Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on July 27, 2001:
Issam M. Fares
Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon
I thank President J. Curtis Mack
II for his kind invitation to address the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and
I also thank the Vice President, Ms. Mary Morris, for organizing this important
event. I am honored to be introduced by my good friend Ray Irani. As a friend,
and as a person with large heart, he tends to attribute to me more than I
deserve. Many thanks, Ray.
Los Angeles is a great
metropolis welcoming emigrants from all countries. Thousands of my Lebanese
compatriots thrive in this metropolis and take pride in its activities.
I shall speak on Lebanon in the context of three dimensions: the national, the regional, and the international. It is the policy of the Council to reach a better understanding on international issues through dialogue such as this. I applaud this policy and hope that my remarks will make a modest contribution to it.
Lebanon is a unique country in
the Middle East. It is unique because of five fundamental principles in its
political system. These principles represent its values and its claim to special
attention. They are:
1- Freedom.
In the US freedom may be taken for granted. Freedom, however, is new comer on world stage. It is still a new idea in the Middle East, and highly controversial. In Lebanon, freedom is the essence of our political existence. We speak freely, we publish freely, and we enjoy most biting criticism on our TV stations. And every attempt at laying conditions on our freedom is met with severe opposition. We like it that way.
2- Plurality.
Lebanon, though
small, is extremely diverse. There are Christians and Muslims in almost equal
numbers. But Christians and Muslims differentiate in many divisions and
subdivisions each of which insists on its uniqueness. There are more than a
dozen political parties, reflecting the diversities in Lebanese society. This is
an important feature in a region known for the one party regime or for regimes
of no parties at all.
3- Constitutional Democracy.
Lebanon has the
oldest continuing constitution in the Arab World. The Constitution adopted in
the 1920s was amended many times but was never revoked. Even during our internal
war the constitutional system continued to function and presidents of the
republic changed in accordance with constitutional rules not a minor achievement
in the Middle East.
4- Consensus.
Consensus is an
integral part of our democratic process. Perhaps because of Lebanon’s
plurality and its obsession with freedom, all important matters are decided by
consensus. There is no majority and minority, if by some action a minority is
endangered. A democracy is one in which the interests of the smallest minority
are considered to be of greatest importance.
5- A Liberal Economy.
The legacy of open markets, free trade, and international business is associated with the Lebanese since Phoenician times. Ours is an economy of free markets and free exchange. We deal with the East and with the West, with the North and with the South and we do that with minimum interference from the state.
These principles gave Lebanon the reputation of being the “Switzerland of the Middle East”. We enjoyed that reputation; we thrived on it, until the tragic interruption of our internal war (1975-1990). This is neither the time nor the place to go into this war or the causes that led to it.
But I shall address briefly the
issues in the region that affected us and contributed to that war.
We do not know the direction
Middle East history would have taken if Israel was not established in 1948. We
do know, however, the direction history took since that date. All Arab States,
including Lebanon, opposed the creation of the State of Israel. They all
believed that the Palestinian people, like all peoples in the region, under
French and British mandates, were entitled to their own independent state. This
did not happen, and history in the region unfolded as follows:
1- Successive wars took place between Arabs and Israelis, and these wars are still going on. If wars through regular armies have stopped, wars by proxy are taking place all the time. The Intifada is a type of war; it is the war of the weak against the strong. Stones versus tanks. And retaliation is a type of war too.
2-
Palestinians were forced to leave their country and take refuge in the
neighboring Arab states. Refugees, destitute, poor, frustrated with no solution
in sight, took arms and attempted revenge. A few hundred thousand refugees live
in Lebanon, many of them in camps. The Palestinian refugee problem is a major
factor in the destabilization of the region.
3-
Constitutional democratic orders in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, collapsed after
they were discredited in a losing war with Israel in 1948. All these democratic
regimes were replaced by military regimes. And the regimes sided with the Soviet
Union, built armies with Soviet support, and mobilized their population in anger
against Israel.
4-
Western support and more specifically American support for Israel led
Arab intellectuals to seek social and political remedies in the Soviet camp. A
wave of socialism with an authoritarian muscle engulfed the region and weakened
the defenses of the emerging democracies.
While all neighboring Arab
states tightened their belts, centralized their governments, built their armies,
and prepared for showdown with Israel, Lebanon did not heed these developments.
