court in accordance with the law.’ He replied: ‘Fine. Fine. There is really no need for you to thank me for anything.’ ”125
What do the Syrians say? The Syrian historian and diplomat Walid al-Mouallim has stated that when Riad Solh came to Damascus to seek Sa’adeh’s repatriation he brought with him a letter from the Lebanese president asking Zaim to “hand over Sa’adeh to the Lebanese authorities or organize his murder in Damascus.”126 This view is strongly confirmed in Nadhir Fansah’s revealing recollections of that era:
Without delay I went to see Zaim to enquire about Sa’adeh’s status. He said ‘I am under considerable pressure from the Lebanese President, Sheikh Beshara Khoury, and from Riad Solh.’ I replied ‘Is it not shameful to surrender a person you know for certain that he will be executed after you have granted him protection?’ He replied ‘They are demanding of me even to organize the details of his murder right here in Damascus, but of course I will not do anything of the sort. Therefore, I will hand him over to them.’127
Since then, more evidence implicating the Khoury regime has emerged. In 1991, the Lebanese ex-president, Charles Helou, told al-Dayar newspaper that “Lebanese fingers” were definitely involved in a plot to kill Sa’adeh before his trial but refrained from openly naming the perpetrators. He literally said:
Husni Zaim answered the request of the Lebanese government and turned Antun Sa’adeh in. At this point, I am not sure how important this issue is, since one of the people in charge, whom I am not going to name, suggested to the government that Sa’adah should not make it to trial. He proposed that Sa’adah be killed by one of the guards in a police station who would thus supposedly be taking vengeance for the death of one of his family members killed by [Sa’adeh’s supporters]. Sheikh Beshara, however, rejected the idea.128
The confrontation between Sa’adeh and the Lebanese State remains to this day one of Lebanon’s longest and most dramatic events. Its passion and intensity surprised almost everyone but not as much as the intrigue, revolution, and betrayals that marked its history. Out of it, two different and conflicting perspectives have emerged: To the defenders of the established order, Sa’adeh seemed a degenerate outcast. They recognized his potential but continued to treat him with primitive tolerance. To erudite Lebanese and the politically observant he was the first dissident of Lebanon who spoke with the soft anger and naked courage of a non-conformist. Neither could prove conclusively if Sa’adeh was antiestablishment or anti-Lebanon, even though his words and deeds clearly implied no treachery.
For a while the confrontation for both sides seemed like an eternal process destined to end either in slow death or in a showdown. It ended with a showdown. From the standpoint of the Lebanese state, it was purely self-defense against a citizen who had deviated from the norm and was bent on destroying its entity and absorbing it into a larger unit. For Sa’adeh, it seemed more like a phase in a long and drawn-out battle between a reactionary regime lacking true national legitimacy and the principles of modern life. His method might have been unconventional but the aim was familiar. Like a “father of the nation”, he sought to reshape the very character of the Lebanese state by challenging its ideological underpinnings and foundations of power.
On 7 July, 1949, the long arm of the law finally caught up with the rebel Sa’adeh and now all that was left for the “winner”, the State, to do was to put him on trial for the public to judge for itself. This was the “moment of truth” that most Lebanese had been anxiously waiting for – public scrutiny of the simple facts from the independent perspective of the law. What they got did not remotely come close to that. It is revealed in the next chapter.
1 Walter L. Brown (ed.), Lebanon’s Struggle for Independence, Part II, 1944–1947. North Carolina: Documentary Publications, 1980: 142.
2 A. Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 15.
3 See Nadim Makdisi, “The Syrian National Party: A Case Study of the First Inroads of National Socialism in the Arab World.” PhD, American University of Beirut, 1960.
4 Abdullah Qubarsi, Nahnu wa Lubnan (Lebanon and US). Beirut: Dar al-Turath al-Arabi, 1988.
5 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 63.
6 Sabah el-Kheir, Beirut, 12 July, 1988.
7 Ibid.
8 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 110.
9 George Akl, Abdo Ouadat, and Idwar H.unayn, The Black Book of the Lebanese Elections of May 25, 1947. New York, N.Y.: Phoenicia Press, 1947.
10 Ibid., 112.
11 Ibid., 96.
12 Ibid., 115.
13 The campaign against Sa’adeh was not free of humor. A reporter for the widely-read al-Hayat alleged that a Lebanese security force assigned to the task of capturing Sa’adeh directed him to Sa’adeh’s hideout after he wandered off on his way to interview the SNP leader. Ibid.
14 On the course of negotiations between Sa’adeh and the government, with Emir Farouq Abi Lama’ as the intermediary, see Nawwaf Hardan, Ala Durub an-Nahda (On the Pathways of the Renaissance). Beirut: Dar Bissan Publishing, 1997: 193–196.
15 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 156–157.
16 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 15. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 214.
