Independent Lebanon

Author: C.R. Pennell, former Al-Tajir Lecturer in the History of Islam and the Middle East, University of Melbourne, Australia

Edited by: Erik Prins

During the Second World War, French rule of Lebanon continued under the control of the Vichy regime that was allied with Nazi Germany. In June 1941, British forces from Palestine invaded Lebanon to protect their supply routes to Iraq, following the attempted coup by Rashid Ali there.

General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French Forces, allied to Britain then announced that Lebanon would become independent. But with the Mandate still in place under the authority of the Free French government, it did not satisfy Lebanese nationalists.

On 8 November 1943, after elections, the new Lebanese government announced that it had abolished the Mandate. As this was not agreed upon with the Free French government, its local representatives arrested and imprisoned the Lebanese cabinet. While there were local protests, the allies of the Free French government put great pressure on them to back down. The French released the Lebanese officials on 22 November and announced that they accepted the full independence of the country.

However, this did not solve the political instability in Lebanon. Confessional loyalties were overshadowed by fragmentations within the communities, making stability complicated.

Among the Maronites was Emile Eddé who was inclined towards a closer relationship with the western alliance, and particularly France. Another Maronite politician, Camille Chamoun, who had once been a champion of independence from France, was explicitly pro-American. Beshara al-Khoury, who would become the first president of independent Lebanon, wanted closer links with regional Arab states.

Among the Sunnis, Riyadh al-Sulh, who had both Egyptian and Palestinian roots and whose father had served Faisal when he was king of Syria in 1920, identified with Arab nationalists and with the international Arab elite.

One of his daughters was married to the brother of Hassan II of Morocco, another to an important Saudi prince. Al-Sulh tended towards cooperation across sectarian and national lines. Abdul Hamid Karami, who came from a religious Sunni family in Tripoli in the north, was an Arab nationalist more rooted in local elite structures.

These and other Lebanese politicians agreed to solve the sectarian problem by sharing and balancing political authority and organization in Lebanon. They made an unwritten agreement known as The National Pact which set internal stability against external neutrality.

• Lebanon would be independent within present boundaries
• Its government would cooperate with the Arab states while maintaining links with Europe
• All sects would participate in government and administration on a proportional basis
• Seats in Parliament would be distributed based on 6 Christian MPs to 5 Muslim

The National Pact did not replace the formal and semi-formal constitutional arrangements that had emerged in the inter-war period. Under these arrangements, the president would be elected by parliament for a single 6-year period and would always be a Maronite; The prime minister would always be a Sunni; the speaker of Parliament would be a Shi’a and so on. Thus, Beshara al-Khoury became president, Riyadh al-Sulh became prime minister and Colonel Fuad Shihab, a Maronite, took command of the army.

As a result of this system, Lebanese internal stability was based on an internal balance between religious communities. An equilibrium between the Arab states and the west was important to its external independence. If the balance was rocked in any way, those relationships became precarious, which is what happened in the 1950s.

On the international stage, the new Lebanese government tried to maintain the balance of the National Pact by joining both the newly formed Arab League and the United Nations in 1945, which required a declaration of war on Germany.

The Charter of the Arab League, partly at Lebanese insistence, stated that it was an organisation for cooperation, and that its decisions were not binding on member states. The Maronite leadership specifically objected to anything that gave other Arab governments control of Lebanese affairs and policy.

As the Cold War developed, there was a growing reluctance from Arab nationalist politicians to the enforced membership of the western alliance. This is one of the external factors that helped to undermine the internal organisation of the National Pact.

It became an even more serious issue after the 1948 War between the Arab states and the new State of Israel. The Lebanese army was not a strong force and Lebanese forces hardly took part. At the end of the war, the Israel-Lebanon Armistice Line followed the former international boundary between Lebanon and Palestine.

After the war ended, huge numbers of Palestinian refugees began to arrive in Lebanon. In 1949, an estimated 100,000 Palestinians were in Lebanon, rising to about 235,000 in 1969. Most were workers, fishermen, and peasants from Galilee and the coastal strip around Haifa and Acre.

Initially, they settled in twelve camps operated by UNRWA and then spread into surrounding districts. The city of Beirut spread to envelop refugee camps that had often originally stood on waste ground. By the late 1960s, only a third of the Palestinians in Lebanon lived in camps, although camps remained the social core of the Palestinian community in Lebanon.

The Lebanese government was very unsupportive. By 1969, only 3,362 Palestinian workers in Lebanon had legal work permits. This did not conform to the expectation of Arab nationalists in Lebanon who promoted close ties with other Arab states.

It was not just the arrival of the Palestinian refugees that undermined the pact. The structure of Lebanon itself was very fragile. President al-Khoury, who was corrupt and self-serving, tried to change the constitution and seek a second term as president. Camille Chamoun joined Kamal Jumblatt, the main Druze leader, in his efforts to stop him and in September 1952, Chamoun became president by manipulating the rivalries between Sunni leaders.

The economy began to grow – the currency was stable, there was free trade and banking prospered from huge Arab inflows. However, wealth was very unevenly distributed, and many Lebanese remained poor. This liberal economy pushed Lebanon closer to Europe and the United States at a time when the socialist Egyptian revolution pushed for Arab unity.

After the Suez Crisis of 1956, during which the United Kingdom and France sided with Israel, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Yafi demanded that Lebanon cut relations with both countries. This was another external factor that undercut the National Pact.

In 1957, US President Dwight Eisenhower pledged that the US would send economic and military aid to the Middle East to protect governments in the region from the threat of armed aggression by Communist-linked regimes. This Eisenhower Doctrine became US government policy in March 1957. Chamoun enthusiastically welcomed it, as the US government saw him as a consistent ally in the Middle East.

However, the main Sunni leader Rashid Karami, and the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, who were determined supporters of Nasser and the United Arab Republic (UAR), said that calling on overt American support violated the National Pact. As tension increased, Chamoun rigged parliamentary elections, holding the Nasserist groups in check, and making sure opponents among the Maronites and Sunnis would lose. That brought opposition forces onto the streets. Chamoun’s position looked very vulnerable.

In February 1958, the formation of the United Arab Republic brought the Nasserist regime to the borders of Lebanon, and now Chamoun asked for American aid.

In accordance with the Eisenhower doctrine, the US government sent a small force of Marines, which allowed Chamoun to see out his term. The army commander, General Shihab, refused to use the army to keep order, fearing divisions within the pluri-religious force. By avoiding fragmenting the only national force, he emerged as the only man who could take the presidency.