It acted as if not much was happening, and frustrations resulting from regional
conflicts were soon to explode on its territory. When they did explode the state
was not ready.
Frustration magnified amidst the
Palestinian refugees after the Arab defeat in the war of 1967. Palestinians
decided then to take matters into their own hands. In Lebanon, they built
militias; they armed, and became in effect a state within a state. They had Arab
states behind them some guiding, some controlling, and some financing.
The Palestinians also worked in the Lebanese plurality driving some to their side and driving others against them. The Lebanese internal war may have its internal causes, but these were never strong enough to make a war and sustain it. Regional conflicts triggered the war and kept it going. Lebanon collapsed in the 1970s and 1980s because it was the victim of the region and its conflicting positions.
This was the time when
atrocities took place in Beirut, and not necessarily by Beiruties, and
throughout Lebanon, but not necessarily by Lebanese.This is the situation as I
see it nationally and regionally. Let me now turn to the international dimension.
We should keep in mind that until a decade or so ago the world was in a Cold War in which the US and the Soviets faced each other in every region, and especially in the Middle East.
True, the US and the Soviets
supported the rise of Israel in 1948, but interests diverged soon after that.
The Soviets began to lean towards the Arabs while the US intensified its support
of Israel. American policy in the Middle East took the following format:
1- To support the state Israel that it may maintain military superiority over any combination of Arab military forces pitted against it.
2- To maintain direct or indirect control over the extensive oil reserve in the Arab World and to protect the ship lanes ensuring the flow of oil to Japan, Europe, and North America.
3- To defend the strategic routes in the region as to enable American forces to move freely in case of conflicts in Asia and Africa that might endanger American interests.
4- To keep the Soviets out as they represented a threat to Israel, a threat to the flow of oil, and a threat to American strategic interests in the Middle East.
Let me conclude by saying that the three dimensions I alluded to above need to be redirected if Lebanon is to enjoy the peace and stability it deserves.
I believe Lebanon has addressed the National dimension well, and with the help of its Arab friends, when it reached an agreement in 1989 known as the Taif agreement. In this agreement the issue of identity was clarified, imbalances in the political system were corrected, basic freedoms, once threatened, were reaffirmed, and relations with its neighbors were defined. There is broad consensus in Lebanon behind this agreement. In time some of its provisions may have to be amended, always in the spirit of the Lebanese philosophy as spelled out in the Taif introduction.
The Agreement ended the war, restored Lebanese unity, dissolved the militias, and put the state on the road to reconstruction.
The Middle East region continues to be hot, and tensions arising from the Arab-Israeli conflict impact on Lebanon, and on the region as a whole. Let’s not minimize what is happening in the Middle East now. Prime Minister Sharon is resorting to a policy that has failed in the past. It is failing now. It will fail in the future. The Intifada is the expression of a deep frustration. It only grows when met with violence. What looks like a skirmish or a type of war, as the Intifada might look, can easily spiral out of control and evolve into a real regional war. The consequences of such war are too terrible to contemplate.
The need is for reason, not emotion, for conciliation, not confrontation. The time has come to bring peace to the Land of Peace. The peace can only be led by the United States.
After the Gulf war president Bush made a valiant attempt to reconcile Arabs and Israelis. President Clinton made a similar attempt at the end of his Administration. I am pleased that President George W. Bush and Secretary Powell have decided early in their Administration to build on the achievements of past Administrations and attempt again to bring the conflict to an end. In this effort the U.S can benefit from the store of good will that Russia and Europe have in the region.
As Lebanon needed an agreement with regional and international support, so the Middle East region needs an agreement with regional and international support.
Peace in the Middle East will be an achievement of historic proportions. It paves the way for closer ties amongst Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It opens the Arab East to new economic opportunities. It eliminates the enmities that have arisen between the Arabs and the US and it will free the region from the spirit of violence and revenge that has pervaded it for half a century. Furthermore, it gives all peoples in the region the opportunity to plan for the long term future.
In working for a just and comprehensive peace the US will be drawing not only on its strategic and economic interests, but more importantly it will be drawing on he very values on which its free political system was founded. It will not be out of place, in the context of a just and stable peace, to think of these values: of freedom, justice, equality, human rights, fair play. These are your values. We admire these values, and we share them, and always attempt to translate them from theory to fact.
Again I thank you all for the privilege of being with you at this luncheon and for sharing my views with the members of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and their guests.
Good luck to you in your deliberations and Godspeed.