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One can safely argue that the Lebanese society, in the aftermath of the civil war, has been heading toward a two-society segmentation: the oppressive “elite”, comprised mainly of warlords, merchants and bankers; and the marginalized, representing over 95% of the population.

Laws are made and broken for the sole purpose of serving the first category, while the second category is left with unemployment, emigration, poverty and crime. The majority of those are destined (every decade or so) for chaos and sectarian and tribal feuds. Recent Information International polls show that the Lebanese are split around sectarian lines on issues such as UN Resolution 1559, support for this Zai’m and that Zai’m. In addition, the poll seemed to indicate that allegiances are forgotten as quick as they are made. Respondents’ answers (most of the time) varied, not according to age, gender, education, or income, but rather to which sect they were born into.

The Lebanese tend to forget that the second and largest group (the marginalized) is made up of all the sects and has a common destiny:

_- More than 500,000 immigrants in 20 years.

_- $10,000 is each individual’s share of the public debt by the end of the year 2009.

_- More than 250,000 are unemployed.

_- 25,000 university graduates and citizens are looking for jobs each year.

_- 500 million tranquilizer pills are consumed annually.

_- 700 homicides took place in 2009.

_- LBP 620 billion was the deficit of the NSSF Sickness, Maternity and Family Compensation Funds in 2009, funds that all of the Lebanese benefit from.

The oppressive “elite” share the following spoils:

_- 3.5 million m2 of illegal coastal property.

_- 5.2 million tons of fuel that is imported exclusively by a cartel setup, in violation of existing laws.

_- $43.7 billion in interest on the public debt since 1993 until the end of 2009 (attributed to few hundred individuals).

_- $20 billion in bank deposits that are attributed by 0.5% of depositors (2002 statistics).

_- $450 million only paid in corporate taxes.

_- $8.2 billion banking sector profit over the past 12 years

_- $410 million tax on the bank interest

_- $2.1 billion spent on people who were not displaced or displaced who did not return.

One can further argue that both groups often intersect and sometimes certain mobility is allowed or gained. The oppressive “elite” often plays the role of the marginalized, in its attempt to explain its failure to administer the country. On the other hand, the marginalized can also become aggressive and oppressive by infringing on public property or refusing to pay water and electric bills to a state it feels it does not belong to. The hypothesis, however, is not complete without a third missing segment that is neither oppressive, nor marginalized. This is made up of independent individuals that come from all sections of society. Should these individuals continue to fail to work together, they will eventually dissolve into one or the other category. It is high time for the Missing Third to unite.

*An Nahar newspaper published this piece on 3 August 2002. The Monthly chose to re-publish it in its issue number 32 of February 2005. The situation since then has grown worse. The Monthly republishes it again and the figures have been updated with the year 2009 as a basis.

Jawad N. Adra

Jawad N. Adra - Who remembers? On that day in the mid-nineties, individuals from the so-called “civil society”, and most of whom with good intentions and some with a purpose and a strategy, organized the campaign “my country, my hometown, my municipality”. Funding of course is western and the reasoning is change from through the bottom-up approach. With those of purely good intentions there is no discussion, but for those who claimed they had a strategy and views of change involving civil society and 12 years after the first post-civil war municipal elections, the time is ripe for a serious discussion.

My country: Divided horizontally and vertically between five heads, and sponsored by the Ta’ef and Doha agreements and jubilantly celebrated in the ceremony held at the Syrian Arab Republic’s Embassy in Beirut.

My hometown: No electricity, no sewage, no water, and pollution everywhere. No public schools, no preventive health care, lack of awareness for rights and obligations and no accountability for those elected to the municipal council.

My Municipality: A miniature replica of the public sector and the Council of Ministers with every family being represented by a person irrespective of how corrupt or ignorant he is and with the head of municipality controlling all decisions. The saying goes: “The municipality is a president and a policeman.” Squandering of public funds, outright theft, construction of roads and retaining walls even when they are not needed, and the ambition of families for their sons to be hired as municipality policemen.

The solution? The solution lies in the dissolution of all the municipal councils and the implementation of the laid out and paid for schemes, plans and strategies including (Lebanon’s urban and rural master plan and the strategies of social and economic developments, among others), holding elections after the integration of the municipalities to minimize their number to less than quarter, allowing residents to vote in their place of residence rather than their place of birth and placing them under the jurisdiction of the Court of Audit.

