The Middle East: A Turning Point?: Lebanon: A New Republic?

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It is hazardous to write about postwar Lebanon while the war is still going on, to write about the day after tomorrow when tomorrow may bring still more bloodshed. Yet it is not unrealistic to outline what the Lebanese deem most desirable for Lebanon and what may still be feasible, under conditions not beyond human control.

At the outset, one must point out that an analysis of Lebanon today cannot be narrowed down to the relatively simplistic question: What after the Palestinians? If it is to have the slightest claim at comprehensiveness, such an analysis must still address problems that almost ten years of war have left not only unsolved, but unexplored. Other issues, more commonly dealt with on a day-to-day basis, are the consequences of the Israeli invasion and the presence of the Syrian "peacekeeping" force. Immense, and probably immeasurable at the present stage, these consequences range from the geostrategic to the purely human, not excluding such aspects of Lebanon's national life and policy as reconstruction, political reforms, the restructuring of forces, the realignment of alliances, and so forth.

This essay does not, of course, pretend to present a complete analysis of what will now be called again-as in the nineteenth century-the Question of Lebanon. But at the very least, we would hope to present a Lebanese contribution to an ongoing debate, or rather game, conveniently dubbed the redrawing of the map.

II

It may be pertinent to preface this essay with two preliminary considerations:

First, to understand the Question of Lebanon-as probably all the Middle East-and grasp the essence of the political entity that is Lebanon, we must look at the realities of today from the perspective of history, not geography.

Second, the Question of Lebanon, so conveniently considered for over ten years now as a "sideshow" of the Middle East, has now suddenly burst onto center stage as the epitome of all that riddles the region, the one point of encounter of all its wars and all its revolutions as well. From the second consideration flow two subsidiary remarks that have acquired, for the Lebanese, and many others as well, axiomatic value: