Speech
of Rector Selim Abou s.j
regarding Syria's Occupation of Lebanon on
the occasion of the patronal celebration of
St Joseph's University
Ladies
and Gentlemen of the faculty
Ladies and Gentlemen of the administrative personnel
Ladies and Gentlemen representatives of the student body
Dear Friends
In his introduction to a book on multi-communitarian societies by philosopher Charles Taylor, Amy Gutmann defines one of the primary civic tasks of any university as follows: “Members of academic communities, faculty, students and administrators, can use our rights to free speech to denounce disrespectable speech by exposing it for what it is, flagrant disregard for the interests of other people, rationalization of self-interest or group interest, prejudice, or sheer hatred of humanity.”[1]
Among the discourse that our academic
community is asked to denounce, I dwell today on that which seeks to justify Syrian
control over Lebanon, which the vast majority of the population cannot bear any longer. It
may be that the Syrian army finally withdraws to the Bekaa Valley, - albeit, one should
note, eight years behind schedule. But it is not so much the physical presence of this
army which wounds the dignity of the Lebanese, as the symbol of domination which it
represents, and the effective domination which its intelligence apparatus exercises over
all sectors of public life. This Syrian control is not about to be relaxed, and there will
be no dearth of Lebanese sycophants to laud its alleged benefits in a discourse which
reflects a true culture of servility and which, therefore, belongs to the category of
disrespectable speech.
To denounce this discourse is not to
simply summarize its content in order to rebut it, but as Amy Gutmann says, “to
expose it for what it is,” i.e. to reveal the form and degree of harm that it
carries. Whether it belongs to the langue-de-bois,
to double speak or logomachy; whether it is uttered by political officers, religious
personalities or party leaders; whether it is motivated by pragmatism, opportunism or
fear, this discourse is of a nature which in part undermines social relations,
destabilizes the nation and discredits the state, and for the other part accelerates the
migratory hemorrhage which is emptying Lebanon of its young elite, who have become
convinced that the country does not belong to them any longer.
It is the sudden emergence of a
liberated political discourse calling for the redefinition of relations between Lebanon
and Syria, for the real independence of Lebanon, and for national dialogue, which has
unleashed irrational, contradictory or passionate speech which seeks to justify, sometimes
even to celebrate, the effective political and economic subservience of the country. It is
therefore necessary to dwell on the circumstances which have made possible the
emancipation of Lebanese political language, before we proceed to a brief typology of
disrespectable speech that pretends to enslave it again, and thereafter to appreciate the
highly damaging effect such speech exercises on society, nation and state.
Liberation of political language
Ten years were necessary before the
tongues unwound and freed themselves from coded language, that is from periphrases,
metaphors, metonymies and other figures of speech under which was expressed the increasing
unease caused by the presence of the Syrian army on the whole of Lebanese territory and
the intervention of its intelligence apparatus in all the fields of social, political and
economic life. Two events have operated as a prelude to the change of linguistic behaviour
in the course of the summer of 2000: the withdrawal of the Israeli army from South Lebanon
has come as a heavy argument against the presence of the Syrian army over the whole
territory, a presence which could no longer be justified, if ever it could be, and the
access to power in Damascus of a young president, raising hopes for the liberalization of
the Syrian regime, and consequently, for a substantial modification of its policy in
Lebanon. But neither the dominant nor the Satellite State wished to understand it in this
way. Their combined intelligence apparatus was finishing preparing – with
manipulations, pressure and threats – an election which was vitiated from the
beginning by absurd electoral gerrymandering, in order to allow the formation of a
monochromatic Parliament which is totally subservient to Syria, and to shut down any
opposition. In the course of that strategy, however, they forgot that an excess of
repression leads, sooner or later, to the reaction of freedom seekers. Thus the opposition
landslide, in Beirut and in the Mountain. And as tongues unwound, they did so for better
and for worse.
Christian discourse against Syrian
domination is not new – as in the case of the Taef Agreement, it is ten years old.
