The report of the King-Crane Commission in the summer of 1919 and the Yale supplement highlighted two points:

• They emphasized the weakness of a unifying nationalist feeling in Bilad al-Sham. The report's authors saw that this feeling was concentrated in a hatred of outworn Turkish rule. As for feelings towards the potential mandatory powers in the Arab world - France, Britain, and the United States - the hatred of all these countries, or the hatred of one and attachment to another, was an issue related to sect. The authors observed, for example, that Emir Faysal's nationalist language did not conform, in reality, to the sand of his political base, which was fundamentally Islamic- religious. Their attention was also drawn to the multitude of a nationalist groups in Bilad al-Sham, the differences between the nomadic and settled elements, the differences between urban and rural elements, and ,as was natural, the multitude of sects and their differing opinions and political positions.
  
• They also emphasized the dominance of sectarian differences in the formulation of political options. The report's authors noted that the overwhelming majority of Sunnis supported the "Damascus option," or Emir Faysal's plan, which most Shi`a also endorsed. They found that the Druze, with the exception of an extremely small minority, insistently demanded that if France was granted mandatory powers in Mount Lebanon, that they be allowed to separate from it. Instead, the Druze preferred a British mandate, although they were practically alone in this. Muslims, in general, supported independence or a United States mandate, since the U.S. was not a member of the "imperialist" camp. Most Isma`ilis supported a French mandate, and the Alawis were divided.
  

On the Christian side, the majority of Catholic sects - of which the largest and most prominent was the Maronites - forcefully demanded the independence of Lebanon, its enlargement, and its placing under a French mandate. The Greek Orthodox community was divided between those who supported Faysal's goals - which did not rule out a British or American mandate- and the French-Maronite plan. Other Christian minorities, such as the Syriacs, Chaldeans, and Protestants were generally divided between those who demanded a federal union with Syria and those who supported an American on British mandate.

In essence, there was a strong rejection of the French mandate outside Catholic circles. At the same time, the request for a British mandate was generally weak. The call for an enlargement of the Mountain, its independence within the confines of a state, and the establishment of a French mandate - the three demands were inseparable - was limited largely to the Mountain's Maronites and its other Catholics, who were the strongest adherents to this position. It was rejected by most of the Mountain's Druze, its Muslims, and a part of its Greek Orthodox population. On the eve of World War I, Christians formed 79% of the Mountain's population, while Catholics in general constituted 84% of the Mountain's Christians. The Christians of the Mountain and its surrounding areas, who requested independence and the expansion of the Mountain, made up approximately one-fifth of Syria's entire population, which did not exceed two and a half million.

Aside from this local majority - which was strengthened by the Mountain's special historical experience, French support, and the progress in the general negotiations between Britain and France - the predominantly Muslim majority in Syria faced the likelihood of a French mandate with strong and unconcealed loathing. Public opinion leaders in this majority recognized that Mount Lebanon possessed a special status, but they rejected its enlargement and suggested granting it appropriate guarantees in order to place it within the framework of a single, decentralized state. They rejected, in particular, France's taking over of the Mountain from which it could spread its influence within Lebanon and Syria.

Thus it was difficult in 1919 not to notice the strength of the relationship between "Lebanese nationalism" and a Maronite, or in the best of cases, a Christian asabiyya. On the other hand, it was difficult not to notice the weakness of "Syrian nationalism," the triumph, instead, of religious ties, and the absence, at many levels, of homogeneity between the groups towards which this nationalism was directed. The strength of nationalist ties was linked to the degree of homogeneity attained. Thus the bases of the nation-state were unstable at that time in both Lebanon and Syria.

In Lebanon, areas that were to be incorporated into the enlarged state, clearly rejected such an alternative, and there was more than one pocket of resistance that initiated armed struggle against the French, and lost no time in attacking their Christian supporters in various areas. In Syria, the Faysalist state contained, side by side, groups which, by virtue of the disparity in their situations, differed fundamentally in their acceptance of the principal of the modern state. In both situations, the strength of the center - namely the voice of the mobilized social elites - hid the confusion at the base, and the rapidly visible need to make great efforts and overcome crises to build the nation and stabilize its foundations.

Thus, when it was established, Greater Lebanon was divided on a clearly sectarian basis. Its founding coincided with the confirmation of the French mandate, a mandate which, as we mentioned, met with a comprehensive rejection among Muslims and a wide rejection among non-Catholic Christians. This rift, in a manner of speaking, accompanied the new state during the entire period of the mandate. However, the rift began to close at the beginning of this period as well.

