A Maverick’s trip to the hinterland -1

 Aoun’s visit to Syria has sparked a bush fire in the Lebanese media. It seems like every single editorialist and politician in the country felt the urge to comment on it. 

Much of the analysis coming from the aounophobic press was twofold, one one hand geopolitical and on the other electoral. Aoun’s visit was seen as an electoral trick to insure Syrian support during the coming parliamentary elections. It was also presented as a proof of Aoun’s political positioning within the “Syrian-Iranian Axis”. 

On the other side of the policial spectrum, journalists and politicians were praising the visit or saying that it was perfectly natural. Aoun’s internet media Tayyar.org emphasised the religious aspect of the visit, and so did his Orange TV.

I personally believe that in practical terms, the visit doesn’t have much sens. By that, I mean that it will not have any immediate result. Syria has very limited influence on the Lebanese elections. It can no longer choose who is allowed to run, and it is no longer a broker in the formation of alliances or the constitution of slates. It can assert its influence through the votes of its nationals that were accorded a Lebanese citizenship in the 1990s, it can try to pressure its allies into making or unmaking alliances, but this is relatively insignificant compared to its influence during its “mandate” over Lebanon. In fact, its influence depends on the will and compliance of its local allies; on their acceptance of its interference, like it was the case in the late 1950s and 1960s with Nasser’s Egypt. 

So what’s the fuss about?

Working on Peace education

I have been working for several weeks now on two programmes for peace education in Lebanon: One for trainers and one for a summer workshop. It’s a whole new field I’m discovering and I this has resulted in my total neglect of this blog. One of the main fuels for my post writing was the daily news. I chose to ignore it a couple of months ago because I noticed that it was sterile and reported nothing really new. But today, it is very difficult to ignore the news because it’s here, it’s violent, it’s real, and it is bloody.
For over two weeks now, there has been ongoing fighting between the lebanese army and a militant islamic group in and around the camp. And I see myself quite supportive of the Lebanese army. How can I reconcile this position with my pro-peace work? how can I be supporting a military intervention while working on an anti-violence pro-peace programme?

Israel to appoint first Arab minister

I heard on the radio today that the Israeli cabinet had agreed to include an Arab MP in the current government. For the first time in it’s history, Israel will have a non-Jewish cabinet member. This obviously has been long overdue. The country after all, even if it declares itself to be Jewish, has two official languages (Hebrew and Arabic) and its original Arab inhabitants make up for about roughly 20% of the entire population.

This is obviously a very important step for the country in its long path to come to term with its binational and multiethnic character. 

MK (Minister in Knesset) Ghaleb Majadele is a muslim Arab (Sunni) and a member of the Labour party. In an article published in the Haaretz, he is quoted saying: “I have a good feeling, the Arab population is being given a sense of cooperation”. “I will prove that I am suitable for any position. I want to loyally serve 20 percent of the country’s residents.”
He might be assuming responsibility for culture, science and sport, which MK Ophir Pines-Paz handled before he quit the cabinet, protesting against the inclusion of MK Avigdor Lieberman, the current Minister for Strategic Affairs. M. Lieberman is the only member of the Cabinet to have voted against the inclusion of Ghaleb Majdele.

Murder in Istanbul

Hrant Dink, the editor of the bilingual Armenian/Turkish Agos newspaper was shot dead in Istanbul.
He had been receiving threats for a while and had been dragged to the courts for “insulting turkishness”.
Interestingly enough, his murder was described as insulting turkishness by the Turkish authorities. This is a similar argument one hears in the Middle East: ‘tarnishing the state’s image or reputation’…
Interesting comment on the following blog:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harut-sassounian/murder-of-an-armenian-jou_b_39650.html

Route 181, a documentary and a debate

Route 181 is a three part documentary, shot and edited by Michel Khleifi & Eyal Sivan, two Israeli directors; one Christian (self-defined as Palestinian) and the other Jewish.
They chose to follow the border decided upon by the UN general assembly in its Resolution 181, to try to retrace it by filming the different villages and areas it went through, going from south to north.
During the screening on Wednesday, organised by the French association A’doc, only the third part was shown. The final part of the trilogy could be taken as a documentary of its own. The message is very clear, the build up interesting and the finale quite dramatic. It takes us to the Northern region of what the directors call Israel/Palestine.
This region was supposed to be divided into four areas: two Jewish and two Arab, but after the 1948 war, and after having been invaded by five armies (Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi and Jewish), it was actually split into two parts: Galilea reunited under Jewish sovereignty and a much smaller region attached to the kingdom of Jordan as part of the West Bank.

