2009-11-23 00:00:00 : Lebanon > Opinion

"Independence, which is better: the little Lebanon, or unity..."

On November 21, the pro-minority daily Al-Akhbar carried the following opinion piece by Jean Aziz: "In the memory of childhood, distant and contradictory pictures of Independence Day. Pictures filled with naïve childishness and silly patriotism. [Pictures] of the military parade, [pictures] of the long television day…, and [pictures] of the vacation day… The memory of the Lebanese current and ex-generations does not hold anything deeper than these superficial manifestations. There is even a confusion regarding several phases of the independence "impressions:" Does the [independence] anniversary go back to 1920? Or to 1943? Or rather to the French withdrawal three years later? And how can we have an independence without a withdrawal…? "Chance has it that the 2005 disarray or the "second independence" is added to this mental chaos of independence… Behind this chaos, the constant thing in the minds of the Lebanese groups was that there are two opposed directions that contradict with the official understanding of that independence in the Forties. The first direction is an "Isolationist," diminutive one lived by the Christians. The second direction is a fusionist, expansionist, nationalistic one adopted by Muslims. Indeed, the central logic for the majority of Christians…was closer to the formula of the little Lebanon. This is proved by that unconscious and spontaneous praising that exists in the Christian memory of that official in the French mandate authority – Robert Duquet - who was said to have predicted to Patriarch Houwayek: you were big in Little Lebanon, you will become little in Big Lebanon… On the other hand, the central logic for Muslims was a contradictory one: the rejection of the Lebanese entity and its diffusion in a geographic, international framework, the size of nationalism…[ellipses as published] "After decades of multi-reasoned struggles, it appeared at a certain moment in 2005 that the two contradictory directions fell down and have been buried. It appeared that a new Lebanese generation was born out of the suffering of the past two directions and has killed them both. It appeared that a certain "Lebanism" [patriotism] is now able to unite the Lebanese… Four years after that moment, the vertical contradictions inside that "Lebanism" appear to be able to shake it violently to the extent of collapse. Indeed, somewhere inside the minds of the new Lebanese group, there is a fear of a "political Sunnism" able to monopolize power in Lebanon… And somewhere else, there is a fear of an armed, military "political Shiism" able to impose a special image of Lebanon… And between the two, there is a fear of the collapse of "the buffer group" laying between the two sides of the religious struggle that is flared up in the region. This fear plays the role of a trigger to the self-prophecy under the form of: Being afraid of ceasing to exist, we run away, so we cease to exist…" - Al-Akhbar Lebanon, Lebanon

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