"Enough of using Lebanon and the Middle East!", Pope cries outChristians, key to Lebanon's stabilityA famous Italian advertisement from a few years ago presented Switzerland as a country with a heart of chocolate. At the heart of this heart was another: a famous company that produces this delicious food. The Lebanonformerly known as the "Switzerland of the Middle East", is something like this: a small strip of land about 250 km long and no more than 60 km wide, full of high mountains, in the heart of the Arab-Islamic world and the eastern Mediterranean. However, within it there is another heart (the Mount Lebanon mountain range), famous for being the fulcrum and the center of irradiation of the Maronite Christian culture and spirituality, the pivot of the Lebanese identity itself.
Lebanon has always been known for the beauty of its landscapes, the hospitality of its inhabitants and the coexistence, although not always peaceful, between the different ethnic and religious components that make up its population.
Lebanon: a diverse nation
The term that perhaps best describes it is that of "plurality", which is the Latin expression e pluribus unum a representative motto. Its own geography, often harsh, is composed of contrasts between high mountains, valleys and coast. The two main mountain ranges running parallel from north to south, Mount Lebanon (the whiteness of its peaks gives the country its name, from the Semitic word "laban" meaning "white") and Anti-Lebanon (whose main peak is Mount Hermon, on the border with Syria and Israel), are separated by the Beqaa Valley, the northernmost branch of the Great Rift Valley. The coast, then, is lined with high mountains that literally plunge into the sea, from the Syrian border in the north to the southern border of Naqoura, with its white cliffs, where the country meets Israel.
And it is perhaps precisely the variety of this landscape that has favored, and in part preserved, the settlement of different populations, first the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, Arabs, Crusaders, Circassians, Turks, French, etc. And the mosaic of communities that make up the Lebanese people is also the result of various invasions, conquests, settlements, conversions.
Geography
In coastal cities such as Tripoli and Sidon (although with significant Christian minorities, both Catholic of various denominations and Orthodox) and in some districts of Beirut, the majority of the population is Sunni Muslim. In the governorate (muhazafah) of Mount Lebanon, in other mountainous areas, especially in the north, in towns such as Jounieh and Zahleh (in the western foothills of the Beqaa) and in several districts of Beirut, a large part of the population is Maronite Christian and Melkite Catholic, predominantly, but also Greek Orthodox or Armenian, both Orthodox and Catholic (the Armenian community has grown exponentially by welcoming the survivors of the infamous genocide carried out by the Turks).
However, Christians are spread throughout the country and, where they are not in the majority, they remain an important component of the population; the Maronite element, and their Syro-Antioch spirituality, have strongly permeated their mentality and culture. The Shiite component, now a majority throughout the country, is mainly concentrated in the south of the country (between Tyre and the surrounding region, but also in the southern districts of Beirut, especially around the airport) and in the Bekaa. Finally, the Druze (an ethno-religious group whose doctrine is a derivation of Shiite Islam) have their stronghold in the Shuf mountains, in the south of the governorate of Mount Lebanon (in the center of the country).
Muslim and Christian identity
Until the late 1930s, Lebanon was a predominantly Christian country. The last official census, dating from 1932, gave the figure of 56% of Christians (mostly Catholics, mostly of the Maronite rite) and 44% of Muslims (predominantly Shiites). Since then, in order not to upset the interfaith and political balances, the population has not been officially counted.
This balance, by the way, had been sanctioned on the eve of the country's independence from France in 1944 by the National Pact of 1943. In it, the different confessions agreed on how the main offices of the State should be distributed: the Presidency of the Republic to the Maronites; that of the Council of Ministers (therefore, the head of the government) to the Shiite Muslims; the Presidency of the Parliament to the Shiites.
Other positions continue to be distributed among the various groups and, in addition, through a complex electoral system that is still in place today, each Lebanese confessional community (the State recognizes up to 18: 5 Muslim, 12 Christian and one Jewish) was provided with adequate parliamentary representation.
Legislation
Belonging to one community and not to another is still established today not by religious practice per se, but by birth. The Lebanese system distinguishes, in fact, between faith and confessional affiliation: one is part of the Maronite community, for example, if one is the son of a Maronite father (there are many mixed marriages, especially among the Christian communities).
Thus, the different communities enjoy relative autonomy and their own jurisdiction in matters of personal status (family law), following the model of the millet, an Ottoman inheritance (Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918).
The National Pact itself had established that Lebanon was a country "with an Arab face": the Arab factor, therefore, is one of the elements of the Lebanese national identity, but not the only one. Many Christians, in fact, do not identify themselves as Arabs, but as "Arabic speakers" of Phoenician or Crusader descent.
Although the Constitution states that "Lebanon is Arab in its identity and belonging", the debate on the country's Arab identity is still dominant in society, just as more and more intellectuals and prominent members of society are calling for an end to confessionalism and the need for a shared national identity that is therefore not solely Arab.
Between confessionalism and civil wars
The problems of the confessional system became evident as early as the late 1940s. In fact, the high emigration rate characterizing the Christian population, coupled with the higher fertility rate of the Muslim population and the influx of Palestinian refugees (mostly Sunni Muslims) after 1948 and especially after 1967, considerably altered the numerical proportions within the population, estimated at about 7 million inhabitants today (unofficial surveys speak of 66% of Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis, and 34% of Christians).
The imbalances caused by the social, economic and political differences between the various communities, and the growing influence of Yasser Arafat's PLO, which turned Lebanon into its stronghold, led to several civil wars (1958; 1975-76, but, in fact, until 1989). These sharpened the contrasts between parties and organizations aspiring to represent the different ethno-religious components of the population (for example, the Christian right, with the Lebanese Phalange of Pierre Gemayyel, more inclined to alliances with the Western bloc and also with Israel, and the left, with the progressive Druze bloc and other Sunni and Shiite Islamic forces, but also Christian, with ideas compatible with Arab nationalism and anti-Zionism).
This led to the intervention of Syria (through the Deterrence Force, a pretext to turn the country into a protectorate), on the one hand (1975-76), and of Israel, on the other (1978, but especially since 1982, with the first Lebanon War).
Massacres
Since then, there have been massacres of thousands of innocent civilians, perpetuated both by Muslims against Christians (the most famous being the massacre of Damour, 1976, by the Palestinians, whose adversaries were not only Christians of the national right, but also Shiites) and by Christians against Muslims (how can we forget Qarantine, 1976, and Sabra and Shatila, 1982).
The Sabra and Shatila massacres were then rightly blamed on the Lebanese Christian Phalange, acting with Israeli complicity, but there is no doubt that the tactic of Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, was to sharpen the contrasts between the various Lebanese communities, even to the detriment of a growing number of "martyrs" among the Palestinian refugees, which would have given greater visibility to his cause.
The Israeli withdrawal in the mid-1980s (except for maintaining control in a narrow "security strip" in the south of the country) then led to the rise of Syrian political and military influence, although in 1989 the Taif Accords had officially ended the civil war, and the birth and rapid growth of the anti-Israeli Shiite militia in southern Lebanon, called Hezbollah (Party of God).
Hezbollah while becoming a political party actively present in the Lebanese context over the years, has maintained its military strength, also thanks to the support of Iran and Syria, becoming in fact more powerful than the regular Syrian army itself and dealing a heavy blow over the years not only to Israel, but also to the opponents of Bashar al-Assad's regime during the Syrian civil war.
Writer, historian and expert on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture.