The documentary’s point is to expose the absurdity of this division line that actually was never drawn and officially determined. It also underlines the violence that accompanied this demarcation, geographical and ethnic.

Eyal Sivan who was present at the screening discussed quite brilliantly his film, his approach, his views both as a documentarian and as an Israeli citizen.

Should Siniora resign?

For three days now, the opposition has been waging demonstrations and a sit-in, meters away from the office of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. They’ve been calling for the government to resign, contesting its legitimacy after the withdrawal of all the Shiite ministers and the resignation of a Christian minister and the assassination of another.

In the meantime, Siniora has been receiving support from foreign governments, ambassadors and political parties that are still part of the government, and their leaders. 

What has the government achieved after a year in power?
A question of political responsibility
Is his government still legitimate?
Can he pull the country out of this political crisis?

Visiting MAFPA (the franco-palestinian friendship house)

Asile, a French NGO, set up a Franco-Palestinian friendship house in Beddawi, a Palestinian camp situated a couple of miles north of Tripoli. Two days ago, there was trouble in this camp, after the police discovered an arm stash. But this didn’t stop us from going there.
First impressions
It was the third time this year I entered a Palestinian camp. During this first visit, I started to notice how familiar they had become to me. Architecturally, they didn’t differ much from the neighbouring towns or cities. The only distinctive signs were political, and they were to be found everywhere, on walls, on banners, in street names… All posters, names, graffiti, wall drawings, streamers and flags were political, and they all referred to Palestine.
The Franco-Palestinian friendship house has been operating in Lebanon for several years now. Its main activity takes place in summer when a team of artists, educators, journalists and animators fly in from France to start a three week workshop that is proposed to children living in the camp.
The team that operates the house is entirely Palestinian and quite young and dynamic. They are now proposing academic support lessons to children, and some cultural activities (such as a weekly film projection). I really enjoyed the dynamism in this group and would greatly enjoy working with them. They are all Palestinian francophone. They graduated from the handful of francophone schools UNRWA operates in Lebanon. I wonder if we could associate them in the coming future to a program managed by Peace Initiatives in collaboration with AILES, a Lebanese association proposing similar activities. This could help to bridge the two communities and to increase the outreach of the programs of each association.
Accents
What never fails to amaze me is the extent to which the Palestinian accent is preserved in the Palestinian camps, some Lebanese expressions are used, and some Palestinian expressions are dropped, and I’m sure the Palestinian living in the camps no longer share the dialect spoken by those still living in Northern Israel, but they retain inflections, expressions and an accent that is easily identifiable as Palestinian. But those who have been to a Lebanese University to complete their studies also master the Lebanese dialect and can quite aptly switch from one to another. This duality is also to be found during presentations when they decline two geographic identities, that of the village their forefathers left in Palestine, and that of the camp or Lebanese locality they live in.

Intercommunal bridging

Samir Chartouni, Pierre Gemayel’s bodyguard shot dead on Tuesday, was brought back to his native village of Chartoun (in the Aley region) for his burial. The convoy that transported him was stopped in Aley by PSP militants, who took his coffin draped in the Kataeb flag, and carried it on their shoulders to Chartoun. The image was quite striking because these two parties had fought each others in 1983 and the war that ensued resulted in ethnic clensing and the expulsion of the Christians of Chartoun by the Druze militia (PSP) that attacked them from Aley.

This image seems to translate the intercommunal reconciliation that Walid Joumblatt mentions so often: Druze and Christians, PSP and Kataeb, comming together, accepting one others, admitting their political differences and uniting nevertheless.

But how does that reconciliation operate? How can one explain that Druze villagers and PSP partisans accept to carry a coffin wrapped in a Kataeb flag, the symbol of their ‘traditionnal ennemy’? Are bygones really bygones? One can only hope that they are, but it seems quite unlikely.

One must keep in mind that the reconciliation process was State funded and Zaïm operated. No tribunal or commission was set up to estimate the damages incured by the ‘displaced’, and the authority that was incharge of the file chose a very personalised manner to conduct the process. Instead of working on indivudual bases, it decided to operate on collective ones, village by village, through a ceremony in which the reconciliation was solemnly declared.

