Catholic Lebanon: A 1300-year Crusade

Fr. Patrice LaRoche

After the fall of the last Latin kingdom in the Levant, (Acre, 1291) the close relationship between the Maronites and France was interrupted until Francis I and the Turkish sultan Soliman signed the "Capitulations" in 1535. Albeit questionable from some points of view, this treaty did establish France as the official protector of Eastern Christians and of Christian missionaries of whatever nationality going into Asia minor. It also granted the French a trading monopoly in the Levant.

Until the First World War, when Turkey repudiated the "Capitulations" and ended the French protectorate of Lebanese Christians, the Kings of France, and even the various governments which followed the 1789 Revolution, were in general faithful to their obligation to support these Christians, assisting them both morally and materially. Whenever the French kings did fail in their responsibilities in this regard, the representatives of the Holy See were not slow to remind them of the undertakings made by their predecessors and to request their immediate intervention to put an end to whatever form of persecution their Lebanese coreligionists were suffering.

In 1860 France had to take military action to stop the Druze massacre of Christians which was going on in the area just east of Beirut. This had been instigated by the Turks with the connivance of the British, who continued until the end of World War II to do all in their power to supplant the French in the near east. Only the arrival of an expeditionary force sent by Napoleon III prevented out-and-out genocide. In less than two months 22,000 Christians had died, 75,000 had fled, and 3,000 women and girls had been sold into harems. The Blessed Sister Rafqa, (beatified 11/17/85) was at Deir-el-Qamar in the Chouf region at the time and herself witnessed these atrocities. A century ago such events still stirred the West to action. But not so now! "Christian" Europe watched the massacres at Damour in 1975 and in the Chouf in September, 1983, and again at Sidon in April, 1985 without batting an eyelid, let alone raising a finger to help. Yet apart from the thousands of dead, some 320,000 Lebanese Christians were forced to abandon their homes to flee the war that is currently tearing their country apart.

How did the Lebanese get into this situation? What is really going on? During World War I, by being friends of France, the Lebanese Christians laid yet another claim to the hostility of the Turks who had allied themselves to Germany. Mount Lebanon was blockaded, and a third of the population was wiped out before the end of the war. But when the awful conflict ended in 1918, the defeat of Germany also marked the fall of the Ottoman empire. Lebanon was declared an independent state on September 1st, 1920 under a French mandate. At the time, Lebanese Christians believed that their historically legitimate aspirations were about to be realised. But alas, the League of Nations, together with the liberal French government, opted for the constitution of a single state, taking no account of the fact that in Lebanon, Christians form one nation and Muslims another. No one seems to have given sufficient consideration to the fact that collaboration between Christians and Muslims was only possible on a basis of mutual respect. Now such a sentiment is alien to a Muslim unless he is already assured of the superiority, or at least of the sufficient strength, of the other party. However good Muslim/Christian relations may be—and for long periods in Lebanon they were good—as soon as the Christians are no longer in a position of strength and able effectively to defend their rights, then some ayatollah or other will always come along, Qur'an in hand, to preach the "jehad", the "holy war," and thus to wipe out former friendships. In the mind of Islam these are of no account. This attitude is well expressed in the Arab proverb: "Kiss the hand you cannot bite and hope that it will break itself."

The very foundations of the modern state of Lebanon leave much to be desired. One of its main bases, for instance, is the national pact of 1943, which asserts the Arabic character of the whole country. Lebanese Christians are certainly Semites, but they are Arameans, not Arabs. Then again, no account is taken of the specific rights and legitimate historical aspirations of the Christian population, such as the right to be governed by Christian laws and leaders. It is therefore not surprising that the state's equilibrium was already a precarious and artificial one when it was dealt a decisive blow by the introduction into Lebanon, in the name of its supposed 'Arabness', of a largely Muslim Palestinian population.