17 Ibid.
18 An example was the time when it tried to disperse a modest gathering organized by the Beirut Executive branch of the Party on February 28, 1949, on the eve of Sa’adeh’s birthday anniversary, although the meeting was being held in a private garden. That attempt nearly ended in a clash with a throng of young men attending the celebrations. Having failed in its bid, the government then proceeded to ban the official ceremony which the Party was planning to hold in the Normandy Hotel on the day of Sa’adeh’s birthday. Consequently, the Party was forced to celebrate in a private house in an atmosphere of intimidation by the secret police which spoiled the social nature of the occasion.
19 Alford Carelton, “The Syrian Coups d’Etat of 1949,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 4 (1950): 4.
20 Zaim stated that the number of deputies in the new parliament would be decreased, that suffrage would be extended to educated women, and that the civil service would be purged, while the lower echelons would be given better working conditions. He proposed a widespread distribution of abandoned state lands to the peasants and the imposition of a limitation upon the size of landholdings. Zaim also promised to re-arm the army with the most modern weapons. See Gordon H. Torrey, Syrian Politics and the Military: 1945–1958. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964: 125.
21 For further confirmation that Qawuqji was planning a coup see Hani al-Hindi, Jaysh al Inqadh (The Salvation Army). Beirut: Dar al-Quds, 1974: 112.
22 Taha al-Hashimi, Mudhakkirat (Memoirs). Beirut: Dar al-Tali’a, 1967: 234. Taha al-Hashimi, a former prime minister then in exile in Syria for opposing the Iraqi royal family during the 1941 Rashid Ali coup, was appointed by Mardam as the Inspector General to supervise the new army. It was named the Jaysh al-Inqadh or Rescue Army.
23 Al-Jil al-Jadid, 25 May, 1949.
24 Ibid.
25 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000: 169.
26 See Qabbani’s recollections in the Syrian al-Dunia newsmagazine in the second half of 1949. The entire series can be found in Abdul Ghani al-Atari, Sa’adeh wa al-Hizb al-Qawmi (Sa’adeh and the National Party). Damascus: Al-Dunia Printers, 1950: 158–205. Hereafter cited as “Qubbani’s recollections.”
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid. On Zaim’s military ego see Alford Carelton, “The Syrian Coups d’Etat of 1949,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 4 (1950): 9.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Al-Hayat, Beirut, 11 June, 1949.
39 Yusuf Salamah, Haddathanii Y. S. Qala (Memoirs). Beirut: Dar Nelson, 1988.
40 Hisham Sharabi, al-Jamr wa al-Rimad (Embers and Ashes). Beirut: Dar al-Tali’a, 1978: 208.
41 Michel Faddoul memoirs of the Jummaizzeh incident (unpublished).
42 Yusuf Salamah, op. cit., 78.
43 Al-Hayat, Beirut, 11 June, 1949.
44 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence: 184. Zisser’s interpretation is factually inaccurate: (1) at the time of the clash, the Phalanges and Premier Solh were not ‘opponents’ but allies united with an-Najjadah by a common enmity towards Sa’adeh; (2) the Phalanges was not the only victim of the 1947 rigged elections. Even if it was, the issue is not directly relevant here; (3) the government did not arrest ‘some fifty Phalanges’ after the clash, but twenty-one of them none of whom was charged or jailed; (4) the July 18 incident between the government and the Phalanges falls outside the scope of Jummaizeh and thus is immaterial.
45 In Istijwab Jumblatt al tarikhi lil hukuma hawla istishhad Sa’adeh ome 1949 (Jumblatt’s Historical Interpolation to the [Lebanese] Government in Regard to Sa’adeh’s Martyrdom in 1949). Beirut: SSNP Information Bureau, 1987.
46 Ahmad Asfahani (ed.), Antun Sa’adeh wa al-Hizb al-Suri al-Qawmi al-Ijtimae’ fi Awarq al-Amir Farid Chehab, al-Mudir al-Ome lil al-Amn al-Ome al-Lubnani (Antun Sa’adeh and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the Private Papers of Emir Farid Chehab, the General Director of the Lebanese General Security). Beirut: Dar Kutub, 2006: 40–41.
47 Hanna Toufiq Bashur, Min Dhakirat Abi, Major Toufiq Bashur (From My Father’s Recollections). Damascus: Maktabat al-Sharq al-Jadid, 1998: 101.
48 Ibid.
49 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution): 51–53.
50 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. Sa’adeh also asked for freedom of movement for the party, especially at the border-points with Lebanon.
55 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
56 An-Nahar, Beirut 16 June, 1949.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
60 Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 16. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 159–163.
61 Ibid., 159.
62 The countryside between Lebanon and Syria is fairly open. Both countries lacked, and still lack, the right measures to monitor and control their borders. Back then and even today people from both countries are able to traverse the borders on foot and with considerable ease.
63 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
64 Al-Sayyad, Beirut, 16 June, 1949.
65 An-Nahar, Beirut, 16 June, 1949.
66 Ahmad Asfahani, op. cit., 40–41.
67 An-Nahar, Beirut, 16 June, 1949.
68 See Asfahani, op. cit., 40–45.
69 An-Nahar, Beirut, 21 June, 1949.
70 An-Nahar, Beirut, 22 June, 1949.
71 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 A. Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 16. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 161–163.