One must keep in mind that the reconciliation process was State funded and Zaïm operated. No tribunal or commission was set up to estimate the damages incurred by the ‘displaced’, and the authority that was in charge of the file chose a exceedingly personalised manner to conduct the process. Instead of working on individual bases, it decided to operate on collective ones, village by village, through a ceremony in which the reconciliation was solemnly declared. Through this means, the returnees who had been ethnically cleansed out of the region, and their former foes (who had participated in their expulsion, or profited from it).
Through this mean, the populations of the areas that suffered the displacement were not given ownership of the process. This was left in the hands of their political leader. It is true that the two communities are brought together, but through the mediation of a Zaïm in the beginning, and then several. In other words, a distance is kept between the two communities so that the Zaïm could keep on “bridging” them together. But what happens when he decides to break with one community? Would the flock that he controls through varried means keep the ties or follow him?

For other writings on the national reconciliation debate in Lebanon:
Displaced and returnees, the saga continues – 1
October 17th, 2006
Displaced and returnees, the saga continues – 2
October 24th, 2006

A noose hanging over Saddam Hussein’s head

“It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq’s history”, said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, commenting on the former Iraqi dictator’s death sentence, in a speech he delivered on Sunday.But is it really?

That’s not how the majority of Iraqi Arabic speaking Sunnis seem to see it, even though Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime was tough on the whole Iraqi population and not on the Kurds and Shiites alone. But during these last years, he came to represent Sunni power in Iraq, something that the Arabic Sunni population see as irremediably lost.

How did this come about? How did this tyrant become the symbol of a community and its alleged fall? Saddam Hussein is after all the person eliminated all his political rivals (many of whom belonged to the same community as him), set up a very authoritarian and centralised state, where power was imposed on the people, rights were restrained and their existence became merely formal, the distribution of State resources was discretionary, people were arrested, tortured, executed without trial… He was responsible for dragging his country into three very destructive wars that drained its resources and brought it to the state it’s in today. His brutality towards the Shiites and the Kurds created the grievances that we see today in both communities. But instead of seeing all this, the community which he belongs to sees him as its symbol.

Many elements can be taken into account to explain such a reversal of fortune. But I believe the most important one is the mismanagement of communal politics.

A month ago, I participated in a workshop on power-sharing where I went into a very heated debate on a closely related issue with another participant who’s working on Iraq. She was arguing that the main problem in Iraq was the recognition of ethnic identities by the new political system. I personally thought that maybe that recognition didn’t go far enough and that is probably the aggravating factor. Communities are social facts, and so expressions of communalism are expected when several communities live in the same polity and interact with each others. Ignoring communalism could be a way to manage diversity, but when several communities in a polity are demanding recognition and communal rights, such a policy becomes impracticable.

The greatest danger in institutionalised communalism is its tendency to transform power sharing into a zero sum game: what one community gains, the others loose. And even if that isn’t true, this is how it is felt by the population. And that’s exactly what is happening in Iraq, and that’s what happened in Lebanon after 1943 (when a rigid power-sharing formula was devised); any reform of the system was generally viewed by the Christian community as signifying a loss or a setback. On the other hand, the electoral system in which a candidate can only run against another candidate belonging to the same community as he does is quite effective in attenuating the political tension between communities: they never compete against each others during elections (except if the constituencies are very large and communally diverse, as the example of the latest elections in Lebanon have shown).

So communal politics are not bad per se. Whether they are adapted to the situation or useful is another question. But even when established, they can always be removed or replaced if deemed useless, or if they do not answer a specific need that is expressed in a country. Nevertheless, the greatest challenge is to imagine how to transform the political game that power sharing devises tend to institute into a win-win one. In Iraq as in Lebanon, such a game hasn’t been set up yet. Unfortunately.

Remembering Lebanon’s 17th community

I’ve been wanting to write an article for some time now on the Lebanese Jewish community, its growth in the 1940s, its decline in the 1960s, and its near disappearance in the 1980s. But I’ve never found the time to finish researching the topic and to initiate the writing process.
While working on the preceding post, I was wondering if something positive can come out of this joint suffering of the Mizrahi Jews and the Palestinians. One should also add that of the Lebanese Shiites who were dragged into a conflict that wasn’t theirs eversince their homes and villages became one of its main battlefields.
This joint suffering could create empathy, but at first the grievances should be expressed publicly.