Considering that all of this is not in the horizon, it is therefore recommended to raise Nancy Ajram’s picture in their so-called “municipality palaces” and to start the day with her song “baladiyat”…” literally meaning municipalities or from the same hometown. Following are the lyrics:

“Very very good … I am also naïve, I thank him, there is no one else to make my hours happy … I am a part of him as he is also a part of me … he is also from the same hometown… he is my “baladiyat”.”

Since Nancy is the United Nations goodwill ambassador, we can here celebrate the so-called international legitimacy partnership with the private and public sectors and celebrate our success in raising Lebanon’s name high in the world of art and democracy.

A lie called civil society! Yes, “I am a part of him and he is also a part of me!” as Nancy says.

Jawad N. Adra

Issue June 2010 | Issue95

Ever since Walid Jumblat spoke of his “moment of abandonment” and the Arab sultans (kings and presidents) and zua’ama of Lebanese tribes are engaged in a fiesta to justify to themselves their moments of abandonment.

But some of them decided to move from “a state of abandonment – Halat al- Takhali “ to “a state of enlightenment – Halat al-Tajali” so here it is:

- Bashar Assad is planning to establish a state of institutions where independent judiciary can deliberate freely and citizens can elect independents and opposition figures according to a plan that moves Syria within 20 years to the 21st century not governed by a family or a single party and where public money is not squandered. Then the people would freely support their leadership and the resistance facing Israel with dignity for the sake of Palestine and Syria. Then he (Bashar) signals to “the allies” in Lebanon, and more specifically the secular parties, that their relation with the intelligence services is forbidden.

- And there he is Hosni Mubarak deciding that he has ruled Egypt long enough and that the water of the Nile is still polluted, the Cairo air is still suffocating and that half of Cairo’s residents envy the two million grave dwellers in it.

- And there he is Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz deciding to lead the Friday prayers in Al Aqsa Mosque and demanding the immediate lift of the siege on Gaza.

And there he is …

And there they are, the zua’ama of the Lebanese tribes deciding that their ancestors were killed, their fathers were killed and their sons were killed, and they shall no more squabble and fight.

And there they are the Arab sultans (kings and presidents) suddenly enlightened.

Then Muammar Gadhafi awakens you from the dream laughing to tell you “I am the king of Africa’s kings” and longest serving ruler worldwide.

Wake up, gather yourself, rub your eyes and never dare to dream again. Stay in your “state of abandonment” as long as you wish but never be enlightened. Now leave, you are unwanted.

Jawad N. Adra

Jawad Adra - Citizen Zero decided to break the silence. Two local events provoked his sadness and his words. He was taken by a statement by Samir Geagea that he is an Arab nationalist and the jubilation of Fouad Siniora - also an Arab nationalist - with his new comrade. He was also taken by Walid Jumblat’s statement about an “abandonment of reason” (‘Lahthat Takhlee’ in Arabic). Citizen Zero did not know that Geagea, Siniora and of course Condoleezza Rice were up to their ears in their Arab nationalism nor did he know that the Druze enjoyed a special language worthy of a lexicon understood only by the enlightened of the “Arab Druze”. And he wondered about the variances between this lexicon and that of Bsharre when some of its inhabitants, after burning the houses in Ehden, stated in bewilderment: “Who burned Ehden?… Thank God!” At this point, Citizen Zero wonders: what happens if everyone declares they were living in a moment of abandonment?

- Hundreds of thousands of dead, missing and disabled in Lebanon’s civil war had become victims of an abandonment of reason.

- Billions of dollars worth in public funds from properties were squandered and violated, in an abandonment of reason.

- Confessions and tribes loathe and then love one another and elect zua’ama in moments of love and hate at the same time - all of course, in an abandonment of reason.

- Citizens protesting and voting after getting paid, in an abandonment of reason.

- A country with no electricity, in an abandonment of reason.

- Officers, politicians and capitalists ruled Lebanon and Syria and enriched themselves, in an abandonment of reason.

- Political assassinations and haphazard killings of students and citizens in clashes between March 8 and March 14, in an abandonment of reason.

- Lebanese soldiers were killed and the Nahr El Bared camp was destroyed, in an abandonment of reason.

- Public debt with high interest rates for Lebanese banks was accumulated, in an abandonment of reason.

- Media outlets were financed by politicians and states, in an abandonment of reason.

