Meanwhile, the Muslim and Arab nationalist street found a strong ally in the Palestinian resistance, while the Palestinian organizations belonged to this same street by virtue of their makeup and aims. They had to protect their existence in Lebanon by making the widest possible array of alliances.
Israel played its role by elevating the tension in coordination with the Maronites, and with the Phalangist Party specifically. It launched a military attack on the Bared and Badawi camps in 1973, throwing in for good measure a commando raid in the heart of Beirut, in which it killed three PLO leaders and a number of civilians, without the Lebanese Army lifting a finger.
The situation exploded in a way it never had before: demonstrations and strikes were called by Arab nationalist forces, criticizing the government’s failure to protect the country. Right-wing forces, for their part, demanded that the Palestinian camps be moved away from the outskirts of Beirut. It was no secret that the monasteries that owned a large part of the territory on which the camps were located were making an effort to get it back, after its value had gone up in the previous few years. The president of the republic, Suleiman Frangieh, took it upon himself to carry out this task.
The life of Suleiman Frangieh would make a suitable subject for a thrilling gangster movie; at the same time, it offers an accurate picture of the nature of politics in Lebanon’s celebrated democracy. He began his professional life in the 1940s, under the wing of his older brother, Hamid Frangieh, who was leader of the Maronite community in the town of Zgharta, and its representative in parliament and the government. In addition to electoral advertising for his brother, Suleiman’s assignments included organizing the murder of a Muslim from the city of Tripoli each month, as a kind of repeated warning to the inhabitants of the neighboring Sunni-majority city.
On the eve of the presidential election in 1958, Hamid Frangieh emerged as a likely candidate. Camille Chamoun was eager to retain his position as president of the republic, and he pulled off a cunning maneuver to remove his Maronite opponent, by stirring up trouble between the Frangieh and Duwaihi families. As Chamoun guessed, the discord escalated to a confrontation between the two families at a mass in a church in the village of Miziara, when Suleiman Frangieh opened fire on his rivals, killing twenty of them. Chamoun immediately issued an order to arrest the killer who fled to Syria and stayed as a guest of the Syrian government at a hotel in Latakia, where he made the acquaintance of the military officers Hafez al-Assad and Rifaat Assad, who partnered with the Frangieh family in a number of profitable black-market deals — both business and political.
Less than a year and a half later, he was granted amnesty. Meanwhile, his brother had been paralyzed by a stroke, and Suleiman returned to enter parliament in his place. He became a respected leader of his family and clan, thanks to his high body count (with the passage of years, the total number of his murders climbed to 700).
When new presidential elections were held in 1970, complex local consultations took place among the ruling families — Eddé, Gemayel, Chamoun, Jumblatt, Salam, Solh, Hammada, Karami, etc. — to look for a candidate that would satisfy everyone. In the office of Ghassan Tuini, on the ninth floor of the Al-Nahar newspaper building, which he owned, an agreement was made to nominate Suleiman Frangieh.
On August 17, 5,000 armed men belonging to Frangieh descended from Zgharta onto Beirut and surrounded the parliament building to ensure the election of their leader. The third round of voting ended with fifty votes for him against forty-nine for his opponent Elias Sarkis. When Sabry Hammada, the speaker of parliament, announced that it was necessary to hold a fourth round, Frangieh’s allies outside fired shots in the air to declare their man had won. Drawing his gun, Frangieh rushed over to Hammada, shouting, while his sons came to blows with the Duwaihi patriarch (who subsequently became one of Frangieh’s allies). Hammada’s bodyguards advanced to protect him, raising their machineguns, while Frangieh’s men, who had succeeded in making their way into the building ahead of the voting, took out their weapons.
Hammada retreated to his office, and called the president, Charles Helou, to ask for advice. Helou told him, “From what I’ve heard, I can tell you that if you resist, no one in the parliament building will survive.”
Three years later, in May 1973, Suleiman Frangieh used the slogan “Whatever is necessary to prevent the destruction of the country” to justify the command he issued to the head of the army to attack the camps surrounding Beirut in order to put an end to the control the Palestinian resistance had over them. An American diplomat described this attack, which involved the use of airpower, thus: “It was the first time I saw the Lebanese Army move effectively.”
But the Lebanese Army failed in its mission, and the Maronite parties began to strengthen their armed militias so they could carry out what the army had proven incapable of doing. The “Kaslik” society — a group of Maronite monks and educated people — took upon themselves the greatest burden, in collecting donations towards this goal; it was able to collect 56 million lira (worth 21 million dollars in 1973–4). Also for this purpose Pierre Gemayel visited Saudi Arabia on April 1, 1974, in a private Saudi plane. Plans were made to train the Phalangist militia in West Germany, Israel and Jordan. Iskandar Ghanem left his post as head of the army in order to assume leadership of the militia.
In his book The Arms Bazaar, which was published in the middle of 1977, Anthony Sampson mentioned that the Maronite front purchased a quantity of weapons at a price varying between 200 and 600 million dollars, which came — according to him — from banks that the Maronite militias had plundered in Lebanon, and from the CIA, Israel, West Germany, the Vatican, the Shah of Iran and conservative Muslim Arab countries.
Naturally, the other side — starting with the Palestinian resistance, and continuing to the local religious communities hostile to the Maronites, to the advocates of “progressive” social and economic programs — would not stand by in the face of this enormous campaign of armament. Its leaders found an endless supply available to them in Baghdad, Libya and Saudi Arabia as well. Kamal Jumblatt armed his Druze, and the Imam al-Sadr formed a military apparatus for the Shiite Movement of the Dispossessed. Young Sunnis assembled in the armed Nasserist organization, the Mourabitoun, and the Communists and Baathists formed their own armed militias.
War was now inevitable.
Chapter 8
A number of aspects remained hazy in my view. But time was tight. From experience, I knew that things would become clear during the work itself.
I called Antoinette, and made an appointment to meet with her. As soon as I put down the receiver, it rang. I lifted it to my ear again.
It was a soft female voice: “Hello…?”
“Who is speaking?” I asked, imitating the Lebanese dialect.
“Please — do speak in Egyptian.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, laughing.
“I’m Lamia — Lamia Sabbagh.”
“Oh, hello. I tried calling you several times.”
“I know. But I was at the country house, and then I was busy repairing the damage.”
“Ah yes… Terrible.”
“No matter. Those kinds of things have become normal here. My husband spoke with me today from Paris.”
“Will he be coming to Beirut?”
“I don’t think he will now… The important thing is: something stupid happened. He told me that your manuscript got lost before he’d had a chance to read it.”