1/ Lebanon is NOT an artifact of French colonialism. Its current borders reflect the Maronite desire to build an economically viable state with seaports and agricultural land after the great famine of Mt Lebanon decimated 50% of its population. The Sunni Grand Mufti agreed.

2/ It’s sad to hear “our borders are artificial”, as if some foreign power dictated them to advance its own agenda. That is historically untrue.

3/ For the geographically challenged among you, Lebanon borders are largely natural. To the North, the Great Southern River; to the east, the Anti-Lebanon range; to the West, the Mediterranean sea. Only “artificial” border is in the South for reasons that are very obvious.

4/ Lebanon was over the years a refuge for minorities fleeing persecution in the region. Maronites, Shiites, Armenians, Jews, Kurds, Druzes, and many other groups sought the protection of its arduous mountains and welcoming cities.

5/ the modern form of Arabism is a late 19th century concept was revived from its ashes and given new form by Lebanese intellectuals (Jurji Zeidan, Amine Rihani, Ibrahim al-Yaziji, among others) as a form of resistance against the Ottoman empire.

6/ The same transnational identity these Lebanese helped shape in the mind of millions in the region came back to threaten their very own local identities with the political rise of Pan-Arabism in the late 1940s.

7/ Lebanese Muslims & Druzes, grown tired of Maronite clout, jumped on the Arabist bandwagon. This was first observed in a meaningful way in the 1958 Lebanon crisis.

8/ Years of civil war strengthened the divide. The PLO entered Lebanon and started conducting operations from within its borders, promising “social justice” to Lebanese groups fighting on its side. Assad entered to “keep the peace” as things degenerated into an utter mess.

9/ Cease-fire agreements reached in 1989 slapped an Arab label on Lebanon. Syrian Baathist hegemony peddled the Arabist narrative further, firmly quashing dissenters.

10/ The Lebanese regained their freedom in 2005 and with that started a new debate about identity. Here’s my take: we have AT LEAST 99 years of common history; our country is older than many nation-states around the world. It is high time we start seeing ourselves as LEBANESE.