75 See Nadhir Fansahh, Ayyam Husni Zaim: 137 Yawman Hazzat Suria (Days of Husni Zaim: 137 Days that Shook Syria). Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah, 1983.
76 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
77 Mohammad Fadhel Jamali, Experiences in Arab Affairs: 1943–1958 (Located in Widener Library, Harvard University under the title: Arab Struggle; Experiences of Mohammed Fadhel Jamali). Also at http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/Fadhel.html
78 An-Nasr. Damascus, 22 June, 1949.
79 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
83 An-Nahar, Beirut, 25 June, 1949.
84 Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Diplomacy 1945–1958. Oxford University Press, 1965: 71.
85 Andrew Rathmell, Secret War in the Middle East: The Covert Struggle for Syria, 1949–1961. London: I. B. Tauris, 1995: 49.
86 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 Details of the two plans are discussed in Nawaf Hardan, Ala Durub an-Nahda (On the Pathways of the Renaissance). Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1997: 245–255.
96 Abdullah Qubarsi, Autobiography. Vol. 4. Beirut: Dar Al-Furat, 2004: 51.
97 An English-language version of the communiqué can be found in Adel Beshara, Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the Political Philosophy of Antun Sa’adeh. Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1995.
98 A. Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 16. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 169–171.
99 Hisham Sharabi, al-Jamr wa al-Rimad (Embers and Ashes): 227.
100 The first and only communiqué of the uprising reached comparatively few people in Lebanon because the local authorities were alerted to it by the Syrians and, thus, were able to confiscate most of it.
101 Elias Jurgi Qneizeh, Ma’ather min Sa’adeh. Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1989: 207.
102 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 83.
103 Ibid., 76.
104 “Qubbani’s recollections.”
105 Ibid.
106 Nadhir Fansah, op. cit., 129.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid.
110 Muti’e as-Samman, Watan wa Askar (Homeland and Soldiers). Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1995: 322–327.
111 Abu-Riche was born in Acre, Palestine to a Palestinian mother and Syrian father. He received his educational upbringing in Syria and continued his tertiary studies at the University of Damascus. He also studied at the American University in Beirut in 1931, and later read chemistry at the University of Manchester. Returning to Syria, he produced literary works and attended to his duties as Librarian of Aleppo, Syria. In 1949, the Syrian government appointed him ambassador to Brazil. As a diplomat until 1964, he would also serve as ambassador to Argentina, Chile, India, Austria and finally the United States. See Sabry Hafez, “Obituary: Omar Abu-Riche”. The Independent, London, 19 July, 1990: 31.
112 Hanna Toufiq Bashur, Min Dhakirat Abi, Major Toufiq Bashur (From my Father’s Recollections) (Damascus: Maktabat al-Sharq al-Jadid, 1998): 102.
113 Ibid.
114 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 82.
115 Ibid., 84–85.
116 First, Sa’adeh did not mention to anyone that he was going to Jordan, not even to his chauffeur, or leave behind any instructions to indicate that he was escaping to the Kingdom. Second, it would not have been like Sa’adeh to leave in this manner without first ensuring the safety of his wife and three children who were cooped up in the northern Syrian city of Latakia.
117 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 86.
118 Ibid.
119 A Syrian bystander has related that that day Damascus “teemed with officers of the Lebanese General Security . . . we counted more than two hundred taxicabs and private cars zigzagging various parts of the city including designated areas where taxicabs were barred.”
120 President Zaim was not present but, according to Adib Qaddura, he was listening to everything from a concealed corner in the Chamber.
121 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 88.
122 Interview with Farid Chehab, former Chief of Lebanese General Security, Sabah el-Kheir, 7 July, 1980.
123 Ibid.
124 In Khoury’s words: When the meeting [between Sa’adeh and Zaim] ended and the guest bid farewell to his host, Sa’adeh walked out only to find the Presidential Palace encircled by a unit from the [Syrian] General Security account. The head of the unit then walked across and arrested him. Immediately after that the [Syrian] Chief of General Security called his Lebanese counterpart and asked him to bring along with him an armed unit to collect the detainee at midnight on the borders between the two countries, on the condition that Sa’adeh would be killed before he arrived in Beirut. The Damascene Chief of General Security was deadly serious about this condition. See his Haqa’iq Lubnaniyyah (Lebanese Truths), Vol. 3, Beirut: Awraq Labnaniyah, 1961: 240–241.
125 Ibid.
126 Walid al-Mouallim, Souria 1918–1958: al-Tahdi wa al-Muwajaha. Damascus: Babel Publications, 1985: 113.
127 Nadhir Fansah, Ayyam Husni Zaim: 137 Yawman Hazzat Suria (Days of Husni Zaim: 137 Days that Shook Syria). Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah, 1983: 85.
128 al-Dayar, Beirut, 1 March, 1991.