Leon Blum’s Popular Front government had also hoped to resolve differences between France and its mandates in Syria and Lebanon. After years of opposition interspersed with fruitless negotiations, nationalists in Beirut and Damascus responded to the change of government in Paris with a new optimism. The year 1936 seemed to herald a new age of broader Arab independence and reduced imperial controls. Britain, which had conceded independence to Iraq in 1930, was on the verge of concluding a similar agreement with Egypt in 1936. Nationalists in Syria and Lebanon had every reason to believe the Popular Front government, with its enlightened views on empire, would follow suit and conclude treaties that would allow them to follow Egypt and Iraq into the League of Nations as nominally sovereign states. In the aftermath of the 1925–1927 revolt, Syrian nationalists had pursued the politics of national liberation through nonviolence and negotiation, in a policy known as “honorable cooperation.” The National Bloc, headed by wealthy urban notables, became the dominant coalition of parties and factions working toward the common aim of securing Syria’s independence. They redoubled their efforts after Iraq secured its nominal independence in 1930. However, faced with the persistent opposition of the conservative French colonial lobby, the National Bloc had made no gains through cooperation. The first treaty the French offered, in November 1933, fell far short of granting independence and was rejected by the Syrian Chamber. Honorable cooperation began to give way to systematic resistance, culminating in a fifty-day general strike called by Syrian nationalists at the start of 1936. The Popular Front government of Leon Blum seemed both to sympathize with the demands of Syrian nationalists and to place a high priority on restoring peace and stability to their troubled mandate. Shortly after coming to power, the Blum government entered into fresh negotiations with the Syrian National Bloc, in June 1936. The two sides made rapid progress as the French negotiators conceded many of the nationalists’ demands. A draft treaty of preferential alliance was concluded between the French and Syrian negotiators in September 1936 and submitted to their respective parliaments for ratification. Syria believed itself on the verge of independence. In light of Syria’s success, the Lebanese pressed the French to draft a similar treaty granting Lebanon its independence. Negotiations were opened in October 1936. Following the model of the Syrian document, a draft Franco-Lebanese treaty was concluded in just twenty-five days and sent on for parliamentary approval in Paris and Beirut. Nationalists in Syria and Lebanon were very satisfied with the terms of the new treaties with France, as demonstrated by the ease of the ratification process in Beirut and Damascus. The Lebanese Chamber approved its treaty in November, and the Syrian Chamber approved its own at the end of December 1936, by unanimous vote in both countries. However, as with the Blum-Violette bill, the colonial lobby in France succeeded in blocking any debate or vote on the 1936 treaties with Syria and Lebanon in the French National Assembly until the fall of the Blum government in June 1937. Lebanese and Syrian hopes for independence crashed with Blum’s government. In 1939, with war looming in Europe, the French Assembly refused to ratify the treaties. Adding injury to insult, French colonial authorities took the further step of ceding the northwestern Syrian territory of Alexandretta to Turkey, which had long claimed the region for its 38 percent Turkish minority, in order to secure Turkey’s neutrality in the impending war in Europe. Outraged Syrian nationalists organized huge rallies and demonstrations, provoking massive repression by the French authorities, who suspended Syria’s constitution and dissolved its parliament. France was on the verge of a major confrontation with its two Levantine mandates when Nazi Germany occupied the country and overthrew its government in May 1940. A collaborationist French government—the Vichy Regime—was set up under Marshal Philippe Pйtain, the same “hero of Verdun” who had displaced Lyautey in Morocco at the height of the Rif War. Under the new regime Syria and Lebanon were to be ruled by a Vichy high commissioner, General Henri Dentz. The British, already troubled by the pro-Axis leanings of Arab nationalists in Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine, saw the Vichy administration in Syria and Lebanon as a hostile entity. When Commissioner Dentz offered Germany the use of Syrian airbases in May 1941, Britain was quick to intervene. United with the anti-Vichy Free French forces, headed by General Charles de Gaulle, the British occupied Syria and Lebanon in June–July 1941. With the British occupation of Syria, the Free French promised full independence to Syria and Lebanon. In a proclamation read shortly after the Anglo-French invasion, General Georges Catroux, speaking on behalf of General de Gaulle, announced: “I come to put an end to the mandatory rйgime and to proclaim you free and independent.” ⁴⁴ The French declaration of Syrian and Lebanese independence was guaranteed by the government of Great Britain. Nationalist celebrations in Syria and Lebanon proved premature. The Free French had not forsaken the hope of retaining their empire after the war. Both Syria and Lebanon would face an uphill battle to secure their independence against tremendous French opposition.