But it was made explicit, structured, and was amplified to give birth, on 20 September
2000, to the Declaration of the Assembly of Maronite bishops. Until that date, Christian
discourse resounded like a voice in the wilderness, and it was not difficult for Syria to
neutralize it. It was enough in order to do so to marginalise the turbulent Christian
community, which Syria had already decapitated by preventing it from any authentic
representation in power. It was then, thanks to the electoral campaign and its unexpected
results, that the discourse against Syrian domination crossed the boundaries of the
Christian community, and that a wind of panic blew beyond Lebanon's frontiers. The taboo
was broken. The Druze leader Walid Jumblatt took on board most of the Christian requests
and called for national unity. As Issa Ghorayeb commented in his editorial on 15
September, “Walid Jumblatt appears today as an ice-breaker, a bulldozer, a
minesweeper, behind whom one already sees other free thinkers rallying more or less
resolutely.”[2] For Syria
and its supporters, that was not acceptable, because Walid Jumblatt is a considerable
political leader, because he is Druze, and because during the war he had fought the very
Christians with whom he was now allying himself. There followed the unleashing against him
of a discourse of hatred and death threats, which is the extreme form of disrespectable
speech, its most despicable form indeed.
The ideological discourse and
logomachy
In present day Lebanon, one can
distinguish three types of disrespectable speech. The first is the ideological discourse of so-called
“national” parties, for whom the nation of reference is not the Lebanese nation.
Rather, reference is either to a mythical “Syrian nation” or “the large
Syria”, which is supposed to absorb Lebanon, and, in due course, Jordan and
Palestine, or to a utopian “Arab nation” which is even larger, and which has no
other point of reference than the nostalgia, slightly secularized, of the Caliphate. These
parties, which were marginalized in the past by the mere operation of the democratic game,
occupy at present key positions in the Administration and are, occasionally, the preferred
bearers of Syrian messages to the frustrated Lebanese. It is one of these parties which
takes pride in having organized, in September 1982, the assassination of president-elect
Bashir Gemayel; it is the member of another party, of similar lineage, who, on November 6,
2000, in the fullness of a parliamentary session, responded to the reasoned and serene
speech of the Druze leader with a litany of curses and his death threat.
It happens that I had denounced, in my
previous speeches, unionist, totalitarian and ethnicising ideologies which were anchored
in language, or in religion, or in some alleged “natural” geography, - and
promoted by Arab nationalists, irrespective of the party they belong to. Walid Jumblatt is
more explicit and more incisive: “In my mind, these parties which have ideologies
based on what is called the Syrian nation or the Arab nation, these parties with old,
frozen ideologies with a racial character, are obsolete… In my mind, there is no
Syrian nation or Arab nation. There is a vast Arab culture, Christian and Muslim, which
goes back several centuries.”[3]
Pan-Syrian or pan-Arab speech belongs
formally to pure phraseology, when it does not fall into logomachy. This is the case, for instance, when the
holders of this type of discourse insist that sending the army to the Southern border is
rendering a service to Israel, and stay mute when they are told that the Syrian army
stationed in the Golan would in this logic be serving the interests of the enemy. This is
also the case when they declare that the Syrian army is present in Lebanon to defend this
country against Israeli aggression and stay coy when asked of one single instance in which
Syria protected Lebanon from Israeli bombardments. This is equally the case when they make
accusations of collusion with the enemy or with a foreign power supportive of Israel
against any person or group which rejects Syrian hegemony and asks for the real
independence of Lebanon, or when they affirm that these demands fan the flame of
confessional and sectarian drives, and so on. What is deplorable is that these assertions
are often reinforced by similar official declarations, when they aren’t are simple
repetitions thereof.
But the specific vocation of the
ideological discourse is to boast of the immense services rendered to the Lebanese by
Syria and its army. Did Syria not fly to the rescue of the Christians, in 1976, at a
moment when they were running the risk of being destroyed by their Muslim adversaries ?
Did it not put an end to the fratricidal war and reestablish civil peace in the country ?
Did it not spill the blood of its soldiers to allow Lebanon to live again ? This litany of
counter-truths, which was taken on by the arrogant Syrian minister of the information on
the occasion of a visit to Lebanon, found its sharp refutation under the pen of Ghassan
Tueini.[4] After reminding the minister that it
was not the Lebanese Muslims but the Palestinians, who had been armed by Syria, who in
1976, threatened Christians with annihilation, he denounced, with several illustrations,
the cynic and cruel character of Syria's intervention throughout the war of Lebanon, and
ended by suggesting to the passing Minister that he close that file which does not honour
his country.