In Lebanon, the Jewish community has ceased to exist. Probably less than a hundred Jews still dwell in Lebanon with no Rabbi, no open Synagogue, no Religious Tribunal… The most active Jewish institution is certainly the cemetery, for those who remain are ageing.
Those who remain have chosen transparency. In this multi-religious society, their voice is never heard. I wonder if there’s a way to make it audible again. To acheive that, they should be made comfortable about it. They should be publicly acknowledge as being part of the nation, encouraged to come back, like all the other Lebanese who have emigrated. To say that in Lebanon, the State never persecuted or discriminated against the Jews is not enough. What the State actually did was erase their presence from the public sphere.

Lebanon has since the 1940s been defining itself as a Christian-Muslim country. Where does that leave the Jewish community? The constitution talks about parity between Christians and Muslims. What about the Jews? There are no official Jewish holidays (even public holidays in Lebanon follow the parity rule: they’re split evenly between Christians and Muslims). Hezbollah and the programs its television airs confuse very readily Jewish and Israeli, although the law protects the Jewish faith and the Jewish community from defamation. But the government has done nothing about it.

There is a shared belief in Lebanon that defending Jews means siding with Israel in the Israeli-Arab conflict (or what remains of it). I wonder how this belief can be changed, through what actions.

Jewish claims in relation to Arabic Countries

Haaretz pubished a couple of days ago an article on Jews from Arab States campaigning for recognition… as refugees. This article had unfortunately escaped my attention. Luckily taltalk reproduced it on his blog and this enabled me to read it. Its main focus was a campaign spearheaded by two groups for the recognition of Jews from Arab countries as refugees in the Middle East conflict. Their other motives are reperations and, with the help of the Israeli Justice department, these two groups are collecting and registering testimonials, affidavits and property claims for future claims.
These two groups are:
The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC)
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC)

I hope the Justice department isn’t forwarding this issue in order to support the idea that there was an exchange of population between the Arab world and the Jewish state, and then argue that the losses on both sides are equivalent. The Israeli government would probably then argue that they are even larger on the Jewish side. The WOJAC evaluates Jewish losses to mount to over $100 billion in personal and community assets. Could the Palestinians top that? Would the Arab countries accept these claims and pay reparations? Almost certainly not, they’d rather settle for a deal, and so would the Israeli government. In other words they are likelier to sacrifice the individual rights of their citizens and refugees then risk any measure that could hurt their interests.

This would be scandalous, because loss and suffering are not simple equations that could annul each others and that they could be subtracted from one another. When they are put together they can only add up. And they should be put together because they are linked, nevertheless one doesn’t make the other less of a victim. News of these claims will probably inspire anger in the Arab countries. People would object to them, say that the departure of their Jewish communities was voluntary, that it was organised by the Israeli government, that there was no anti-Semitism in the Arab World… Some of their arguments would be false, other short-sighted and some even right. But hopefully that will remind them that there was a time when their were thriving Jewish communities in their countries, a time when that community was considered to be the oldest (as in Alexandria) or one of the largest (it seems that in the 19^th century, a third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish).

This campaign is obviously based on grievances, which is absolutely normal and expected. Their departure from Arab countries was quite traumatic. They were facing growing hostility in their countries because of their religious faith which linked them to Israel; they left very hastily abandoning a lot (not only their belongings, their livelihoods, but their history, their language, their heritage). And they had to start anew, in a country that was foreign to them, designed by European Jews and where anything Arab had to become alien (except for the food).
Here is Linda Abdel Aziz’s testimony, she fled in 1971 at the age of 21: “We did not interfere in politics but we were persecuted. We are all haunted”. Her father, Jacob, who stayed behind in Iraq disappeared in 1972, and family members believe he was executed by the ruling Baath party regime for being a Jew.
One could only imagine her suffering and her rancour. Through her testimony and claim she’s expressing her pain, she’s able to make her voice heard.

There is a positive aspect in these campaigns. They recreate a connection between the Mizrahim and the Arab states they originated from. It is true that the connection here built is based on legal claims and grievances. But it is a link nevertheless. They will have to put forward their past identity, plunge back to an earlier period where they were Arabic speaking Jews interacting with other Arabic speaking groups. That will awaken the curiosity of the third generation Israelis of Arab origin, to their specific heritage, to these ancient lands that their forefathers lived in for centuries and sometimes millennia.

