Lebanon As The Democratic And Civilized World Knew It

• Lebanon: the Switzerland of the Middle East

Writer Fayza Diab wrote an article published on August 24, 2018, in Al Majalla magazine, issued in London, in which she said: «There are many nicknames by which Lebanon is known. Many are the advantages that the country of 10,452 square kilometers enjoys. Despite its small area and many problems, Lebanon remained over the years and ages a lit beacon that was never extinguished by wars or disasters that ravage the country of the Cedars, shaken but never collapsed…»

Writer Diab is correct. Lebanon is also called Switzerland of the East. Lebanon enjoyed stability, economic prosperity, scientific progress, impartiality in international relations, and a superior banking system. It was characterized by its cultural openness, the diversity of languages, the distinctive presence of Western culture in its commercial, tourism, and educational concepts, its role as a civilized bridge between East and West, the increase of freedoms, and the plurality of media institutions, parties, and non-governmental organizations.

The country’s extraordinary and rare mountainous nature is unique in the Middle Eastern region. It has a history of more than five thousand years, as it witnessed the passage of all the world’s civilizations on its lands since the era of the Phoenicians, leaving many fingerprints on all its terrain that are considered a human heritage. These fingerprints are of great historical value and are as crucial as other greatest international heritage sites.

• Lebanon: The holy Land

Lebanon is considered a part of the holy lands. The Lord Christ, peace be upon him, walked to Tyre, and the cave in which he lived in Qana during his trips to that region is still standing, surrounded by many carvings left by the believers as a sign of his miracles. Lebanon is also characterized by religious openness. Several religious minorities resided in its mountains fleeing persecution or came to it as missionaries and took root among its residents. They established temples and institutions in Lebanon, such as churches, mosques, monasteries, and others. Among the churches is the Evangelical Church, which opened a school in the second half of the nineteenth century in a mountainous village called Ubay, located in a Druze residential area where the Tanukhi princes used to reside.

• Lebanon: The home of the Semitic Phoenicians Canaanites

Lebanon is one of the oldest countries in the world. Historical and religious references indicated that its history and recorded name go back five thousand years. Its name was mentioned in the Ebla monuments in the middle of the third millennium BC. It is also mentioned 12 times in the Epic of Gilgamesh and 64 times in the Old Testament. It is the country of the cedar tree whose name is glorified in the Bible, as it is mentioned 103 times. It is home to the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities to date. The history of Beirut goes back more than 5000 years. The Romans called it the «Mother of Laws.» Beirut hosted the empire’s most prominent law school. There is the city of Byblos, the oldest trading city since 5000 BC, and the city of Sidon, which dates back to 4000 years ago, and was the headquarters of the purple industry. Then there is Tyre, to which the Bible refers by saying: «It is the inhabited by the sea, the famous city that was mighty in the sea. » There is the city of Tripoli, where the Crusaders built their largest fortresses in the early twelfth century.

 Lebanon’s first inhabitants, the Phoenicians, invented the alphabet, which Herodotus said was the basis of the Greek language. The Phoenicians are the creator of the art of sailing. They established the concept of globalization through their trade with other peoples. Archeologists indicate that they were the first to reach the American continent. They also established residential colonies in different countries, which turned into prosperous cities, such as Carthage in Tunisia, and Cadiz in Spain. They introduced purple dye, glass, and wine.

 The inhabitants of ancient Lebanon, like all the inhabitants of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, were Semitic Canaanites descended from Sam, son of Noah. For that, the “Mormons” book by Ross T. Christensen put forward the theory that the Molecans were «largely Phoenician in their ethnicity.» The people of Lebanon have established a variety of relationships with their surroundings. Historical and religious references speak about active interaction between the original inhabitants of Lebanon and the region’s peoples. They established several settlements across the Mediterranean. But Lebanon was subjected throughout history to many setbacks by man and nature, such as invasions, earthquakes, wars, and migration.

• Lebanon: An open historical Museum

Lebanon’s geographical location, as a crossroads linking the three ancient continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa, caused it to be subject to several successive external controls. The ancient Egyptians ruled Lebanon (Hexus), followed by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs (starting with the Umayyads and then the Abbasids, the Mamluks, and the Ottomans), and the French mandate after the First World War. Lebanon of today started engaging in the world civilized democratic process with the establishment of Greater Lebanon with its current borders in 1920. It gained its independence in 1943 and transformed into a republic governed by a constitution based on a free liberal economic system and a parliamentary democratic system. The system preserves, at the same time, the advantage of the coexistence of different sects within the Lebanese society.