Constrained discourse and double
speak
The second type of disrespectable speech
is characterized by double speak, the one which
is expressed in private, and the one which is uttered in public. In private, one complains
of living in a satellite country, occupied and exploited; in public one expresses one's
glee in experiencing an osmosis between two countries which share the same destiny. Last
July, Thomas L. Friedman could still write in the New
York Times: “The number of Lebanese politicians, statesmen or writers today who
will dare to articulate a distinctly Lebanese national interest, position or vision of the
future – independent of Syrian interests – is lower than ever.”[5] But the speech held in public is of two types: it is
a constrained discourse, motivated by fear or
apprehension, or an accommodating discourse,
which is dictated by opportunism. Among the latter variations, on finds the most subtle
and the grossest, and no social group is spared. Among the former, it would be wrong to
think that it is always held under the sway of a foreign, more or less explicit, threat;
rather, and more probably, it comes as the effect of an internalization of the repression:
“Sixteen years ago, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon was on the streets - Syrian
checkpoints, soldiers and tanks. That has largely disappeared. But that's because the
Syrian occupation has moved from the streets into the heads of the Lebanese. As the world
has looked away, Lebanon has increasingly become a Syrian province.”[6]
It is hard to know to what extent the
pleadings of Muslim religious authorities in favor of the Syrian presence in Lebanon
corresponds to their deeper convictions; one only knows that Syria and its agents exercise
a particularly severe pressure on the representatives of the community in general. What is
certain however, is that double speak splits here into two opposed discourses which are
foreign to each another, public discourse held by the hierarchy, which is favorable to
Syrian presence, and the private discourse of the majority of the people, which is opposed
to it. What happened is that the latter has ceased to be clandestine and has expressed
itself openly. For instance the response of the Sunni and Shi‘i muftis to the Bkerké
Declaration has provoked two strong responses, under the form of two articles which are
equally significant, though unequal in length. In a column entitled “between the
Patriarch, the Mufti and Syria”, a Sunni from Tripoli, who is a doctor in orientation
psychology, addressed the religious head of the community in the following terms:
“The position of Patriarch Sfeir is wise and expresses the opinion of all Lebanese,
with the exception of the sycophants, the profiteers, the liars and the weak-minded. As
for you, Mr. Mufti, you have spoken in your personal name, and not in the name of the
Muslims or the Lebanese. Let your heart speak, even if your fatwas have been dictated by
the brothers. I invite you to get down from your
car in the souks and neighborhoods of Tripoli, Saida, Beirut and Baalbeck, so that you see
with your own eyes and hear with your own ears the complaint that your brothers in faith,
in religion, in community and in nation raise against the military and economic presence
of the Syrians. In this day of September 2000, I have spoken the truth, and for that very
act, I fear no one’s accusation.”[7]
In a long article under the title
“About which dialogue and about which national reconciliation is one talking?”,
Saoud al-Maoula, member of the National Committee for Islamic-Christian dialogue, puts his
ideas at a more general, more comprehensive, level. “It has been ten years,” he
wrote, “that the Church and the Christian street complain and protest, and that we
tell them that we understand their complaint and agree with them in recognizing that what
is needed is the correction of deviations and the restoration of balance, but that it must
be done in the shadow of the State and in the framework of the institutions… Ten
years have passed and here we are, recognizing and saying in public that the State is not
a State, that the institutions do not exist, and that justice is not justice, but some
dictated order… What happened recently, I mean this mobilization of Muslims and
so-called “secular nationalists” against Patriarch Sfeir and the call of the
Bishops, does not augur well and constitutes a blow to dialogue, to civil peace and to
national reconciliation; first because what the Bkerké Declaration said is what everyone,
without exception, says, except if the group of profiteers and thieves is taken into
account; and second because the declaration is expressed in moderate language and calls
for solidarity and balance both inside the country and at the level of our relations with
Syria.”[8]
Pragmatic discourse and langue-de-bois
The third type of disrespectable speech
is characterized by what is known as langue-de-bois.
One should perhaps be grateful to the Prime Minister, Mr Rafic Hariri, for honoring his
promise to defend freedom of expression under all its aspects and to have blocked, at
least temporarily, this slow death sentence to democracy which was described, on 14 June
2000, by the director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, before the Subcommittee of
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “The implications of occupation for
Lebanon have been dire. What had been the most open of the Arabic-speaking countries,
boasting decentralized power, real democracy, rule of law, unimpeded movement and a Hong
Kong-style free market, along with independent schools and an unfettered press, has turned
into something like a minor version of the totalitarian state of Syria.”[9] The Prime Minister intends to put an end to this
creeping dictatorship which is run by both the Lebanese and Syrian intelligence services,
and, by doing so, to rehabilitate the image of Lebanon in the eyes of potential Western
investors who are sensitive to the respect of human rights. One hopes he will also be able
to undo the schemes of the intelligence services which may appear discreet, but are no
less devious for that. In any case, even if freedom of expression is finally recognized by
the government as a fundamental right, the citizens’ free speech faces, at all levels
of the power structure, an ultimate rejection. One is warned that one has no chance to
start a debate on the Syrian presence in Lebanon. The message is clear: you can say
whatever you wish but you should know that you will change nothing; the Syrian presence is
“legal, necessary and temporary.” This is a sacred leitmotiv of official
discourse, it cannot be violated or changed: it is the discourse of langue-de-bois.
