Lebanon at 100: The French mandate’s mixed blessing

Lebanon, 9-1-1920, Solemn proclamation of Greater Lebanon in Beirut , General Gouraud, surrounded by the Maronite patriarch, Msgr Hoyek, and the Mufti, listening to the city's governor, Negib bey Abussuan. (Getty Images/File Photo)
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Updated 03 September 2020
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Lebanon at 100: The French mandate’s mixed blessing

  • Sectarian politics thrived long before Greater Lebanon was created during the Mutasarifiya system
  • Lebanon was meant to be a ‘friendly’ entity to anchor French presence in the Middle East

NEW YORK CITY: It was amidst the ruins of the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion, surrounded by traumatized citizens who seemed comforted by his presence, that French President Emmanuel Macron found himself in the surreal position of having to announce that he would return on Sept. 1 to commemorate the creation of Greater Lebanon. 

Macron’s interaction with regular Lebanese on that day has invited re-examination of the past hundred years, during which France, despite all misgivings, was always called “the tender mother”. What separates the events that led to the creation of the modern Lebanese state and those that had brought the French leader to Beirut, is much more than just the passage of 100 years. 

As his ship crossed the Atlantic on its way to Paris in 1919, US President Woodrow Wilson was armed by an unwavering vision for a new world order in the aftermath of the First World War: Affairs between nations would be conducted in the open, on the basis of sovereignty, self-determination and the repudiation of military force to settle dispute. 

The victorious Allies gathered at the Paris Peace Conference to set the terms for the defeated Central Powers. A question was on everyone’s mind: What to do with the pieces left of the Ottoman Empire, the “sick man,” and every other empire that collapsed? 

Back then, in the US, there was heavy opposition to colonialism. The US would never join the fight to help maintain and expand European empires. Instead, there would be mandates given to small, well-run countries, perhaps Scandinavian countries, Wilson thought, that would not have the ambition or resources to turn the protectorates into colonies. It would just give the newborn states good advice. 

“But of course, as soon as Wilson got to Paris, there was no way the prime ministers of France or Britain were going to let him do that,” said historian Elizabeth Thompson, author of “How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs.” 

Paris and London were negotiating their own new order for the Middle East, and it could not have been more anathema to Wilson’s vision. France had invested so much in Syria and Lebanon during the previous century that it insisted on creating a “friendly” entity that would anchor the French presence in the Middle East. 

The new entity had to be a safe haven for the Maronite Christian minority for whom High Commissioner Gen. Henri Gouraud, a passionate Catholic himself, felt very warmly. Christian fears were exacerbated by the sight of their Armenian counterparts dying by the roadside during the genocide perpetrated by the Turks. 




In Beirut, General Gouraud, accompanied by General Goybet, passes before a double row of infantrymen in 1920. (Alamy) 

A locust wave decimated the mountain crops and resulted in famine which, compounded by the Allies’ blockade of Beirut’s coast, killed tens of thousands. Emotions, then, were running high on the first day of September 1920. 

Behind the trappings of the proclamation ceremony, an important fact was kept under wraps: When the French pleaded with the British to lift the blockade off the Beirut coast, the latter refused. The blockade was to remain. Starvation was exactly the point. Deaths continued to rise. 

“Macron reappeared on the explosion site to extend sympathy and promises of help, almost exactly 100 years later,” Thompson said. “Macron is to be lauded: In February 2017 he visited Algeria as he was campaigning for office, called colonialism a crime against humanity, and urged the French to apologize. 

“But I have heard no mention of an apology for actions the French took in Lebanon 100 years ago, even as the League of Nations awarded them the mandate. 

“When World War I ended, the French came with sacks of grain and declared themselves the saviors of the poor Lebanese. Then, they installed a sectarian regime: Access to political office and representation was defined along the lines of what religion you belong to. 

“Sectarianism segments the citizenry. The direct opposite would the project of French Revolution: to create no mediating. It is kind of ironic, isn’t it, that the French came up with this system of power? 

“That sectarian system laid the seeds for the deep divisions within Lebanese politics that we all now know too well have weakened the development of a stable government, which could ideally care for all Lebanese people.” 