- Teachers do not teach and learners do not learn, in an abandonment of reason.

- Demands for Hezbollah’s disarmament on Sunday, August 13, 2006 were declared as soon as there was a “cessation of hostilities”, in an abandonment of reason.

- Bad roads and suffocating traffic, in an abandonment of reason.

- A railway without a train, in an abandonment of reason.

- A city without a public park and a public library, in an abandonment of reason.

- Polluted water everywhere and solid waste in the valley, in an abandonment of reason.

- Audi-Saradar announces the construction of an “urban dreams” complex after destroying what little remained of Phoenicia and Byzantium, in an abandonment of reason.

- LBCI suddenly discovers, after MTV was reopened, that there had been a squandering of funds over the past few years and that Solidere had crossed the limit, in an abandonment of reason.

- From “one people in two states” to at least two people, two nations and two embassies, in an abandonment of reason.

- From “the complete liberation of land” to two states: Palestine and Israel, in an abandonment of reason.

- From the “usurped province” (Iskenderun) to the Ottoman caliphate, in an abandonment of reason.

- An Arab world ruled by individuals, of whom the oldest ruler is Muammar Gadhafi (first worldwide) followed by the Omani Sultan Qaboos ben Sa’id, then by the Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, of course seeking to hand down the reins of power to their sons, in an abandonment of reason.

However, he read what Dr. Hassan Sarkis wrote in the Monthly about “Canaanite-Phoenician cities-states”[1] and “Phoenicia and the Phoenicians”[2]:

“Cities acted completely as independent states… He/she was either Sidonian (from Sidon), Aradian (from Arwad/Arados) and so forth. The natives’ negative reaction to be named Phoenician is caused by the term’s hidden pejorative meaning. Phoenician seems to have been derived from a Greek word for bloody, blood-soaked and even murderous or criminal.”

Furthermore, he read from Dr. Sarkis:

“Phoenicia, as a geographic entity, is confined to the middle part of the central eastern Mediterranean region situated between Ra’s Al Bassit in Syria, to the north, Mount Carmel in Palestine, to the south and the chain of Lebanon’s mountains to the east…”

But didn’t the Phoenicians establish Carthage in North Africa as well? Maybe it is possible to overcome the Sunni-Shia’a-Christian and Lebanese-Syrian-Egyptian-Iraqi-Saudi hurdles, but how?

Citizen Zero, after all this, deduced that he was a Phoenician in a moment of abandonment. He is therefore a Phoenician-Druze and so went the cry to the Arabs stretched from “the roaring ocean” (Morocco) to the “rebellious gulf” (Arab or Persian) to join him in this new identity.

1 - The “Canaanite-Phoenician” city-states by Dr. Hassan Salameh Sarkis, The Monthly, issue number 89

2 - Phoenicia and the Phoenicians by Dr. Hassan Salameh Sarkis, The Monthly, issue number 88

Jawad N. Adra - In order not to do injustice to the Arab sultans (now known as kings or presidents) and in order not to do injustice to the zua’ama of Lebanon (the lords of war, money and tribes) we shall recall what Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) in 1948:

“Listen to me:

A family man is never a real family man.

An assassin is never entirely an assassin.

They play a role, you understand.

While a dead man, he is really dead.

To be or not to be, right?”

Since none of them care for, or for that matter, fear the dead, let us also quote Sartre in his 1943 Les Mouches (The Flies):

“Fear ‘your’ dead no more, they are ‘my’ dead.”

With this, The Monthly will notecase to publish an editorial for a period of time.

Lebanon and War: two words that go hand in hand. As soon as one war ends, another one always seems to be around the corner. The 1840 war, the 1860 war, and then on to World War I, then there was the 1958 strife, until the major war of 1975 that lasted until 1990 during which there were Israeli wars on Lebanon including the 1978 and 1982 invasions, after that the Israeli aggressions of 1993, 1996, and finally in 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a reply to columnist Sarkiss Naoum’s article published in An Nahar on August 10, 2009 titled “Is Lebanon of 1870 … Similar to Present-Day Lebanon?” Naoum quoted Protestant missionary William M. Thomson’s impressions on his travels to ‘The Holy Land’ published in his book “The Land and The Book”. An Nahar published an abridged version of Jawad Adra’s response on August 12, 2009 that The Monthly will print in full. Read the rest of this entry »