This third type of discourse wants to be
pragmatic. The argument is the following: let us
leave aside the thorny political problem of Syro-Lebanese relations. The Syrian army and
its intelligence services will eventually leave Lebanon under the pressure of the Great
Powers, it was not us who got them in, and it will not be us who will make them leave.
Meanwhile, let us tackle the unprecedented economic crisis which the population is mired
in. This is the more serious challenge. Such a discourse occludes two realities which
undermine its content. First, that no power will come to our rescue if the people and the
government which is supposed to represent them do not express, with all the means that
they have at their command, their rejection of Syrian control over the country. These
powers are tired from hearing the accusation of interference in the internal affairs of
the country, every time they recall UN Resolution 520, which stipulates the withdrawal of
all foreign powers from Lebanon, and every time they repeat their support for the
independence and sovereignty of this country. The Lebanese government could no doubt
improve the people's lives, but it cannot make Lebanon again the regional economic pole
which it once was. Economic prosperity is narrowly linked to political decision. Therefore
the political domination of Lebanon is not of a nature that encourages investors, whether
they are Lebanese or foreign.
For the defenders of the pragmatic
discourse, the leitmotiv: -“the Syrian presence is legal, necessary and
temporary”- seeks to relieve Syria on
the political front in order to obtain a free hand in the economy. It is not the same
however for those who, at various levels of the political and social pyramid, owe their
place, influence and privileges to Syria, and who would be reduced to nothing without its
presence. The perennial character of Syrian control over Lebanon is for them absolutely
vital, and they get into a panic when are disarmed the three terms of their slogan on
Syrian presence as “legal, necessary and temporary.” They also get into a panic
when they are reminded the affirmation of Syrian vice-president Khaddam: “Our forces
have entered Lebanon without soliciting anybody's authorization, and will leave in the
same way”, and the official request, which was left without response, and which was
expressed by two Lebanese presidents who, in 1982 and 1983, demanded from Syria that it
withdraw its forces.[10] They
get into a panic when they are asked what strategic necessity is served by the presence of
the Syrian army and the Syrian intelligence on the outskirts of the presidential palace,
of the Ministry of Defence, and on the whole of Lebanese territory. And they get into a
panic when they are reminded that the decision taken in Taef was to redeploy Syrian troops
to the Bekaa as a prelude to their total and definitive withdrawal from Lebanon, and that
this has been constantly postponed for the past eight years, without any valid reason to
justify this delay. Their obstinacy is however not worrying, for as soon as Lebanon
recovers its sovereignty, they will switch sides or leave the country.
Disdain for society
It is evident that the orchestrated
practice of these three types of discourse in which are mixed, in variable proportions,
logomachy, double speak and langue-de-bois tends
to pervert the language itself and the social relations mediated by language. Confronted
by a rational usage of language, concerned with understanding reality and speaking the
truth, the irrational use that is made of language by disrespectable speech seeks to adapt
reality to words and betray their meaning. To some extent, it does not care about reality,
or even about meaning. Words get associated in a mechanical way with each another because,
as a linguist says, “one can talk by thinking words, without thought being real; this
is the law of all reflexes; the automatic act gets substituted for the conscious
act,” and language becomes “a pillow of intellectual laziness.”[11] In these conditions, discussion over disagreements
and differences, which is so essential to the democratic ideal, finds itself annulled, as
is annulled the critical discernment which establishes the faculty of judgment. Social
coherence is broken, and solidarity gives way to distrust. The national dialogue which is
called for by rational discourse cannot be established. This is perhaps the hidden
objective: to prevent dialogue, because it would necessarily disrupt the advantages
brought about by the status quo.
