Struggle for Lebanon

The new cease fire in the Lebanon will not solve the conflict. U.S. imperialism will not allow it to.

The article below by Phil Hearse is taken from the September 30th British weekly 'Socialist Action'.

American intervention in the Lebanon marks a new stage in the struggle between the forces of imperialist-backed reaction and the forces of Arab nationalism which has been underway in that country for 25 years. But without any doubt it is one of the most complex struggles anywhere.

In Lebanon today there are five foreign armies, the P.L.O., the Lebanese Army and dozens of different militias involved in the struggle. If the most dramatic aspect of the fight today is the escalating involvment of US imperialism, then the war is overlaid with numerous conflicts. In order to disentangle these disputes we have to look at aspects of Lebanon's history.

A convenient starting point is the revolt by the Druze people in 1958. Lebanon had been dominated by Christian interests:the constant struggle between Muslims and the Christian communities derived from this basic fact of Christian dominance. Lebanon itself is an artifical creation of imperialism;the product of the French - British carve up of Syria in 1919.

Since the middle ages the area has been a patchwork of conflicting religious communities. The Maronite Christians preserved their identity and exclusiveness by denying that they were Arabs. The Maronites weirdly claim to be descendents of the Phoenicians. Ever since the successive invasions of the Levant by the Crusaders, they looked to the West, and in the 19th and 20th centuries to Western imperialism, for protection and support.

For centuries the region around Mount Lebanon (the 'Mountain' and the mythical homeland of the Maronites), was dominated by Druze landlords and chieftans. The Maronites, mainly peasant farmers and labourers, were liberated by the French intervention in 1863 from Druze domination.

Three main communities co-exist in Lebanon today Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shi'a Muslims. The Druze sect which dominates the Chouf mountains is an exclusive order of 'initiates' - itself a split from the Shi'a branch of Islam

Since the foundation of independent Lebanon in 1943 the confessional character of the state has been enshrined in the constitution. Each community with a certain number of seats in the parliament, the President a Christian, the vice-president a Sunni Muslim.

The Shi'ites, as relative late comers to the region, have shared power less despite their domination of the southern part of the country. At various times the Christians have attempted to exploit the divisions between Sunni and Shi'ites Muslims today with less success, although there are still Shi'ite Muslims in the Christian militia of Saad Haddad.

However the constitutional confessionalism of the state failed to prevent conflict between the Christian rulers and the dispossessed Druze and Muslim peoples.

The conflict between them was overlaid in the early 1970s by the arrival in Lebanon of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian fighters and refugees, evicted from Jordon after 'Black September' in 1970. Although the PLO headquarters were formally in Cairo, Lebanon was a 'front line' state from which Israel could be attacked.

In 1973 the Israelis mounted commando attacks on the PLO offices in Beirut, in which three top leaders of the PLO were killed. Muslims and Palestinians mounted huge demonstrations against the Christian government of Sleiman Franjieh, accusing the government of complicity with the Israeli attacks. The scene was being set for civil war, which duly broke out in 1975

In the mid-1970s the Phalange party of Pierre Gemayel with its ruthless militia, became the predominant Christian force. In the 1975-6 civil war the Christian militias fought the Lebanese National Movement, an alliance of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party led by Kamal Jumblatt, the Palestinians, the Nasserist militias, the Lebanese Communist Party and numerious other left and nationalist forces.

In this struggle, despite terrrible Christian massacres of Palestinians and Muslims, the National Movement got the upper hand. Without doubt, in 1976 the Christians were on the verge of an historic defeat. It was prevented by the intervention of the Syrian army, dressed up as the 'Arab peace keeping force'.

The Syrians above all wanted a government in Lebanon under its own patronage - the Nationalist Movement and the Palestinians represented a force too much outside its control. While in 1976 the Christians saw the Syrians as allies (Franjieh has remained their ally to this day), this alliance proved temporary and fragile.

The Phalangist objective remained the establishment of a state dominated by themselves. Their opportunity came with the Israeli invasion, which propelled Bashir Gemayel leader of the Phalangist militia, to the presidency.