Response from a reader
i received a response from a reader and friend salman abu sitta, an engineer and who is an expert in palestinian affairs.
i would like to share with the readers these few points in the commentary on the article published on 19-11-2019 entitled ‘the saudi jinn and lebanese newspaper’. in the article, there was a paragraph about the headlines which appeared on the front of the magazine ‘al-ahrar “issued in 1927, related to the lebanese concerns at the time, including ‘discussions on the lebanese-palestinian border’!
what i would like to add here is to emphasize the validity of the paragraph, which dates back to 90 years ago, and which concerned a sharp dispute between the french mandate authorities, which controlled lebanon and syria, and the british mandate authorities, which controlled palestine, east jordan, and iraq. the british side was working under pressure from the jewish forces to seize the water sources in palestine, and the french side sought to expand the area of a christian state in lebanon.
the british occupied palestine during world war i, following their successful expulsion of the ottomans in 1917. the french occupied lebanon after the end of world war i (1920) and left it in 1943.
at the time, mount lebanon governorate was an ottoman province independent of the rest of the states. following the establishment of a major christian state in lebanon, they saw the mountain as small in size, poor in water, and this required its expansion. although the land they claimed was inhabited by a majority of shiite muslim population, these ‘al-mtaouleh”, as they were called, did not pose a political or material threat to the christian state, which france sought to establish, as the majority of them were poor farmers and as a result would have little influence on state administration.
after lengthy and tiring deliberations between the mandate powers, the parties agreed in the 1926 treaty (the treaty of the good neighbor) to annex all shiite villages of lebanon, i.e. jabal amel, and left a few shiite villages inside palestine. it was also agreed to annex the hasbani river, the source of the jordan river, to palestine, hence the so-called galilee finger, which is receding south to the head of naqoura, note that the hasbani, relative to the town of hasbaya in southern lebanon, stems from the northwestern slopes of mount hermon, a length of 24 kilometers inside the lebanese territory, and then exits to palestine (israel), where its name changes to the jordan river.
paradoxically, the land of the almtaouleh, the land of farmers and the poor, who were not a threat to the nascent of the christian state, the villages which britain had abandoned in favor of france, became, by the time, the strongest minority in lebanon.