“There is a large difference”,
writes Saoud al-Maoula on this point, “between those who want, for Syria and the
Arabs, honour, dignity, freedom and democracy, and those who, for partisan or selfish
reasons, want Syria to be an instrument of domination and oppression, of repression of
freedoms, of the violations of people’s dignity. There is a large difference between
those who take upon themselves the preoccupations of the nation and the claims of people
in terms of reform and change, those who care for the unity of people, for their interests
and dignity, in Lebanon and in Syria,… and those on the other hand who brandish the
slogan “unity of course, unity of destiny” so as to give way to the politics of
division and destruction, to the point of accusing others of treason and apostasy. The
difference is large between those who try to give actuality to the formula “One
people in two States” and those who force onto people the reality of “One state
with two peoples”, and who are the reason for the drying up of the relations between
two brotherly peoples and for the development of Lebanese racism towards all our Arab
brothers… Responsibility for this waste is not because of the signatures onto the
Bkerké Declaration, or the statements of Walid Jumblatt, or Omar Karamé, or Nasib
Lahoud, or Boutros Harb, or the silence of Hussein Husseini, and even less so the wisdom
and moderation of Muhammad Mahdi Shamseddine. Those who are responsible are the tenants of
stupid policies, of unwholesome authoritarianism, of repression and terror, and disdain
for all the lasting values and all the principles upon which Lebanon is founded.”[12]
Disdain for civil society turns into
perversion when, in order to argue that without the presence of Syrian forces Lebanon
would be again the theatre of communal fight, the Authorities do not hesitate to provoke
periodically, in a number of circles, controlled trouble or high-pitched speeches which
are supposed to trigger among the population the fear of a return to internal war. In
reality, few people are fooled by a tactic which is part of the classical arsenal of
divide and rule. What is new since last summer, that is since the liberation of political
language and the de facto consensus which is
growing among the Lebanese on fundamental questions, is that the intelligence services
show evident signs of nervousness: they do not even care to salvage the appearance and use
the grossest stratagems. “Who has taken”, Samir Frangié asks, “the
initiative in Akkar to push the ulamas to insult Patriarch Sfeir and to call for the
presidents of all the municipalities of the region to publish a statement calling for the
Syrian forces in Lebanon to remain ? Can one think for a second that these are
‘spontaneous’ initiatives ? And the demonstration in Tripoli during which
slogans which insulted the Maronite Patriarch were expressed in the presence of ministers
and deputies, is it also ‘spontaneous’ ?… One must face the fact that the
Authorities are today at war with society. Since the issue of Syrian presence in Lebanon
was raised, they multiply threats and intimidation attempts, refusing any dialogue with
the citizens.”[13]
Hatred for the nation
Disrespectable speech does not limit
itself to establishing hurdles to national dialogue, it concerns the historical
foundations of the nation by expressing its frenzy against the almost total concordance
between the declarations of the Druze leader and those of the Maronite Patriarch, who
represent each of the founding communities of Lebanon. To understand the magnitude of this
hostility, it is worth pausing for a moment at what I would call “the Jumblatt
phenomenon”. In the first phase, his detractors asked why he turned against Syria, to
whom he was closely allied. Jumblatt explained it clearly on September 12: “Some
Lebanese intelligence services which, like many Lebanese, claim an alliance with Syria,
have been a burden to the population, and they have tried to sow discord and to undermine
public liberties. This cannot continue. It is not normal that they intervene everywhere,
in universities, in trade unions, in public life, in the press, in the name of common
security.”[14] On
October 24, he protested further: “It is astonishing that after 25 years, Syria has
not yet understood that it must stop interfering in the internal Lebanese political game,
and that it must cease to cast a systematic veto against any person who would be minimally
representative of the Christian community.”[15] The fullness of his thought is summarized in one of
those hitting sentences the secret of which he knows well: “Before China took over
Hong Kong, it threw a slogan: one country, two policies. In our case it is: two countries
with one policy. We need two countries and two policies. With minimal coordination.”[16]
Jumblatt’s opponents ask why and
how he offers an arm to the Christians, with whom there is a troubled past: “Does he
want us to believe this big lie about his national role; is this national role illustrated
by his massacre of Christians in the Mountain, for which he wants now to be absolved by
offering higher bids, to the detriment of Syria ?”[17] It is in these terms that this deputy from the
Syrian Baath spoke in the midst of Parliament, ending it with death threats. More
dignified, but no less hostile was a journalist who considered it “necessary to
distinguish between Walid Jumblatt and those who support his positions towards
Syria,”[18], but who have reason to be his
historical or ideological foes and will not fail to turn their back on him. One finds, in
other articles, similar declarations whose authors are apparently disconcerted by the
reconciliation of the Druze leader with yesterday’s enemies. A truly uncouth
argument, because no one has ever heard of the need for reconciliation among friends !