Betting on Berri

For the past two weeks, Speaker Nabih Berri has been promising the Lebanese a surprise, one he revealed yesterday… only it wasn’t much of a surprise and it certainly didn’t catch anyone off guard. What he was proposing was to resume the National Dialogue round table (see October 16^th Post: Lebanese idiosyncrasies 3: “National Dialogue”). He was recycling an old idea, an old formula that had failed in achieving results the first time.  But Berri’s unsurprising surprise is not surprising at all. The only things that he has proven up to know are his skills in enriching himself, becoming the largest patron in the public service, and surviving politically without much of a political base.  So who is actually betting on him, and why? Surprisingly enough, during the election period, it’s Hezbollah that supported him in the quadripartite alliance of which he was the weakest constituent. They knew that he wouldn’t have much leeway because of his dwindling popular support, and they thought that he could be useful as an intermediary between them and those who refuse to acknowledge them. That was their bet, and that’s why they imposed him as Speaker claiming that refusing him would be opposing the will of the Shiite community. After the elections, the former Bristol Gathering started betting on him, hoping to break the alliance between him and Hezbollah. If he joined them, they would be able to claim Shiite backing and pressure Hezbollah into decommissioning. So they recognised him as a political arbitrator between them and Hezbollah and reinforced his prestige in encouraging him to start and chair the National Dialogue round table. This way, they thought, he’ll become a neutral party between them and Hezbollah, he’ll distance himself from Hezbollah, and this will be a first step in getting him to side with them.

The July war proved their bet wrong: Berri fulfilled his promise, becoming the official representative of Hezbollah, at a time when the party’s politburo was in hiding or working on the ground. After the war, the former Bristol Gathering resumed its previous bet. Is it that they do not learn from their mistakes or could it be that they’ve given themselves no other alternative?

Displaced and returnees, the saga continues – 2

In the preceding post on the displaced (October 17^th), we saw how a political actor uses this issue in relation to national reconciliation so as to assert and reaffirm his power both locally and nationally. The reader might be interested in getting some background information on the controversy surrounding the displaced of the Shouf and Aley districts.

The civil war and the military interventions of the Syrians and Israelis had resulted in the displacement (through expulsion or heavy destruction of the livelihoods) of several hundreds of thousands of Lebanese. There were four main areas which suffered the most from displacement: Beirut and its suburbs (Christian fleeing or being pressured to leave for the eastern parts and Muslims fleeing or being expelled to the western parts), Southern Mount Lebanon (that was cleansed of its Christian population), the South (mostly Shiites leaving because of the intense Israeli bombing and occupation), the Northern and Eastern peripheral regions (mostly Christians leaving because of  political reasons, or being expelled from isolated villages).

In 1992, the Ministry of Displaced was created to grant rights to citizens and protect them in order to guarantee the return of the displaced according to all relevant national and international laws. It estimates the number of the displaced population to be 800 000. For the funding of their return to the towns and villages they had left during the civil war, a Central Fund for the Displaced was established.As for those who are displaced as a result of recent military attacks (by Israel), they are cater for by the High Relief Commission.The management of the displaced files was controversial from the very start.

The most contentious element was the naming of Walid Jumblatt, a warlord responsible of much of the displacement, as the first minister of the displaced. Since then, this ministry has been held almost disruptively by an MP from Jumblatt’s bloc (and the region he controls) that he has named to the post.  More recently, two elements brought the controversy around the displaced back to the forefront.

-         A conference organised by the FPM on the ‘Right of return’ where the ministry’s handling of the issue was criticised (September 30^th).

-         The allocation of 80 million LP to those who were hit by this summer’s Israeli attack, while the other displaced are granted by the Ministry of the displaced the sum of 30 million LP (October 16^th).

The Mecca document, what reconciliation between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis?

The media reported today that Sunni and Shiite clerics had signed a declaration in Saudi Arabia, pleading for national reconciliation in Iraq between all groups, especially the Sunnis and Shiites.How effective can that be, I asked myself.  Are such agreements supposed to be directly effective or are they only meant to give moral support to concrete political steps?  Either way, they should have a strong moral weight. This is brought by the influence of its signatories and the way it addresses moral issues.  So what was exactly agreed on and by whom?

