Resolving the Lebanese Issue
by
Saturday, January 12, 2008
There is no question
that virtually all non-Muslim communities in Greater
Lebanon (including the Druze) would prefer to remain part
of a new Lebanon, with Aramaean consent, rather than
joining a pre-dominantly Muslim federal Arabia.
There needs
to be six ex-Lebanese Arabian federal subjects, one Sunni
federal subject (Halba) and one Shi’i federal subject (Baalbeck)
in the north and two Sunni federal subjects (Sidon and
Qaraaoun) and one Shi’i federal subject (Tyre) in the
south. There also needs to be a joint Sunni-Shi’i federal
subject in Muslim parts of Beirut and the Muslim regions
close to it. The northern and southern ex-Lebanese federal
subjects would be connected through an extra-territorial
corridor through Aramaic Lebanon. Beirut, like Jerusalem
and Mosul would be divided. All boundaries should be drawn
so as to ensure that as many communities as possible find
themselves on the right side.
Palestinian
residents in Arabian federal subjects would obviously have
the same Arabian citizenship and the same residential
rights as others in those regions. There needs to be a
territorial arrangement whereby Syria annexes entire Sunni
border regions in Anti-Lebanon just inside the eastern
Greater Lebanese border, on the Hongkong model of one
state two systems, while ceding the wider Hermon Druze
region to the new Lebanon.