Those students of the High School of Engineers who wrote next to the announcement of Walid
Jumblatt’s lecture at Saint Joseph’s University - “An enemy we respect and
love” -, understood this well. Should one forget that it is often external or
domestic wars that forge nations? Should one forget, appropriately, that conflicts and
reconciliation which mark the history of the Mountain, have contributed to sculpting a
real national conscience, which has thereafter extended to the people of the littoral and
the periphery ?
The bad faith of those who want to see
in the recent Druze-Christian rapprochement some nostalgia of the times of the
Mutasarrifiyya is further illustration of the logomachic discourse. However distasteful to
his enemies, Walid Jumblatt has acquired the stature of a national leader. He locates in
the founding history of his community the legitimacy of the role as unifier which he
seeks. This was underlined well by Ghassan Tueini as soon as the legislative elections
were over: “ Only Walid Jumblatt knows how to position himself in the logic of
Lebanese legacy and give his electoral campaign its historical dimension. He has presented
his victory to all men who are fond of liberty and democracy, or rather the victory of the
mountain in the two Choufs.”[19]
Jumblatt himself is conscious of his legitimacy as a national leader: “We are,
ultimately, the heirs of a great Emir of this Mountain, the Emir of coexistence and
independence, Emir Fakhreddin.”[20] And
the Maronite Patriarch recognized in him “a great national leader representing a
community which constitutes one of the pillars of the Lebanese entity.”[21] When a pluri-confessional nation like ours is
threatened in its very existence, it is natural that salvation should come from a reaction
of the founding communities. This is the conclusion which Issa Ghorayeb drew in a text
with a significant title: -“Massive Minority”-, by underlining the fall of all
the taboos and the liberation of Lebanese political language: “In this evolution of
the minds, the country owes it mostly to two men: Patriarch
Sfeir, whose admirable combativeness will have vanquished the onslaught of some as well as
the cold reservations of others. And Walid Jumblatt, who with unparalleled courage, has
offered the shining proof that Lebanon which has at last become Lebanese is not the mad
dream of the Christians alone.”[22]
Humiliation of the State
To the humiliated society and the
loathed nation is superposed a humiliated State, whose haughty speech is nothing else, to
the population, than a sad process of verbal compensation, as it stands in perfect
contradiction with reality. To say, for instance, that the relations between Lebanon and
Syria are “brotherly and permanent”, is to ignore that for the past twenty-five
years, they are, in the strict sense of the term, relations of domination of which Lebanon
- society, nation and State -, has not finished paying the price. To say that any
questioning of these relations is dangerous, because it could break national unity, is to
expect national unity where there is none, since part of the population has been
marginalized by Syria for the past ten years, while the remainder of the people has been
forced to collaborate, and while any movement aiming at national understanding is being
systematically blocked. To say that the problem of Syro-Lebanese relations must be treated
only from State to State, is to presuppose that the two States are equal partners, while
one is under severe tutelage, unable to represent public opinion and the aspirations of
its people. As for the term ‘democracy’, which is repeated under various
modulations, it has been emptied of all significance. “In the past,” Alia Riad
al-Solh writes, “we used to export free thought to all oppressed people in the Arab
world. Today we import a single thought, so that it oppresses us.”[23]
Single thought is the daughter of the
principle, “unity of the road, unity of destiny,” which the dominant state has
succeeded in imposing upon its vassal, but which remains for the majority of the
population an empty slogan, destined to globally justify the execution by Lebanon, to its
detriment, of Syrian diktats. When the slogan tries to be elaborated, the discourse which
results becomes the more peremptory because of its incoherence. As Alia al-Solh explained,
“logic is in Lebanon no longer the normative logic we know. It has exploded into a
multitude of logics which get done and undone depending on the circumstances of
oppression.”[24] Thus,
for instance, a stunned population wonders what could be meant by “a state at war
cannot deploy its army on its borders.” It wonders what national interest there is
for Lebanon to defy the United Nations and the European Union, which recommend with
insistence, but to no avail, that the army be sent to the South. It wonders finally why
the control of Syria over Lebanon must remain until the liberation of the Golan. Alia
al-Solh recalls in this respect how, at the end of the French mandate, when Lebanon gained
its independence before Syria, Lebanon was not asked to renounce its independence until
independence was gained to Syria: “Then relations between the two countries were in
conformity with the rule, and marked by mutual respect and the rules of courtesy.”[25]
More royalist than the king, the
Lebanese Authorities want us to understand that if the Syrian army withdraws, its
intelligence services will remain and that the Syrian presence will continue at least
until the conclusion of a comprehensive and total peace. This means that the restoration
of independence to Lebanon is adjourned sine die.
This, in turn, puts at risk the Pact which presided in 1943 over the establishment of an
independent State. The minimal principle underlying the Pact, one remembers, was the
famous double negation “Neither East nor West”, i.e. the renunciation by
Christians of the protection of France against the renunciation by the Muslims of union
with Syria. But this principle is openly flouted, and Lebanon has become virtually a
Syrian province against the will of all its citizens.
Modern Lebanon has known 32 years of
independence between two mandates, and the two mandates are very different from each
another. A political veteran likes to underline this difference: “France had at least
the decency to choose the better group amongst those available for the management of
public affairs. The most competent and most honest people were called to task, both at the
political and administrative levels, and the Administration was effective. Today the most
bizarre appointments are made. Distribution of posts is made according to quotas and
influence. One has often seen fraud in the qualification of seekers of some positions. And
when this is not sufficient, intimidation is resorted to.” Then he underlines the
decline of democracy after Taef: “Before Taef, domestic political life was active and
passably acceptable at the level of democratic freedoms… Today, following the
notorious marching orders,… it is deliquescing. The only freedom left to the local
political actors is to destroy each other in order to get more advantages.”[26] All happens as if the Syrian mandate, imposed upon
Lebanon in the wake of Taef, has as its objective to teach the Lebanese how to unlearn
democracy and to forget even the taste of independence.
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
On 21 November 2000, on the eve of
independence day, the USJ students, joined by students from other universities and
students from high school, demonstrated in large numbers from the Medical Science Campus
to the National Museum, to demand the real independence of their country. Amongst the
banners brandished by the demonstrators, three carried inscriptions the meaning and scope
of which it seems to me useful to develop in conclusion.
The first banner said: “Yes, thank
you, but it’s enough.” After the word of courtesy – thanks for the services
rendered – the word of rejection: no to the continued presence of Syrian forces and
their intelligence agents on Lebanese territory; no to the machinations which pretend that
the nation is divided confessionally, and that it always needs a tutor; no to the use of
Lebanon and the Lebanese to the exclusive profit of Syria, under the false pretext of a
common strategy; no, strictly no, to reducing Lebanon to the de facto status of a Syrian province.
The second banner read: “Resistance
will not die.” Resistance continues today to maintain alive the language of protest
and to defend free expression. No to the perverse twinning of the freedom of expression
with the imperatives of security alleged by the Authorities. No to the stratagems of the
intelligence services to confine again the discourse of protest to the ambit of a
marginalized Christian community; no to the visit of Security agents to the Administration
of the University to ask for the names of candidates to alumni elections or to enquire
about demonstration plans; no to the infiltration of their young hirelings amongst the
students of various universities.
The third banner said: “We want
dialogue.” Demonstrators took over the idea, which was expressed by political and
religious personalities from all sides, to call for a national congress that debates
Syro-Lebanese relations and envisages the future of a liberated Lebanon. It is important
therefore that the de facto consensus, which has
been underlined by the Lebanese despite the Authorities, gets consolidated and formalized
by an official national understanding, not between the deputies, but by way of a procedure
which needs to be specified in utmost detail, between qualified representatives of the
country’s political, economic and educational spheres. This is also why it is
difficult to understand, if not as a joke, the affirmation that Parliament is the same as
the National Congress being sought, especially when one knows how the majority of deputies
have been elected.
But our young men and women can be
reassured: the process of liberation is irreversible. In the absence of a National
Congress which is presently impossible to convene, intercommunal networks of intellectuals
and professionals meet periodically to promote the discourse of resistance and think about
the future of a liberated Lebanon. The moment will come when Syria will understand,
perhaps before the Lebanese political representatives themselves, that it is in its
interest to completely withdraw from Lebanon, to respect the country’s independence
and sovereignty, and to establish relations of mutual recognition. But the mistrust of
Lebanese towards Syria will not really dissipate until the bilateral relations will get
translated into an exchange of diplomatic relations, as is the case amongst all Arab
states.
As for the political future of Lebanon,
it is also reassuring, despite the belief of many young Christians who have only known war
and its aftermath, and who wonder about the degree of allegiance of Muslims to the common
land. What they should know is that, with a delay which is understandable, Muslims share
today the same national feeling as Christians, the same intellectual and emotional
attachment to the Lebanese nation.