Then again, sectarian politics was thriving long before Greater Lebanon. In the preceding system, known as Mutasarifiya, sectarian institutions had already emerged in an attempt to create a balance among communities. 

“What the French mandate did, however, was anchor that sectarianism, continuing a pattern that was prevalent under the Ottomans,” said Michael Young, author of “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square” and a senior editor at Carnegie Middle East Center. 

“When, in 1943, the Lebanese came to an agreement on their National Pact, a lot of what the French had introduced during the mandate became custom. For example, the president is Christian, the prime minister is Sunni and the speaker of the parliament Shia.” 

Lebanese poet Henri Zoghaib, who has been advocating for a secular state for years, believes “sectarianism in religion is good, for every religion has its sects. But sectarianism in the state is a disaster. 

“The French Revolution began way before 1789 when the nobility and the clergy were tyrannizing society. When the revolution matured and the Bastille was stormed, the clergy were put in their place, and politicians in theirs. The people became the source of power. The people were the ‘word of God.’ Only when the same happens in Lebanon, will we be delivered from this monster called sectarianism.” 

For all its faults, however, Young believes that sectarianism is naturally a pluralistic system.

“If Lebanon was Lebanon between 45 and 75, the sectarian system made that possible,” he said.

“Sectarianism made it difficult to have an absolute state suffocating society like you had in Syria.

“In Lebanon, because you had a weak state, you had a much stronger, more varied and independent society. Sectarianism was good in that it generated pluralism.”

Young makes a key distinction between sectarianism as it had been prior to the 1975 Lebanese civil war, and the version that emerged after it ended. 

“When the war ended in 1990, you had a new order established by the Syrians and the Saudis, who came to a kind of consensus over Lebanon, that became known as the Taif Accord, and that eventually brought the nomination of Rafik Hariri as a prime minister,” he said. 




Picture dated August 2, 1982, shows Israeli shelling of west Beirut. (AFP/File Photo)

“You also had the Syrian hegemony in the country, and what did the Syrians do? They basically gave their wartime Lebanese political allies positions in the state. 

“Before 75 you still had a Lebanese state. It had problems, but you had the state. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Camille Chamoun, Fouad Chehab and Charles Helou (all) had a statist approach: they strove to expand the power of the state and its institutions.

“At the end of the war, the state had been severely damaged. What the (Syrians) established instead was a system of sectarian pie-sharing. The state was given to sectarian wartime leaders, and they pillaged it throughout 40 years.”

Young added: “Another problem of the sectarian system today is it has become an excuse to block everything. Today, because there is no consensus, everything is blocked. We have a completely dysfunctional system.” 

Behind the glitz of the proclamation ceremony of 1920, what the Christians really did was link their fate to another country: France. Reliance on outside forces turned out to be a pattern in Lebanese history that for decades continued to blight the country’s progress and fan the flames of rivalries within Lebanese factions. 

And so, in the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, when Lebanon received the Palestinians, part of the Lebanese population sided with Palestinian militancy. Similarly, in 1982, when Ariel Sharon entered Lebanon, the Maronites built an alliance with Israel, without any consensus reached with the other communities.

“All the Lebanese communities have ignored the rules of the sectarian game which demands and imposes modesty. No one here is modest,” said Young. 

In his book, Young compares then-President Bachir Gemayel to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: “Both of them reflect one of the fundamental problems of Lebanon: they had their own sectarian, communal agenda, and they expected they could impose it on the majority of the Lebanese.

“Since the end of the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2005, Hezbollah has been pushing the Iranian agenda in Lebanon and the region.

“Once again, we are at this inflection point where we can stabilize the situation, but one minority somehow wants to impose its vision on the others.

“When Hezbollah wants to intimate people, it will ultimately end in civil war because that is the nature of the system. Communities begin to respond when they feel threatened. And they ally with other communities that feel threatened as well.

“Today, we have a dominant military force called Hezbollah that is not allowing for the consolidation of a sovereign state. We’re coming back to the problem we had after 1967 of a state existing in parallel with an anti-state. This cannot last forever. Sooner or later one has to take over the other.

“Tensions will continue until this issue is resolved. And on top of it, Hezbollah is an armed group that is not loyal to Lebanon. It is loyal to a foreign power. And that is the problem.

