Farid El Khazen - The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976

The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967-1976

Farid El Khazen

The subject of this book is Lebanese politics in the pre-war period 19671974 and the first two years of the war in 197576. Lebanons multiple wars have been widely discussed on many levels and from different perspectives. Scholars, journalists, and novelists have all written on the war. Some have focused on Lebanon in 1975, when the war erupted, others on the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and on hostage-taking operations in the mid-1980s; still others have reflected on the war years from the vantage point of its ending in the early 1990s.

Few, however, have examined the period that immediately preceded the war and tried to relate it to the development of armed conflict in the mid-1970s. With rare exceptions, students of post-independence Lebanon have analysed Lebanese politics in the 1950s, particularly the 1958 crisis, and in the 1960s, or in the war years themselves. Missing in the literature on Lebanon is a work that deals with the process of destabilisation, both in its internal and external dimensions, since the late 1960s. What this book seeks to offer is a detailed analytical account of the major developments and crises that beset Lebanon during that period.

In the course of my research on Lebanese and Arab politics, I have come to revise my views and assumptions not only about the sources of conflict and consensus in Lebanon, but also the factors that have shaped the historical evolution of Lebanese society and the workings of the confessional system. In the process, I have found the comparative historical approach to the study of Lebanese politics to be more useful than either the structural or the social process approach.

The comparative perspective has brought me to the conclusion that our understanding of Lebanon in times of crisis remains incomplete if the external, namely, the regional dimension, is not taken into account. In no period of modern Lebanese politics since the state was formed in the 1920s has the countrys regional order been as inextricably linked to internal politics as it was from the late 1960s.

The book is divided into eight parts. Part I situates the process of political breakdown in comparative perspective and addresses the academic debate about Lebanons political system in the pre-war period. In Part II the focus is on the political, communal and ideological scene prior to the war. The uneven communal development of Lebanese society is examined, notably that of the Maronite, Sunni, and Shia communities. Part III addresses the evolution, role and place of the Lebanese state in the Arab state system. Lebanons state-society relations are compared with those of Arab countries in crisis situations involving pan-Arab issues. Part IV highlights the changing nature of Lebanese and Arab politics after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The most notable development in that period was the rise of a militant PLO. One lengthy chapter is devoted to the making of the 1969 Cairo Agreement followed by another in which post-1967 Lebanese and Arab politics and Chehabism are discussed. Part V is a detailed account of the political process and regional politics from 1970 to 1974.

The divisive issues that characterized Lebanese politics in the first half of the 1970s are explained in Part V, with emphasis on power-sharing and socio-economic change. The question raised here is to what extent these internal problems were conducive to the 197576 war. Another chapter covers the Sidon disturbances in early 1975. Part VII surveys the 197576 war in its various phases, beginning with the confrontation in 'Ayn al-Rummaneh in April 1975 and ending with the PalestinianSyrian war in the autumn of 1976. The final part of the book is an overall analysis of the process of destabilisation that culminated in the war.

For the narrative of the period covered in this book, I relied on the highly diversified Lebanese press. I also used recently published memoirs of influential Lebanese politicians. In addition, I had access to unpublished material on Lebanese and Palestinian groups involved in the war and to official reports and data about particular events both before and during the war. This has allowed me to shed light on crucial developments in ways that have not been possible before. Equally useful have been the interviews I made with over fifty politicians, activists, and observers of Lebanese and Arab politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the people I interviewed spoke openly about their experiences and shared with me their thoughts about the period under study.

A Note on Spelling

Words or names in Arabic appear in their commonly used English and/or French spelling. The Arabic ayn and hamza were marked by straight quote marks. The prefix al- is used the first time an Arabic name appears in the text, but omitted later.