Most remarkable, in this context, are
the words of Imam Muhammad Mahdi Shamseddin on the specificity of Lebanon, which he shared
with the Arab press correspondents in Paris a month before his death: “I was”,
he said, “one of the first people to propose the abolition of political
confessionalism… I had established my own project around the idea of numerical
democracy, predicting the suppression of the political existence of communities, the
adoption of the individual as the sole political entity, and the rejection of
communitarian quotas which decide the formation of Parliament and government. These last
years however, I have thought a lot, so much so that I am not of the same opinion any
longer: I consider the confessional regime as a fundamental formula for Lebanon, on
condition that it is cleansed… I have renounced numerical democracy in favour of a
political communalism, but, as I just said, the application of this formula is presently
subject to corruption and must reformed. I would like to see that the Lebanese are ensured
a larger representation, and would want such guarantees as to be certain that no community
can complain from being crushed by the majority.”
The faith of Shamseddin in the
specificity of Lebanon goes further: “As for the relations between Syria and Lebanon,
I have said and repeated that Lebanon is to remain forever out of any unionist project.
Even if one supposes that a unified Arab Republic is established from Tangiers to Aden,
Lebanon will be the second Arab Republic, it will remain the other Arab Republic. No
union. The nature of Lebanese society requires it and the interest of Arabs also requires
it. It is preferable for Lebanon, and for our Arab and Islamic environment, that the
country remains an independent, sovereign Republic, which does not get united with any
other country, which collaborates with them all, but does not let itself dissolve its
existence in any type of union.”[27]
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
In all our communities today, voices rise to request the liberation of Lebanon, the
recovery of its independence, the full exercise of its sovereignty. These voices are
destined to enlarge their audience, to shake off the pusillanimity of some and to confound
the interested expectations of others. The national debate is open, it is irreversible.
But it does not only concern the means to reinforce the resistance against foreign control
over Lebanon, it also involves an intense critical reflection on the future of the
country. In this respect, Saint Joseph’s University is a privileged place to welcome
and stimulate rigorous and honest discussions over our agreements and disagreements, with
a view to forming a national consensus. With the means it has at its disposal, Saint
Joseph’s University must be at the heart of the democratic debate.
**************************************************************************************************************************
[1] Amy Gutmann, director of the University Centre for Human Values at Princeton
University, Introduction to Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of
Recognition, Princeton 1994, 23.
[2] L'Orient-Le Jour, 15 September 2000.
[3] L'Orient-Le Jour, 20 August 2000, 2.
[4] An-Nahar, 2 October 2000.
[5] Thomas L. Friedman, "Lebanon: Soul on Ice", New York Times, July 18, 2000.
[6] Id.
[7] Mu’min Dennawi, An-Nahar, 22 September 2000, 12.
[8] Al-Mustaqbal, 24 September 2000.
[9] Testimony of Daniel Pipes, in USCFL (United States Committee for a Free Lebanon), 14
June 2000.
[10] "At the Arab Sommet in Fes in 1982, President Sarkis officially requested Syria
to withdraw its troups as had done already the other countries which were taking part in
what was called the Arab Force of Dissuasion… The following year, in September,
President Gemayel sent the General Secretariat of the League a note repeating the Lebanese
call for an Israeli withdrawal and the departure of all foreign troups, in a document
which was addressed to President Hafez al-Assad." (Emile Khoury, L'Orient-Le Jour, 28
September 2000.)
[11] Albert Sechehaye, "La pensée et la langue", in Essais sur le langage,
Paris, "Le sens commun", Minuit 1969, 88.
[12] Saoud al-Maoula, "Who are the real friends of Syria ?", An-Nahar, 11
November 2000.
[13] Samir Frangié, "The barricades of the state", L'Orient-Le Jour, 20
December 2000.
[14] L'Orient-Le Jour, 13 September 2000.
[15] L'Orient-Le Jour, 25 October 2000.
[16] L'Orient-Le Jour, 13 September 2000.
[17] Speech of Asem Kanso, L'Orient-Le Jour, 7 November 2000, 4.
[18] Ibrahim al-Amin, As-Safir, 13 November 2000, 2.
[19] An-Nahar, 21 August 2000.
[20] L'Orient-Le Jour, 25 September 2000.
[21] L'Orient-Le Jour, 9 November 2000, 3.
[22] L'Orient-Le Jour, 25 November 2000.
[23] An-Nahar, 21 November 2000.
[24] Id.
[25] Id.
[26] Reported by Emile Khoury, "Un système politique qui perd peu à peu de sa
spécificité," L'Orient-Le Jour, 26 October 2000.
[27] An-Nahar, 7 December 2000, 5.
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