The French occupation was direct and heavy-handed in the cities of the Lebanon coast, where the rejection of the mandate and the call for unity with Syria took the form of a partial political boycott of the new Lebanese state. Most of the prominent Sunni families continued to spurn participation in the state apparatus, although gradually this changed. In Jabal`Amil, resistance against the French was mixed with sectarian civil strife (that the French were not remiss in provoking themselves), and acts of plundering and looting. Before Maysaloun, a campaign led by Colonel Nièger crushed the resistance of the Shi`a mountain, creating widespread damage and leaving the area groaning under the weight of heavy reparations. Since the Shi`a aspired to a form of autonomous independence within the framework of a Syrian union, they moved in the direction of accepting the new state following their defeat and that of Faysal. They directed their demands at this new state, and considered the new High Commissioner, General Weygand, more inclined to treat them fairly than his predecessor General Gouraud. In general, prominent Shi`a families participated in the political life and institutions of the state, and Milhim Qasim's armed activities at the beginning of the 1920s and the Danadisha intifada in the Biqa` at the end of the decade, remained very limited in scope. Indeed, among the a`yans of the Biqa` - the Haydar and Hamadeh families, and others - one could find those who accepted the idea of participating in the political hierarchy established by the mandate.

With the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution of 1925, which started in the Jabal al-Druze, the limits of the Lebanese entity's ability to isolate itself from such developments quickly became apparent. The revolution spread to Lebanon, and an important stage of the revolt took place in Wadi al-Taym, the cradle of the Druze presence in Bilad al-Sham. The revolution knocked on the doors of Nabatiyyeh itself, in a move that sought to take over Sidon The Shi`a, however, who were still licking their wounds after what they had incurred in 1920, declined to support the move. This was a prelude towards an increase in the institutional incorporation of the Shi`a into the framework of the Lebanese state. The mandatory authorities recognized the Shi`a as an Islamic sect (madhhab) with full rights, a status which the Ottoman state had never accorded them.

The promulgation of the 1926 Constitution was understood to be a confirmation of the Lebanese entity and its separation from Syria which was, in any case, divided at the time. With this confirmation, some opponents of the entity found grounds for protest; other opponents, however, found grounds for acceptance of a fait accompli that seemed likely to continue. Meanwhile, Muslim participation in both the political and administrative life of the state continued to grow. Constitutional life created more political diversity and competition in the country. A principal result of this was that it led to the emergence of a strong tendency among Christians which began to make a distinction between adherence to the Lebanese entity and support for the mandate. This tendency became stronger in the 1930s when the mandatory authorities moved again towards direct rule, extended the suspension of constitutional life, and pursued an economic policy contrary to the interests of a number of Christian elites.

In this context, the Maronite patriarch himself began to move closer to nationalist politicians in Damascus and the Muslim opposition in Lebanon. In his sermons, the patriarch began to highlight the various similarities between Lebanon and Syria upon which the two countries could build cooperation in the framework of complete independence. On another front, the adherence to Syrian unity enunciated at the Second Coastal Conference in 1936 did not conceal the new flexibility in the Muslim position with regard to acceptance of Lebanon. The entry of the Syrian National Bloc into negotiations with France the same year to reach agreement on replacing the mandate was a sign of the move by the Syrians in the direction of recognizing Lebanon within its current borders. This recognition removed the chief obstacle to negotiations between France and Lebanon, and impelled the Lebanese to demand a similar agreement from the mandatory power as a prelude to independence. Christian groups began preparing themselves to live in a Lebanon without French guardianship. This preparation required both accommodation by Syria, on the one hand, and the ordering of relations with the Muslims, on the other. The abandonment of Syria's demand for areas which had been joined to Greater Lebanon encouraged Muslims to search for a new agreement with the Christians. In reality, this agreement was imposed by the degree of integration which had already taken place on more than one level, and by the network of relations woven between regions and groups, behind the facade of political disputes.

Yet this agreement was only arrived at slowly. In 1936 and 1937, the echoes of the demand for unity with Syria could be heard reverberating - at times, violently - from Jabal `Amil to Sidon to Beirut. Powerful figures from Tripoli- which had remained at the vanguard of the unity tendency during the mandate period - announced their demand for union with Syria, from which the port of Alexandretta had recently been stripped to the benefit of Turkey. Meanwhile, France did not ratify the two treaties arrived at with Syria and Lebanon, despite their ratification by the two states. However, separatist movements in Lebanon, and calls - in some cases by Christians - for a reduction in Lebanon's size began to take on the characteristics of a local phenomenon. The general atmosphere appeared to move increasingly in the direction of reconciliation. On the eve of independence, what was called the National Pact began to crystallize. This unwritten agreement held that Christians would refrain from recourse to foreign protection, and Muslims would refrain from demanding unity with Syria. It gave Lebanon an "Arab face," and confirmed its openness to Western civilization. Yet it held that Lebanon would become neither "a corridor nor a base for imperialism"; rather, it would be a free and independent sovereign country.

