1943 Independence between "official narrative" and facts

Lebanese citizens know independence from school textbooks labeled as the “curriculum.” They memorize it by heart to pass official exams. But afterward, they forget what they memorized, and independence sinks into oblivion. Why? Because the real events differ from the official narrative. (Weren’t the massacres of 1860 narrated as having begun with two boys playing marbles and getting into a dispute? That is how school history books present it.)

The official narrative says that the pillars of the state were arrested by the French Mandate authorities and imprisoned in the Rachaya Citadel. A government was then formed in Bchamoun, which administered the country for eleven days until their release on November 22, 1943, a date adopted as Independence Day.

This is the official story. But what about the actual facts?

Here are some of them:

Britain stood with the Lebanese against France and pushed for amendments to the constitutional articles that preserved the French Mandate provisions. In this sense, without Britain, Lebanon would not have gained independence from France.

How can a country be independent when the French army was still in Lebanon? It withdrew only three years after Independence Day. The evacuation plaque at the Nahr el-Kalb rocks is dated December 31, 1946, and reads: “On December 31, 1946, all foreign armies left Lebanon.” Shouldn’t this date, rather than November 22, 1943, be commemorated as Independence Day?

Independence began to crack just a few years after it was “achieved,” and the fractures came fast and repeatedly.

The first blow came fifteen years after its proclamation, during what became known as the “1958 Revolution,” which raised the slogan: “They were brought by colonialism; let the people send them away.” Independence appeared fragile, as shown by the deep divide in the streets. Documents revealed later that weapons were coming in from Syria, financed by Egyptian intelligence. That “revolution” ended only after a four-man government was formed, consisting of Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, Brigadier Raymond Edde, Prime Minister Rashid Karami, and Haj Hussein Oueini.

The second blow came with the failed coup attempt carried out by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party on New Year’s Eve 1961–1962, led by Lebanese Army Captain Fouad Awwad. It was the first attempted coup in Lebanon after independence. Following its failure, the “Second Bureau”, the common name for the Lebanese Army Intelligence Directorate, imposed itself with an iron fist and tightened its grip especially on the SSNP, which had orchestrated the coup.

The third blow came roughly twenty years after independence, specifically in 1966, when the Palestinians announced the start of armed Palestinian operations from South Lebanon. This dangerous development, one of the harshest blows to independence, reached its peak with the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, known as the “Naksa of ’67.” Arab lamentations began: from the “Nakba of 1948” to the “Naksa of 1967.” Lebanon began paying the highest price in sovereignty and stability, and its independence became like a feather in the wind. The Palestinians declared: “If the Arabs cannot liberate Palestine, then we will. Let all Arab fronts open before us, those of countries bordering Israel.”

The confronting Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, did not comply. Lebanon became the “soft flank.” As operations intensified, clashes erupted between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinians. These clashes created divisions within the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Rashid Karami resigned in April 1969 and returned only after the signing of the Cairo Agreement, signed on the Lebanese side by Army Commander General Emile Boustany and on the Palestinian side by Yasser Arafat. Parliament ratified the agreement without deputies seeing its content, for reasons said to concern “the nation’s higher interests.” Brigadier Raymond Edde, who opposed the agreement, famously said: “Yasser Arafat’s driver was informed of the agreement, while we, the deputies, were not.”

This agreement legalized armed Palestinian operations from Lebanon, dealing an almost crippling blow to independence. Lebanon now had “two armies on its soil: the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian ‘army.’” The spark of the Lebanese Civil War was in April 1969, with the start of clashes between the army and the Palestinians, not in April 1975 with the Ain al-Rummaneh bus incident, which delivered a fatal blow to independence, especially when the political authorities refused to deploy the Lebanese Army to restore order. Their justification was that the army would “split.” Later, documents and wartime memoirs revealed that the Palestinians had pressured Prime Minister Rashid Solh not to deploy the army. This refusal was conveyed by Mohsen Ibrahim, Secretary-General of the Communist Action Organization, who was one of the prominent leaders of the National Movement led by Kamal Jumblatt.

Blow after blow followed, and non-Lebanese armed presence expanded, from Palestinian forces, which drew in the Israelis, to the Syrians.

Then came the Taif Agreement, with its major amendments to the Constitution. It was meant to represent the dividing line between the “first independence,” which had collapsed, and the “second independence,” which was hoped would be born. But the irony is that the “second independence” inherited the anniversary of the “first independence,” keeping November 22 as Independence Day. Even when the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon, the event was described as the “second independence,” yet it remained marred by the “Hezbollah militia,” which inherited authority and dominance from the Syrians.

Today’s reality does not reflect the conditions of independence:

Lebanon “became independent” from France, but what about independence from Iran and its proxy, from Israel, and from the armed Palestinian presence?

One independence against three occupations.

For eighty-two years, our independence has needed countless tests of “eligibility,” and in every test, blood has been shed. It is like sunlight in the desert, we think it’s water, but the closer we get, the more we realize it is a mirage.