These successive events gave Lebanon rich historical wealth. Many archaeological sites in Lebanon preserve and contain many secrets of human development. They tell about social, instrumental, technical, agricultural, and genetic evolution. They also speak about the migrations of different peoples to and from Lebanon. Dozens of such archaeological sites have been discovered in the Bekaa Valley.

 In addition, about 80 archaeological monuments are left across all the governorates of Lebanon. The most prominent are the Roman castles in Baalbek and Tyre, the historic Byblos castle built by the Crusaders in 1204 and its historic harbor, and the remains of the wall that surrounded the Byblos in the middle ages. It is certain that had it not been for the wars in Lebanon throughout those years, more of these important historical monuments would have been discovered.

• Lebanon: The once School of the Middle East

There is no doubt that these events affected the current Lebanese reality. It gave it a diverse cultural and civilizational character and turned it into a seat and a passage for many cultures from the Asian continent and overseas. The first printing press in the Middle East was established in the monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in 1585, and in 1610 the first book, the Book of Psalms, was published there. The Lebanese culture was characterized by its openness to western and eastern cultures, so the Lebanese educational system was open to many languages and knowledge. The private educational sector was active during all times. The Ain Waraka School was established in Ghosta in the Keserwan Al-Fotouh region in 1798. It is considered the mother of schools in the East. The Aintoura Schools followed it in 1834, then the Daoudia School in Abey in 1862, and the Evangelical School in Abey in 1864, which after two years turned into the first university in Lebanon, the Syrian Evangelical College (which was renamed later to American University of Beirut). Schools and universities increased in numbers rapidly until schools and universities pervaded Lebanon.

• Lebanon: The seat for international businesses and international media platform

These events also gave Lebanon two distinct economic and political importance. On the one hand, Lebanon has become a headquarters for multinational companies, major international banks active in the region, and major international airlines that made Beirut airport a transit airport to Asia. The annual economic growth in the sixties was 4.9%. Agriculture grew annually by 6.3%, industry by 4.5%, and services by 4.8%. Gross domestic product was divided into 12% for agriculture, 33% for industry, and 55% for services. In 1960, the Lebanese gross domestic product amounted to 830 million US dollars, higher than Singapore’s (700 million US dollars). Today, Lebanon’s output is $38.5 billion, compared to $210 billion for Singapore.

On the other hand, Lebanon has also turned into an international media platform. The «Akhbar Garden,» issued by Khalil al-Khoury in Beirut in early January 1858, was the mother of Arab newspapers and the first unofficial periodical in Arab land. It was followed by the newspaper «Nafeer Syria» in 1860, founded by the teacher Boutros Al-Bustani, which called for national unity following the sectarian events in 1860. In the meantime, the media outlets doubled, reaching 52 daily political publications and 42 weekly and monthly magazines.

 Lebanon also witnessed the birth of many parties due to its democracy. The first party present in Lebanon in 1800 was the Armenian Tashnaq Party. Then, the parties multiplied since the establishment of the state of Greater Lebanon in 1920, and in 2015 there were 166 parties.

Since its independence in 1943, Lebanon established more than seventy diplomatic missions in a large number of countries in the world and on all continents. Lebanon has contributed to establishing the United Nations, the League of Arab States, the Organization of French-speaking Countries (Francophone), the Non-Aligned Countries, and the GATT (Tariff and Trade Agreement). It is an observer member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and has permanent missions to the United Nations and some specialized international organizations. Lebanon was a member of the committee that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the drafting committee for establishing the International Criminal Court in 1998. It has also hosted one of the world’s UNESCO headquarters since the early fifties. Its representatives participated in the drafting of many agreements and resolutions regulating human relations between peoples.

Lebanon is a peace-loving country that participated in only one war after its independence, the war against Israel in 1948, which ended with the signing of an armistice agreement between the two sides in 1949, which is still valid to date. After that, Lebanon refrained from engaging in any military battles, even though Lebanese soil was the scene of the most horrific wars in the region over the past fifty years.