I search the internet for the complete text (here enclosed, with a link to its Arabic version) only to be disappointed by the content and the signatories to it.Neither Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani nor Moqtada al-Sadr were present or represented. But they both declared their support to it after its publication.If one looks closer at the document, one notices that its signatories are not prominent clerics.  But the most disappointing thing about it is its content. It’s only positive feature is that it treats Shiites and Sunnis as equals. However, it does that by pretending that the differences between them are minor, instead of celebrating difference and saying that it enriches the Islamic faith.

Furthermore, there is no general condemnation of violence. It only insists on the fact that Muslims should not shed Muslim blood and that God abhors those who harm Muslims in any way. The only “universal” or ecumenical element in this declaration is its stand on the safeguard of holy places whatever faith they belong to. One finds no mention of the new Iraqi power sharing system or any element of its political system. The only political element present is the principle of unity which is expressed in the most tradition of ways with an exterior party working on annihilating it and creating a “fitna”.  In other words, political divisions and disagreements become source of a conflict and violence brought about by foreigner forces. This is a very popular idea in the Islamic and Arab speaking part of the world.

Most surprisingly, the document ignores the American occupation, and says nothing on acts of violence against the Americans or those who work with them, in the name of resistance. Is that the price of concensualism?

The Mecca Document

A scanned copy of the document (in arabic) can be found on the Organisation of Islamic Countries’ site. http://www.oic-oci.org/

Displaced and returnees, the saga continues – 1

“The bells will soon ring again in Kfarmatta, Abey et Brih” said Druze leader Walid Jumblatt from the front steps of the Maronite Patriarchal seat. He followed this statement with an open criticism against the FPM saying that some parties act as if the reconciliation of 2001 had not happened.

Here is an English translation of what he actually told the Lebanese journalists there:

“I’ve come here to reaffirm this historic relation and remind those who pretend to forget August 4^th and 5^th, Patriarch Sfeir’s visit to the ‘Mountain’. With him, we have consolidated the historic reconciliation in the ‘Mountain’. All bells had rung on that occasion, and shall soon, God willing, ring again in Kfarmatta, Abey and Brih, with the help of the Lebanese State and the divine blessing, the true one, of Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir” (Orient Le Jour, October 17^th).

This extract is very interesting because it shows the way political actors deal with “Reconciliation”, history and geography.Reconciliation is seen as a ceremony that unites the representatives of the two communities that had battled: the Druze and the Christians (here reduced to the Maronites although Christians belonging to other denominations were equally expelled or killed and their churches, convents and cemeteries destroyed in the Shouf in 1983). As for the representative, there is a politician/former warlord, on one side (who actually gave the orders to kill, plunder and expel) and the head of a church on the other. And they are both considered representatives of their communities. Even though there are no representatives of communities in Lebanon. The Patriarch is the head of the Maronite church, not the political representative of the Maronites (even though the ruling coalition treats him as such) and Walid Jumblatt is an MP with three representatives in government, and even though he considers himself to be the representative of the Druze and is recognised as such by the ruling coalition of which he is part, there are no official representatives of communities in Lebanon.We notice that history is mentioned twice, and both times in relation to the speaker and his political and spiritual partner, who in other words makes history. The Patriarch’s visit to the Shouf following Jumblatt’s invitation in 2001 is considered as historic, and so is the relation linking Jumblatt and the Patriarch. In both cases, we find no explanation on why they are historic, what makes them historic other than the fact that they are done by two “leaders”. Nevertheless they are given (by those participants and the media) a high symbolic value because of the participation of these leaders in the ceremony. This gives it more than a symbolic value. The value is given a metaphysical dimension, and a magical one where words become action, and reconciliation is realised through words pronounced by specific people.

As for geography, Jumblatt refers to the “Mountain” meaning the district of the Chouf, Aley and parts of Baabda and the Metn. This terminology is foreign to the administrative divisions of Lebanon. I think it was introduced by Kamal Jumblatt after he territorialized his power (following the 1958 civil war), marking a region that was defined as Druze (although demographically, they were a minority in all districts except Aley) and it gained political significance when Jumblatt set up an independent government there during the war and banned the Lebanese anthem and flag from it. So it’s rather odd for an MP after the war to use a terminology that is linked to the war (like the word ‘Sharkieh’ and ‘Gharbieh’ used to define the Christian part of Beirut and its suburbs and the Muslim part of Beirut and its suburbs respectively) under the claim that it’s a historical region (although it only serves to hide the real words that define that region and that are clearly associate to it: Druze and Jumblatt).