The Struggle for Lebanon

...Lebanon's Moslems are similarly divided...

...Other trends in the country are equally disquieting...

...The Phalangist chief, Pierre Gemayal, began as a pharmacist, not as a landowner, lawyer or banker with enough money to buy loyalty...

...Indeed, one Christian concern is what PLO forces could do in the event of internal strife in Lebanon...

...Now the Tapline, which runs through the Golan Heights, is shut down, and, in any case, the Teopening of the Suez Canal will make it less expensive to send oil by tanker...

...A striking indication of the country's economic difficulties is the oil pipelines...

...The Sunnis (20 per cent) profess mainstream Islamic doctrines, and are the country's most fervent advocates of Arab unity...

...Yet a higher Moslem birthrate, a Christian propensity to emigrate, and a growing number of Lebanese-born Palestinians leave no doubt that the Christians are by now a minority...

...Because most Shi'ites live in South Lebanon, though, where they rub shoulders with the Palestinians and are exposed to Israeli counter-raids, they have begun to shed their apathy and demand more protection from the government...

...The Armenians have their own parties, whose differences relate to Armenian, not Lebanese, problems...

...Lebanon's two other major Arab Christian denominations are the Eastern Orthodox (11 per cent) and the Melkite (6 per cent), an Eastern Orthodox sect that accepts Papal authority...

...The lack of any clear religious majority made for a succession of weak central governments incapable of threatening investment and commerce...

...But to the Phalangists, the PLO (and Israeli retaliation) is a disaster...

...Nobody is going to invest in a battlefield...

...Arab nationalist movements are currently gaining strength among the Sunnis, and even some younger non-Maronite Christians are forming organizations opposed to the present Parliamentary arrangement...

...As the resolution of the April disorders shows, neither Gemayal nor Arafat wants a civil war in Lebanon...

...This might be fine for the PLO, whose purpose is to provoke an Arab-Israeli confrontation...

...The Parliament, by agreement, contains six Christians for every five non-Christians...

...It cherishes a Christian, Maronite nation-recalling with fondness Maronite churches ringing their bells amid the snowcapped hills of Mount Lebanon at a time when this was forbidden in the rest of the Ottoman Empire...

...This, obviously, can have little appeal to a believer in Islam (only 9 per cent of the party's membership is Moslem...

...The Sunni Zu'ama back the Palestinian presence as a way of showing their followers they have not given in to the Christians...

...Lebanon's middle-class Christians, on the other hand, worry about what it would mean for the independence of their country...

...And prosperity was reason enough for all Lebanese to favor maintaining the status quo...

...Dating back to the 11th century, they have always been politically active, though primarily as followers of one or another Druze clan...

...Hence Beirut became the banking, insurance, cultural (newspapers can be published in relative freedom), and "good time" center of the Arab world...

...Armenians represent the most important non-Arab Christian community, and are themselves split between adherents of the Armenian Gregorian Church (5 per cent), which broke away from Eastern Orthodoxy in the 5th century, and Roman Catholics (1 per cent...

...Since Christian leaders refuse to permit another census, one might say that modern Lebanon is a land built on a lie...

...Economic pressures merely add to the sense most Lebanese have that unknown changes are coming to the Middle East, and that it is essential to be strong...

...A recent visitor to Beirut, after a 10-year absence, was surprised at the city's seediness...

...The mediating role played by Egypt and the Arab League demonstrates that outsiders similarly have an interest in keeping Lebanon quiet...

...Ironioally, however much the comparatively well-off Phalangists may support the Lebanese status quo, by adhering to an ideology they also represent a break with it...

...The Druzes (6 per cent) are the nation's third major Moslem group...

...Nonetheless, the ceasefire hasn't resolved anything, and with armed men nervously prowling every Lebanese city, the country's future is extremely cloudy...

...For the moment a cease-fire has smoothed things over, but the disturbance points to a renewal of tensions within the country that could affect the entire Middle East...

...But since the 1960s the Syrians have been concentrating on developing their own ports of Latakia and Baniyas, and since 1967 the Israeli-occupied West Bank has used the Israeli port of Haifa...

...Above all, the cycle of raid and counter-raid could eventually bring on Israeli and/or Syrian intervention...

...In both the Phalangists and the PLO this has produced a feeling of entrapment, with the other side seen as part of the trap...

...But everyone knows his support comes from his tenants and from those individuals belonging to the Druze faction that he heads...

...Kemal Jumblatt may be the leader of something called the Progressive Socialist party and proclaim his enthusiasm for reform and Arab unity...

...Lebanon's way of life is based on the assumption that it is the economic and intellectual broker between Christian Europe and the Moslem Middle East...

...The former, despite lip service to Lebanon's Arab character, rejects all schemes of Arab federation...

...A LAND BUILT ON A LIE The Struggle for Lebanon BY STEPHEN OREN Mortar blasts and ma-chine-gun fire took the lives of over a hundred people during clashes in Beirut last month between the Western-oriented Phalangist party, composed of Lebanese Christians, and members of Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO...

