Hazem Saghiyeh

In the historical dispute pitting Lebanon against successive military regimes in Syria since the 1950s, there have been two constant features. The first is the freedom of the press and its right to criticize governments who hold power in Damascus, and the second is the Syrian refugees who are fleeing to live in Lebanon in order to escape persecution.

It would be no exaggeration to say that, in addition to the call for linking Lebanon’s foreign policy to Syria’s, these two issues have been at the heart of conflict relations between the two countries. Virtually every Syrian politician has questioned, at one point or another, the freedom of the Lebanese press and the fact that Syrian refugees and exiles are living in Lebanon after having been displaced in their own country.

The current issues of the press and political refugees fall, by definition, under the category of freedom. This attachment to freedom was justified by the pluralistic structure of the Lebanese society and by the fact that Lebanese politics are based on a parliamentary democracy. Yet it is also based on the fact that a great amount of Lebanese political literature portrayed itself as the mouthpiece of freedom in this East, which epitomized tyranny and unilateralism. Accordingly, some educated Lebanese figures, such as Michel Chiha, developed the theory of “Lebanon the refuge” while Western media dubbed Lebanon prior to the civil war in the 1970s as the only democracy in the Arab world. Indeed, emphasis on freedom domestically was often the other face of the required openness to the free and developed world.

Now, as Tunisia and perhaps even other Arab countries head to the polls, Lebanon is relinquishing what its people proudly imputed exclusively to themselves. Whether with regard to handing over Syrian refugees to the authorities in their home country or to turning a blind eye to their being kidnapped on Lebanese soil, it seems that a decent proportion of the Lebanese people has become biased to the Syrian military theory in this renowned historical dispute. Since this segment constitutes the basis of the current ruling power, one can say that “the highest authorities” in Beirut are switching the country from freedom to tyranny.

In this sense, one’s concerns should witness a twofold increase because we are swimming against the tide, which—slowly but surely—is gaining ground in the Arab region and because, under the impulse of the authorities and a sizeable portion of society, we are modifying an essential element of Lebanon’s political composition. This can only be described as heading into the abyss!

This article is a translation of the original, which appeared on the NOW Arabic site on Monday October 31, 2011