Following independence, it seemed that the pact had established Lebanon on acceptably stable foundations. This is not to say that Lebanon was no longer to experience crises. Rather, these crises no longer led to a debate on the existence of the state. Lebanon overcame the disaster of Palestine in 1948 despite the fact that it participated in the war and received a large number of Palestinian refugees. Nor was its regime shaken like those of other Arab countries participating in the war, which sooner or later underwent revolutionary change in the wake of the defeat. Yet it might be more correct to say that the depth of the effects of the defeat - which appeared in other Arab countries in the first years following the event -was not discovered in Lebanon until more than twenty years later.

When Bishara al-Khoury, the first president of independent Lebanon, was forced to resign in the summer of 1952 following a general strike and a political movement in which leaders from various sects participated, all of the members of the opposition appeared to favour the Lebanese entity and the post-independence state. After an ordinary political battle, parliament elected Camille Chamoun from the ranks of the opposition to succeed Bishara al-Khoury, and the head of the army, who had been appointed leader of the transitional government, vacated his position without delay, making way for the new president. Thus, the National Pact appeared capable - between 1943 and the mid-1950s - of protecting the entity and the regime.

Following this period, the stability of the state was tested many times, although within agreed limits. This indicated that the old division which existed during the mandate period was no longer possible, and that its features had changed. In the fall of 1956, when Egypt was subjected to the tripartite aggression by France, Britain, and Israel, following Abd al-Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, Lebanon refrained from severing diplomatic relations with Paris and London, thus rejecting a degree of solidarity with Egypt. This led to the resignation of the two Sunni pillars of the government, Prime Minister Abdallah al-Yafi and minister Saeb Salam, and their departure, along with a third potential prime minister, Husayn al-`Uwayni, to Cairo. In the wake of this, the government of Sami Solh accepted the "Eisenhower Doctrine", a cooperative agreement established in the framework of the Cold War between the Western camp and allied Middle Eastern countries, to stand together in the face of the "Communist threat." Lebanon's acceptance of the doctrine was a new provocation both against Nasserism and its adherence to positive neutrality, which was on the rise in the Arab World.

In June 1957, the second parliamentary elections during the era of President Camille Chamoun were held. These elections were not free from government interference, and led to the ouster from parliament of most leaders of the opposition - among them Lebanon's most prominent za`ims. Following this, an intense campaign began to renew President Chamoun's presidential mandate, which also provoked strong opposition from the president's rivals.

When the armed rebellion began in May 1958, following the assassination of journalist Nassib al-Matni, the ranks of the opposition contained Christian members; indeed, the Maronite patriarch himself occupied, for some time, a pre-eminent place in the opposition to President Chamoun. Despite this, a sectarian tint dominated the opposition. It became obvious that a large portion of the Christian masses had rallied around the za`ama of Camille Chamoun, while Muslim tendencies - attracted by the image of Abd al-Nasser - rallied around the intifada.

However, despite the attendant violence, the sectarian polarization did not bring into question the existence of the Lebanese entity or its borders, as was the case during the mandate period. This, in spite of the pan-Arab unity movement, which reached its apogee with the declaration of Syrian-Egyptian unity in February 1958. Rather, the objective of both the opposition and the regime - each of which had a sectarian colouring - in their loyalty or attraction to external forces, had changed: each side started to find in external protection a source of strength for a battle which accepted the entity's borders. Partiality by each side to a particular foreign power became an expression, not of a desire to exit the entity and join the foreign power, but of a need to gain strength in the conflict with the domestic partners. Thus it appeared that internal continuity, or the continuity of partnership and of the Lebanese entity, became a fixed reality that went unchallenged by the country's principal political forces.

Although the crisis of 1958 began and ended with sectarian divisions, it led to a new period of nation-building. The era of Fuad Chehab which followed saw an increase in the growth of incorporating factors in Lebanon. These included material factors, for example those connected to internal transportation; institutional factors, from the extension of state education to modernization of the bureaucracy; and political factors, including the attraction of new groups and tendencies from the margins, and their participation at the heart of national political life.

All of this was not completely new. The era of Camille Chamoun had witnessed many of the same developments. It had become clear, since independence and perhaps before, that the Lebanese model, with its special features, freedoms, and potential, was a guarantee for the country's strength and stability, and that the extension of this model to all parts and parties in Lebanon was an incentive to consolidate a single identity for its people, with its various elements.

This identity is not, on its own, strong enough to protect the country from crises. Yet it protects, or, at the least, participates in protecting the question of Lebanon's national existence from becoming an object of these crises. The history of a country is not free from these crises. Yet is the question whether the nation should be like this, or like that? Or rather is it simply whether the nation should be, or not be? It was proved during Lebanon's bloody wars following 1975 that the Lebanese began - to the extent that they had control over events - to reject the latter question.

* Ahmad Beydoun is a writer and sociologist. He is the author, most recently, ofLe Liban, Itineraires dans une guerre incivile (Karthala-CERMOC), and he teaches Sociology at the Lebanese University.