No sooner had the Free French proclaimed an end to the mandates than the Lebanese began to prepare for independence. Nationalist leaders of the different religious communities worked out a power-sharing arrangement in an unwritten agreement known as the National Pact, concluded in 1943. Witnessed by the political heads of all of the communities involved, the Lebanese upheld the National Pact without ever seeing the need to record its terms in an official document. According to the terms of the pact the president of Lebanon would henceforth be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the parliament a Shiite Muslim. Other important cabinet posts would be distributed among the Druzes, Orthodox Christians, and other religious communities. Seats in the parliament would be distributed in a ratio of six Christian seats for every five Muslim deputies (for which purposes the Sunnis, Shiites, and Druzes were all considered Muslim). The National Pact seemed to have resolved the tensions between Lebanon’s communities and given them all a stake in their country’s political institutions. Yet the pact enshrined the same principle of “confessionalism” upheld by the French, rigidly distributing posts based on religious community, undermining Lebanese politics, and preventing the country from achieving genuine integration. In this way, the French left a legacy of division that long survived their rule in Lebanon. Once the Lebanese notables had resolved their political differences, they called for fresh parliamentary elections in 1943. In keeping with the country’s constitution, the fifty-five new members of parliament assembled to elect the president, and on September 21, 1943, they chose the lawyer and nationalist Bishara al-Khoury to serve as the first president of independent Lebanon. Al-Khoury was the same lawyer who had once advised General Gouraud and who had been an early critic of the French mandate in Lebanon. He had risen to national prominence in 1934 when he and a like-minded group of politicians formed the Constitutional Bloc, seeking to replace the French mandate with a Franco-Lebanese treaty. Since that time he had worked consistently to bring French rule in Lebanon to a close. The deputies broke out in loud applause when al-Khoury was named president, and white doves were released in the Chamber. “When the final result was announced,” al-Khoury recalled, “and I went up to the podium to give my speech, I could barely hear my own voice over the shouts and gunfire from outside. Yet I managed to make myself heard and told how we would cooperate with the Arab states and end Lebanon’s isolation.”⁴⁵ The Lebanese considered themselves fully independent and saw no grounds to expect any resistance from the French. The Free French had pledged to end the mandate, and the Vichy Regime had been forcibly expelled from the Levant by the British. The Lebanese parliament proceeded to assert its independence by revising the constitution to strip France of any privileged role or right to intervene in Lebanese affairs. However, when the Free French authorities learned of the agenda for the Lebanese parliamentary session of November 9, 1943, they demanded a meeting with al-Khoury. They warned the Lebanese president that General de Gaulle would not tolerate any unilateral measures to redefine Franco-Lebanese relations. It was a tense meeting that ended without a resolution of the two sides? differences. The Lebanese paid little concern to French warnings. The Free French were a fragmented government in exile whom the Lebanese believed to be in no position to halt their legitimate claim to independence—which Great Britain had guaranteed. The Lebanese deputies met as planned and revised Article 1 of the Constitution, which defined the frontiers of Lebanon as those “the Government of the French Republic officially recognized” to assert their “complete sovereignty” within the country’s current and recognized boundaries, which were spelled out in some detail. They established Arabic as the sole official national language, relegating French to a subordinate status. They empowered the president of Lebanon, rather than the government of France, to conclude all foreign agreements, with the parliament’s consent. All powers and privileges delegated to France by the League of Nations were formally excised from the Constitution. Finally, the deputies voted to change Article 5 of the Constitution, which defined the national flag: horizontal bands of red, white, and red replaced the French Tricolor, with the national symbol, the cedar tree, still emblazoned in its center. Legally and symbolically, Lebanon had asserted its sovereignty. It remained to secure French agreement to this new order. The French authorities reacted swiftly and decisively to the revision of the Lebanese Constitution. President al-Khoury was awakened in the early morning hours of November 11 by French marines who burst into his house. His first thought was that they were renegades who had come to assassinate him. He shouted to his neighbors to call the police, but no one answered. The door to his room was flung open by a French captain armed with a pistol, holding his son. “I do not mean to do you harm,” the Frenchman said, “but I am carrying orders from the High Commissioner for your arrest.” “I am president of an independent republic,” al-Khoury replied. “The High Commissioner has no authority to give me orders.” “I will read the order to you,” the captain responded. He then read a typewritten statement that accused al-Khoury of conspiracy against the mandate. The officer refused to give the order to al-Khoury and allowed him only ten minutes to pack his things. He was surrounded by soldiers “armed to the teeth.” Al-Khoury was disturbed to see that the soldiers were Lebanese. The French took al-Khoury by motorcar to the fortress of the southern town of Rashayya. They were joined en route by several other cars carrying the prime minister, Riyad al-Solh, and leading members of his cabinet. By that afternoon, six members of the Lebanese government had been taken to Rashayya. Violent demonstrations broke out in Beirut as word of the arrests spread. Al-Khoury’s wife joined the demonstrators to show solidarity with those protesting the injustice done to her husband and the Lebanese government. The Lebanese appealed to the British, in their role as guarantors of the Free French declaration of Lebanon?s independence in July 1941, who intervened to force the French to release President al-Khoury and the other Lebanese politicians. The changes to the Lebanese Constitution were preserved, but France clung to its Levantine mandate through its control over the security forces. The government of Lebanon would continue its struggle against the French to secure command of its army and police forces in a tug-of-war that would last another three years.⁴⁶