The Lebanese Civil War has been the subject of debate and interpretation of several scholars, politicians, and international relations experts, most of who believe that the Lebanese war had resulted from the interconnected internal and external conditions that have increasingly built up and eventually exploded into an internal conflict.

I have chosen to read Ghassan Tueni’s interpretation on the Lebanese civil war in his book “Une guerre pour les autres” or “War of the others”, namely because the author was a close witness of the Lebanese war especially as he was the country’s ambassador to the United Nations for several years and owned one of the country’s most influential newspapers, “An-nahar”.

Tueni who has written this book ten years after the beginning of the Civil War (1985) warns his readers that it is neither an essay on the history of Lebanon nor an analysis of the war’s events and sequels, but his personal reflection on the war’s mercilessness, which has led him to be a witness against the foreign forces that have used Lebanon as their battlefield to serve their interests.

The book begins with a preface by ‘Dominique Chevalier’, a

In the conclusion of this book, Tueni gives his view on the Lebanese Question by referring to three major points: Power, society, and independence. Concerning power, he argues that the president has legitimacy but lacks authority-and that authority is transferred to the internal warring factions. Concerning society, he believes that it is fragmented due to erosion in national identity. Lebanon was becoming a micro-community nation whereby each Lebanese was identifying himself more and more with his direct community. As for independence, Tueni argues that Lebanon as a country has almost lost its legitimacy with the Israeli-Syrian presence on its territories. Tueni believes that the end of the Lebanese war is unlikely to end through violent means (revolutions, or Coups d’Etat), or through decentralization of the state and community federations. As the ambassador of Lebanon to the UN, he believed the most plausible solution for the Lebanese Civil War was to form a kind of “Geneva!

ld. Third, a regional strategy, which through the ‘Lebanese scenario’ gives Israel a clear picture on the balance-of-power in the Middle East. According to Tueni, Israel is not likely to achieve those long-term goals because the Middle East cannot possibly become a group of ghetto-states for the Palestinians. The third chapter, ‘The Palestinian Ghetto”, deals with the Palestinian question and its impact on Lebanon. Tueni talks about the impact of the Palestinian question on the Lebanese Civil War. He suggests four main reasons why the Palestinian question was a burden to Lebanon. First, the number of Palestinian refugees who came to Lebanon following the exodus of 1948 was proportionally superior to other host states like Syria and Egypt. This was a major destabilizing factor in Lebanon’s demographic, social, and economic givens, taking into consideration the fragile structures of the Lebanese society. Second, while the Palestinians were first confined to their camps (because it was thought that their exodus would be temporary), many started participating in the socio-economic life of Lebanon. This led many Lebanese to question the future of communitarian stability in the country and whether the Palestinian presence would be a destabilizing factor to it. Third, the number of refugees kept on increasing rapidly due to higher birth rates than Lebanese families and due to a continuous exodus of the Palestinians to Lebanon whenever they faced problems in other Arab Territories. Fourth, Lebanon was the first country where the Palestinians could militarily train themselves (it gave birth to a whole new generation of Fedaeyeen). Living in miserable conditions and feeling extremely frustrated, the Palestinians’ struggle for Liberation in Lebanon became inevitable, and this became another destabilization factor in the internal structure of Lebanon. These were major factors that led the right-wing Christians, the Phalangists, to take arms against the Palestinians in 1975.

The first chapter of this part, “Figures and Men”, describes the nature of the Lebanese multi-confessional structure and names the country’s two main religions (Islam and Christianity), and the sects belonging the those religions. In the other chapters of this part, Tueni discusses the sects separately and emphasizes on each community’s interests, fears, and views of the Lebanese political system. Tueni constantly refers to the history of the sects to better highlight their motives and to make us understand why each community takes a certain stand, and why it decides to ally itself with a particular foreign force. He says that Maronites, the largest Christian sect in Lebanon constantly sought security by seeking protection from external forces mostly because they perceived sectarian wars as a threat to their existence as a minority in an Islamic region. That’s the main reason why they proclaimed the role of majority governance during the establishment of ‘Greate

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