“It is not because Hezbollah today has weapons and can intimidate people that it can impose its will on the majority. It cannot. That’s a simple fact.

“Even if there is a civil war in Lebanon now, Hezbollah may be the best armed, but I don’t think it would win the war. The game of intimidation does not work in a sectarian context. You have to respect the rules of the sectarian game.




Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Shiite movement Hezbollah, giving a televised address from an undisclosed location in Lebanon. (AFP/Al-Manar/File Photo) 

“Hezbollah is a Frankenstein created by many people. It was not only Iran, not only the contradictions in the Lebanese society, but believe it or not, after 1990 it was also created by all those who supported the Syrian order in Lebanon.

“Don’t tell this to the Americans. They don’t like to hear it, but they supported the Syrian order that reinforced Hezbollah and used it as an instrument in the Syrian-Israeli negotiations, at a time when the US had completely accepted and recognized Syria’s dominant role in the country.

“Hezbollah has many fathers.”

In conclusion, Young said: “We have no domestic agenda. Our agenda is always tied to someone outside of Lebanon. every community has been weakened by it. The Maronites lost power. The Sunnis lost power. Now Hezbollah and the Shia. We will see where they’re going.”

For his part, Zoghaib, the poet cried out “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa” for the all the mistakes he said he and his people had committed against their beloved country.

In his poet’s optimism, he quickly moved on to embrace hope. “This nation is filled with temples, Muslim and Christian. When in the heart of the capital, the Mohamed Al-Amine mosque embraces Saint George’s cathedral. That is the image of true Lebanon,” he told Arab News.

“What value do the cross and crescent have if we didn’t respect them, and honored the teachings of the Quran and the Bible? ‘In the Name of God, the most Gracious and Merficul’ and ‘In the Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit’ are two paths going upward to the same destination: God. Lebanon is really ‘Leb-Anon’ — ‘The heart of God.’”

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Twitter: @EphremKossaify


Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says

Updated 28 min 5 sec ago
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Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says

  • Hamas said the strike killed a journalist and wounded a number of civilians
  • The CPJ says at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it struck a Gaza hospital housing Hamas militants in a raid Tuesday that, according to the Palestinian group, killed a journalist wounded in an Israeli attack last month.

The strike, which Hamas said happened at dawn, ended a brief pause in fighting to allow the release of a US-Israeli hostage.

The military said in a Telegram post that “significant Hamas terrorists” had been “operating from within a command and control center” at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city.

“The compound was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF (army) troops,” it said.

In a statement, Hamas said the strike killed a journalist and wounded a number of civilians.

“The Israeli army bombed the surgeries building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis at dawn on Tuesday, killing journalist Hassan Aslih,” said Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

Aslih, head of the Alam24 news outlet, had been at the hospital for treatment after being wounded in a strike on April 7, he told AFP.

Two other journalists, Ahmed Mansur and Hilmi Al-Faqaawi, were killed in that bombing, according to reports at the time.The Israeli military said the April strike had targeted Aslih, alleging he operated for Hamas “under the guise of a journalist.”

It said Aslih had “infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the murderous massacre carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization” on October 7, 2023.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the strike.It said Aslih had worked for international media outlets until 2023, when the pro-Israeli watchdog HonestReporting published a photo of him being kissed by then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The CPJ says at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war.

Israel had paused military operations in Gaza to allow for the release of Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old US-Israeli soldier who had been held hostage since October 2023.

Alexander, believed to be the last surviving hostage with US citizenship, was released Monday ahead of a Middle East visit by US President Donald Trump.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas, which was triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack.

The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday at least 2,749 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,862.


‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

Updated 13 May 2025
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‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.


Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

Updated 13 May 2025
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Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

  • Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries
  • Residents urged to stay indoors

TRIPOLI: Violent clashes between rival armed groups erupted Monday night in the Libyan capital Tripoli, prompting the interior ministry to urge residents to stay indoors.
Heavy arms fire and explosions were heard in several areas of the capital from 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), AFP journalists in the city said.
Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries.
The interior ministry of the national unity government in Tripoli in a statement urged “all citizens to stay at home for their safety.”
Local media said clashes broke out in the southern suburbs between armed groups from Tripoli and rivals from Misrata, a major port city 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital.
Libya is struggling to recover from years of unrest following a 2011 revolt that led to the fall of the late dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
It is currently divided between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.
Despite relative calm in recent years, clashes periodically break out between armed groups vying for territory.
In August 2023, fighting between two powerful armed groups in Tripoli left 55 dead.
Several districts of the capital and its suburbs announced that schools would be closed on Tuesday until further notice.
Earlier Monday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the United States Embassy in Tripoli called for calm.
They urged “all parties to de-escalate” and “refrain from any provocation, to resolve disputes through dialogue.”


Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

Updated 12 May 2025
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Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

RAMALLAH: An Israeli rights group has denounced a government decision to launch extensive land registration for parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it could help advance annexation of the Palestinian territory.

“It is a tool for annexation,” said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Settlement Watch project at Israeli nongovernmental organization Peace Now.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has no comprehensive land registry, with some areas unregistered or residents holding deeds from before the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday decided to initiate a land registration process in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Though the process would likely take “years” according to Mizrachi, he said that Palestinians in Area C could lose land if Israeli authorities do not accept their claim to it.

This might lead to “a massive land theft,” Peace Now said, adding that the process could result “in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the (Israeli) state.”

“The Palestinians will have no practical way to realize their ownership rights,” the anti-settlement group said.

Some Israeli ministers have advocated the annexation of the West Bank, home to around 3 million Palestinians as well as some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, has said that 2025 would be the year Israel extends its sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.

To Mizrachi, the government’s decision was primarily “about ... the places where they want to expand settlements,” including in areas considered state land.

He mentioned remarks by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who praised the move in the official statement announcing it.

Katz said that launching land registration “is a revolutionary decision that brings justice to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name that the Israeli government uses to refer to the West Bank.

The process will lead to the “strengthening, establishment and expansion” of settlements, Katz was quoted as saying.

He also said it would block “attempts to seize land” by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank but not Area C.

Mohammed Abu Al-Rob, director of the Palestinian Authority’s communication center, said that the decision was “a dangerous escalation of Israel’s illegal policies aimed at entrenching its occupation and advancing de facto annexation.”

Area C is “an inseparable part” of the rest of the Palestinian territories, he said.

Abu Al-Rob called on the international community to “reject this unlawful decision and to take immediate, concrete action to thwart its implementation.”


Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

Updated 12 May 2025
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Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

  • Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani emphasizes that ‘our goal is not dominance but unification’

ANKARA: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani has warned that postponing the implementation of an agreement between Syria’s new administration and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast would “prolong the chaos” in the country.

His remarks came as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced it was disbanding, an announcement the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control swaths of north and northeast Syria, have not yet commented on.

The PKK’s move is “a pivotal moment” for regional stability, Al-Shaibani told a news conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Jordanian counterparts.

Syria is “implementing the national accord with the Syrian Democratic Forces and incorporating all areas under central state control,” he said.

In March, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the civil and military institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.

The deal, agreed three months after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.

“This process is complicated and sensitive, but it is necessary,” Al-Shaibani said, adding that “delaying the implementation of this agreement will prolong the chaos, open the door to foreign interference, and fuel separatist tendencies.”

“Our goal is not dominance but unification,” he said.

“We are keen on implementing this agreement, and we hope that the other side is seriously committed to implementing this agreement,” he added.

The SDF, the Kurdish administration’s de facto army, controls most of the oil and gas fields in Syria. The force maintains that it is independent from the PKK, but it is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara views as a PKK offshoot.

After years of marginalization and repression under the Assad dynasty, the Kurds took advantage of the government forces’ withdrawal during the civil war, which erupted in 2011, to establish a semi-autonomous administration.

With US backing, the SDF played a key role in the fight against Daesh, which was defeated in its last Syrian territorial stronghold in 2019.

Al-Shaibani emphasized that “the unity of Syrian territory is non-negotiable, as Syria is an indivisible, unified state, sovereign over its land and will remain so.”

“The rights of Kurdish citizens will be preserved and guaranteed on an equal footing with the rest of the Syrian people,” he added.

Syria’s Kurds have criticized a temporary constitutional declaration announced in March and said the new government failed to reflect the country’s diversity.

In February, Abdi said an initial call for the PKK to lay down weapons and disband did not concern his forces.