The arrival of the Palestinians signalled the disintegration of Lebanon. The religious leader of the Sunnite Muslims, the Mufti Hassan Khaled, hailed the newcomers as "soldiers of Islam", and he cunningly made use of them to destabilise the country and to attack Christians and Christian organisations, which constituted the sole obstacles to the integral Arabization of Lebanon and its definitive Islamization.

Even though the notion is not entirely false, it is a serious error to see Lebanon primarily as a battle around where the "super-powers", as represented by Israel and Syria, continue their on-going struggle. Nor is the war which has been raging within this small country for well over a decade an ordinary civil war, a struggle for power and a conflict of interests. While the West looks on in total incomprehension or indifference, or even with its silent complicity, two utterly irreconcilable cultures are confronting one another in this martyred land. On the one side is Christian civilisation based on the gospel, on faith in the triune God, and in Redemption wrought by the Incarnate Son: and on the other is ranged the anti-civilisation of Islam, founded on the Qur'an, the jehad, fanaticism, and hatred.

The instigators of this no-holds-barred fight are quite clear as to what is at stake. It is quite simply the juridical and cultural assimilation of Lebanese Christians by Islam, or in other words the more or less rapid disappearance of Christianity from the East, to be brought about either by the mass apostasy or exile of Christians, or, if both these alternatives are refused, by systematic genocide. That this is indeed the case has become abundantly clear during the years of conflict, as all the Arab/Muslim groups—Sunnite, Shiite, Druze, and the rest—have banded together against the Christians. Since the latter refuse to submit, the aim is now to eliminate them progressively by means of massacres, deportation, bombardment, and terrorism.

What then is to be done? Has President Amin Gemayel been right in attempting to defend the existing constitution, even though it is scarcely favourable to Christians? True, the president of the republic may have to be a Maronite Christian, but the present prime minister is a Sunnite Muslim, and the president of the council is a Shiite. That kind of compromise is of little help. Indeed it is even largely responsible for the present ills of Lebanon, and it was on this account that on March 12th, 1985, the army commander Samir Geagea launched his "Intifada" (renewal) movement, with the aim of boosting Christian strength and energy by distancing himself from a president who was defending the 1943 constitution but not the Christian people, whom he was gradually delivering into the hands of the Syrians. Samir Geagea is Syria's "bête noire," and in retaliation for his creation of an opposition movement to Gemayel's pro-Syrian policy the Syrians threatened to invade southern Lebanon unless the Lebanese forces withdrew from the area. Both government and army assured the Christian population that it would have nothing to fear from such a move, but any illusory comfort afforded by this guarantee was short-lived. As soon as the Christian forces pulled back, the hordes of Islam, supported by the army's Muslim battalions, either massacred or put to flight over 100,000 Christian civilians. Leaving behind all their worldly possessions, they were forced to seek refuge in Jezzine or in the "safety zone" under Israeli control, or else to try to reach the northern "Christian stronghold" by sea, either from Haifa or from the pier which had been hastily constructed at the southern Lebanese town of Naqqoura. In some quarters Samir Geagea was held responsible for this disaster, and in the interest of unity he handed over command of the army to Elie Hobeika, previously head of the Intelligence Service. However, Samir, as he was familiarly known to the troops, remained as head of the General Staff.
From the outset Hobeika's policy caused many raised eyebrows, for he promptly reopened negotiations with Syria with a view to reaching an agreement with the Muslim militia. This may have been in order to gain time, and to give a breathing space to a population already sorely tried by war. Even so, Hobeika was wrong to act off his own bat in this way. He seems to have regarded Christians simply as one group within Lebanese society at large and therefore to have allowed his policy to be dictated by a blind pragmatism devoid of any moral principles. By signing a tripartite agreement at Damascus with the Druze and Shiite militias, he betrayed the very cause he was supposed to defend. What is more, he did not hesitate to resort to threats and corruption in an attempt to coerce the Christian camp into supporting his policy, and finally in early January, 1986, he turned to violence against the Phalangist leaders in a bid to force the president to endorse the Damascus agreement. This was going too far.