Syria and Hezbollah

Submitted by Abir Chaaban (Canada), Mar 9, 2005 at 07:15

The Problem with Syria and the so called Arab States is that they want to view history from the most appealing point to their case. Greater Syria was an Ottoman entity and Palestine was created over Syria by the Sykes Picot Agreement. They tend to start here. The fact that the Arabs conquered Syria, which was known as the Roman Byzantine Empire does not seem to be part of History. The fact that the Roman Empire conquered Syria and Phoenicia does not mean anything in Arab History of the region. Therefore, Syria wants an Ottoman Syria and not a historic Syria. Historically Syria and Lebanon were distinct entities, as confirmed by Herodotus, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. Yet, Herodotus is not a choice of Historians within the Arab domain of History. According to the Arabs each entity that has been conquered by the Arabs has undergone a process of racial and ethnic transformation to being an Arab; only because of linguistic assimilation strategies that were adopted by the Arab conquers. However, the spread of Arabic was a result, and in exactly the same manner as world speaks English today, of education. Simply put, those territories speak Arabic since Arabic was a language of education.
So, you are right to say that this situation originate to the 1920's after the collapse of Ottoman Syria to the Allied Powers. Lebanon was carved to what it was prior to the Arab Occupation, to being Lebanon historically known as Phoenicia. If a Greater Syria has ever existed it has under the Arabs and never before that. Syrian conceptions of Greater Syria amounts for the Arab aspirations of an Arab nation, which is a concept that is greatly comfortable with eliminating existing legitimate states that the Arabists ideologically disagree with, and to the rationale of their existence, such as Israel and Lebanon and implicitly Kuwait. The Arab League is the organization that supports dictators who promote this ideology by supporting absolute regimes rule in almost all Arab States. Those regimes function comfortably in Egypt, Syria, and former Iraq.

Hezbollah's struggle of the Cheba'a farms however seems the most puzzling claim that Syria is supporting in the Syrian-Lebanese chapter; Syria agrees with Hezbollah's claim that this disputed territory was Lebanese, when there was no Ottoman Lebanon. Syria and Lebanon were both constituted by the United Nations. If the UN map indicate that those farms are Syrian then they must be Syrian. Syria and Lebanon were made by the League of Nations. Hezbollah is not basing their claim to any historic facts that amounts to the existence of a defined territory of an entity that was called historic Lebanon, which does not exist anyhow. Hezbollah and Syria are therefore, creating a conflict in Lebanon that is fundamentally Syrian Israeli and not a Lebanese Israeli.

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