...This is all the easier to do because the Sunnis are found mainly in North Lebanon, far from Israeli retaliation raids...

...The economy is also in trouble...

...This apportionment is supposed to reflect the country's 55 per cent Christian majority...

...In 1948, Beirut became the entrepot for the entire area, Syria and Jordan as well as Lebanon...

...Besides, Lebanese politics has rarely pitted community against community...

...At the same time, Iraq is constructing a new pipeline from its oil fields to the Turkish port of Iskanderoun, partly as payment for Turkish help in repressing the Iraqi Kurds and partly because of its feud with Syria...

...According to the unwritten National Pact of 1943, the President of the country must be a Maronite and the Prime Minister a Sunni...

...Nonetheless, it is a land that, until recently, not only survived but thrived...

...In addition, Maronite-Palesnnian hostility, must be seen against a background in which every local chieftain has his own cadre of toughs, and each Lebanese party its own militia-type units...

...Instead of relying on Zu'ama, whose followings cut across religious lines and are determined by patronage, they have organized themselves into a rigid, paramilitary structure...

...Ethnically Arab, but with strong ties to the West, they are more likely to be professionals, businessmen and independent farmers than are other Lebanese citizens...

...Lebanon's religious heterogeneity accounts for its well-known governmental arrangement...

...Many Christian Lebanese have an economic stake in keeping the Palestinians' oil-rich backers happy, and go along with the Sunnis to demonstrate that, as Arabs, they are the equal of any Moslem...

...At various times, the Lebanese government and Army, under this pressure, have restricted the organization, but Lebanese Sunnis, in league with nearby Arab states, have been strong enough to reverse such efforts, and the primary effect has been to exacerbate Palestinian-Phalangist antagonism...

...Ideology enters Lebanon's political picture-from opposite directions-with the Phalangist party and the PLO...

...The Shi'ites (19 per cent), who, unlike the Sunnis, believe that leadership of the Moslem faith passed to Mohammed's descendants, are more backward than either the Maronites or the Sunnis, and therefore have not played a role in Lebanese politics proportional to their numbers...

...Home to a wide variety of religious groups, Lebanon is a place where you can't tell the players without a scorecard...

...Ever since the 1958 Civil War, the Phalangists have been expanding their military strength in case of a future conflict...

...Stephen Oren teaches government at New York University and at Baruch College of the City University...

...the Speaker of Parliament is usually a Shi'ite and the Minister of Defense often a Druze...

...The Maronites, for example, ecclesiastically autonomous Roman Catholics, are the nation's largest Christian contingent, officially listed as 29 per cent of a population of 2.3 million...

...A large number of other sects make up the remaining 3 per cent of a 55 per cent Christian majority recorded by the last census, taken in 1931...

...Although Syria and Iraq are controlled by the Ba'ath (Arab Socialist Resurrection party), the men running Damascus are Shi'ites, whereas the rulers in Baghdad are Sunnis...

...Does Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya or King Khalid of Saudi Arabia really regard Christian Lebanese (even the Eastern Orthodox from whose community many of the founders of the Arab nationalist movement came) as true Arabs...

...Were Jumblatt to rename his organization the Reactionary Capitalist party and come out against reform and Arab unity, the same people would vote for him...

...The Melkites, although their Roman Catholicism makes them less ardent, are exposed to the same pulls...

...Politically, the Eastern Orthodox Lebanese are strong backers of Arab union...

...and because of their opposition to Arab, or "Greater Syria," nationalism, they constitute the backbone of the 70,000-member Phalangist party...

...Yet one consequence of the Palestine and Jerusalem issues has been to blur the distinction between "Arab" and "Moslem...

...The Phalangists have thus demanded a cessation of PLO activities in Lebanon...

...So, it seems, has everybody else...

...Imports consistently run two and a half times beyond exports, and because Beirut is no longer on the road to Old Jerusalem and Bethlehem, tourism has declined, too...

...Should Israeli raids, moreover, lead Lebanese citizens to call for universal conscription and a stronger Army (as the Shi'ites in the South are already beginning to do), not only would the nation's economy be further weakened but Christian domination of Lebanon's volunteer Army would be jeopardized as well...

...Yet the Phalangists must be starting to wonder how long others will continue to be dominated by political bosses...

...Rather, it has traditionally been a nonideological game in which local bosses (Zu'ama) obtained power by distributing patronage and building on feudal or personal links...

...For Yasir Arafat and the PLO, who exist outside the normal processes of national politics, Lebanon is simply a base...

...Lebanon has no petroleum of its own, but a certain amount of revenue (and jobs) was generated by the Tapline, transporting Saudi oil to the Lebanese port of Sidon, and the IPC line, bringing Iraqi oil to the city of Tripoli...

...The result is that Lebanon is the only one of Israel's neighbors that permits the PLO to operate on its soil...

...But the divisions within the country, and the weakness of the central government, work to their advantage, while their actions serve as a catalyst for Arab union...

...At the local or Parliamentary level, ideology has not prevented Phalangist cooperation with various Zu'ama, including Sunni ones...