Why did the Palestinian issue bring about a civil war in Lebanon, while Lebanon has been able to maintain stability after seven years of the Syrian war?

Thank you Wu Xuezhan for the invitation to come here to chat with you. Because I was in this area for the first time, I saw everything, but I didn't specialize in specific topics, so I can't say that I know astronomy and geography. My journey includes Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, currently in Lebanon.

The country of Lebanon may be relatively unfamiliar to everyone, but in the history of the modern Middle East, it is a very interesting small country. Like other Arab countries, he is the product of Britain and France dividing up the Arabian provinces of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The borders are unnatural, and there are many internal ethnic problems. However, compared with the surrounding people, they use the means of political strongman to suppress and manipulate the inter-ethnic groups. Contradictions and relationships, Lebanon's sectarian parliamentary system has taken a completely different direction.

The country is small and many ethnic groups have become the soft underbelly of Lebanon, which is particularly vulnerable to manipulation by external forces. This can be traced back to the time when the country was first established. The Christian Maronite sect in Lebanon had an excellent relationship with France and had always hoped to establish a Christian country. However, after the First World War, the "Greater Lebanon" country divided by France divided the mountains of Lebanon and the surrounding areas. Merged together, the Maronite sect has instead become a half-populated country in the nascent state of Greater Lebanon, and the other half is Muslim. In order to ensure that Lebanon is a "pro-French Christian country", France has divided most of its political power to the Maronites.

How many denominations are there in Lebanon? According to the current classification, Lebanon has 18 officially recognized sects, with a Christian/Islamic dichotomy splitting the seats in parliament equally. From the founding of the country to the present, the main denominations include Christian Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Christianity, Islamic Sunni, Shia and Druze. Each denomination is assigned a certain number of parliamentary and cabinet seats. In addition, according to unwritten rules, the president must be a Christian, the president must be a Sunni, and the parliamentary speaker must be a Shia. This is a system where everyone has a share of the power pie.

The civil war of 1975 was the result of the unfair distribution of power, the growth of the Muslim population over the Christians, and the transfer of the Palestine Liberation Organization to Lebanon, which led to the collapse of the entire power structure. Christian parties are unwilling to give up power, and Muslim left-wing parties want to rebuild the political order (at least in proportion to the population). Among them, Israel, Syria and other countries have intervened to support different groups, and the civil war has turned into an international proxy war, which is a bit like the current Syrian civil war. The previous movie <You Only Owe Me An Apology> focused on that period. There are already two discussion posts about the movie, so I won't talk about it here. If you are interested, please go here https://matters.news/forum/?post =6bba8071-5504-432d-8f9b-6982db79b00c

Lebanon itself is a refugee receiving place, receiving refugees from all over the world. From the Armenians fleeing the Ottoman ethnic cleansing, the Palestinians fleeing Israeli-occupied Palestine, and the Syrians fleeing civil war. The latter two have brought the most impact to Lebanon.

Palestine refugees first came from the catastrophe of 1948, when the war during the founding of Israel drove out large numbers of Palestinians, and the sabra & Shatila refugee camp where the famous massacre took place still exists, right next to Beirut airport. I have personally met descendants of Palestinian immigrants in downtown Beirut. My grandfather immigrated here in 1948. My father and I were both born in Lebanon. Asking him if he is all right seems to be fine. In the past ten years, the Lebanese government has granted citizenship to a small number of Palestine refugees several times, but any act of granting citizenship is to provoke the sensitive nerves of the ethnic balance within Lebanon. Therefore, most people are still in refugee status, and therefore do not Few immigrants left Lebanon.

As mentioned above, the arrival of the Palestine Liberation Organization was one of the reasons for the outbreak of the civil war, and the Palestinian refugees suffered many casualties at the moment. The Christian Maronites believe that Lebanon should be a Christian and pro-European country, unwilling to be involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and adopt an attitude of exclusion towards Palestine refugees. Left-wing groups argue that Lebanon should not be absent from the anti-Israeli Arab solidarity nationalist movement. However, with the Palestine Liberation Organization withdrawing from Lebanon and the Palestinian issue gradually being marginalized after the 1990 Oslo Accords, it is difficult to say that there is a Palestinian issue in Lebanon now. And according to the latest statistics, there are only about 170,000 Palestinians left in Lebanon.

Syrian refugees arrived after the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, and according to an estimated 1.1 million, most of the refugees live in refugee camps. Syrians and Lebanese are probably closer than Palestine, because both are part of the geographical "Greater Syria" area, and both were also placed under the French mandate in the early 20th century. I remember there is a saying that It was the Syrian conspiracy of the twentieth century that was planned in Beirut. It can be said that the lips are intertwined.

It is impossible for the Lebanese government to help Syrian refugees alone, so a large number of Western aid agencies have invested in Lebanon, mainly from the United Nations and EU countries. Aid has also caused some typical resource allocation problems. An aid and development project officer told me that he saw a large number of Syrian refugees in a village, but there was no agency to help, and other villages may not have so many refugees, but received them. With many resources, he ran to the regional government to protest. After protesting several times, he finally got a little invested, but it was still a drop in the bucket.

In another example, when the aid agency cut the budget, the refugees ran to my friend who knew an aid agency to complain, and the friend had to tell him: This is the decision of Brussels, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Here I can feel that Syrians have many faces, some live in refugee camps, some come here for tourism and work, and some escaped from the war, but because there are relatives here, they can still get along. In fact, after a few years, some refugees began to run into the cities to do some small businesses to maintain their livelihoods and avoid completely relying on the help of international aid organizations.

What do the Lebanese think? Although Syrian refugees put a lot of pressure on Lebanon's society and economy, most Lebanese should still be willing to help their next-door neighbors. However, in this election, some political parties have proposed a "refugee policy": if the time is right, and in line with safety and humanitarian conditions, they will be sent home as soon as possible. How much can reflect the views of the Lebanese.

So perhaps we can ask, why did the Palestine issue bring about a civil war in Lebanon, while Lebanon has been able to maintain stability after seven years of the Syrian war?

My personal opinion is, first, the Syrian refugees will eventually return home, but the Palestinian refugees are far from home, not to mention that the Palestine Liberation Organization has led to the invasion of Israel, everyone will endure it eventually. Second, refugees are loose and economically vulnerable families and individuals, and no groups from Syria have entered Lebanon. In fact, because Hezbollah went to fight next door, it should have been Lebanon's intervention in the Syrian civil war, not the other way around.

I asked Lebanese people about this question, and got two interesting answers. One told me that Lebanon has a large number of spontaneous civil organizations and NGOs that can deal with various social problems. One told me because everyone was sick of war and didn't want to repeat it. There is also a saying that Lebanon has discovered natural resources (it seems to be oil and natural gas), and politicians on the table can work together for at least 20 years, and they will not want to fight for the time being.

Personal knowledge is limited, if you have any questions about the Middle East, I will try my best to answer you not only for refugees. If you are interested in a brief history of Lebanese politics, you can read what I wrote earlier: http://bit.ly/2JDA7Be