Disordered World by Amin Maalouf

Author:Amin Maalouf [Maalouf, Amin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: nepalifiction, TPB
ISBN: 9781408815984
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

King Hussein’s attitude in 1967 is easier to understand if you compare it with that of another of Israel’s neighbours, Lebanon. Its leaders took a decision not to participate in the war, which at the time seemed eminently reasonable. But in so doing, they lost their patriotic legitimacy in the eyes of a good proportion of the Lebanese people. As a result, the country became bogged down in a historical quagmire from which it still has not escaped forty years later.

From 1968, armed Palestinian groups began to launch attacks from Lebanon. When the Israelis responded violently and the authorities in Beirut, who were incapable of repelling the attacks of their powerful neighbour, decided to clamp down on the Fedayeen, a section of public opinion sided with the militants rather than their own government. The argument which was repeated endlessly was that the Lebanese army, which hadn’t fought against the enemy, should at least not be fighting with those who were.

Lebanon’s wisest politicians repeated that the 1967 war was one of the most unthinking acts that the Arab countries had committed in their history; that if Lebanon had taken part alongside Israel’s three other neighbours, it would have lost part of its territory, as Egypt, Syria and Jordan did; and that its army would probably have been destroyed without changing the power relations or the outcome of the fighting one iota. No one could seriously take issue with any of this. Nonetheless, a significant proportion of the population no longer recognised itself in its government or its army, and could not tolerate seeing it clamp down on those who were actively engaged in fighting. Some Lebanese, especially those who belonged to Muslim communities and left-wing parties, came to consider the Palestinian fighters as their army, and the regular army as belonging to the Christian parties and the right. That regular army began to fall apart and the state lost control of the country.

The region which suffered most was the south. That was where the Fedayeen had gained a foothold; it was from there that they launched their attacks, and that was where the Israelis hit back. The local population, who were mainly Shi’ite, felt as though they were despised and abandoned, victims caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea. They came in time to curse the Palestinians just as much as the Israelis.

It was from all these resentments that Hezbollah was born. In 1982, the Israeli army, following a war which had seen it get as far as Beirut, decided no longer to confine itself to limited punitive expeditions, but to occupy the south of Lebanon outright in such a way as to firmly close the border. Shi’ite militants, inspired, armed and financed by their fellow Shi’ites in Iran, threw themselves into a resistance movement which turned out to be highly effective from the start. Little by little, the Lebanese, who had long been mocked by other Arabs for having been the only ones not to take part in

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