Here is an insightful article by Robert Fisk on France’s historic and present interests in Lebanon. Anyone interested should also check out the scene in the film “West Beirut” where at a French high school in Beirut, a student is told by his teacher that it was the French who gave Lebanon its nation and freedom.
A French colonial legacy of despair: They wanted Lebanon’s ‘independence’ – but they wanted it in France’s favour; by Robert Fisk:
I couldn’t help a deep, unhealthy chuckle when I watched the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy arrive outside the wooden doors of Saint George’s Maronite Cathedral in Beirut this week. A throb of applause drifted through the tens of thousands of Lebanese who had gathered for the funeral of murdered industry minister Pierre Gemayel. Here, after all, was the representative of the nation which had supported the eviction of the Syrian army last year, whose president had been a friend of the equally murdered ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, whose support in the UN Security Council was helping to set up the tribunal which will – will it, we ask ourselves in Beirut these days? – try the killers of both Hariri and Gemayel.
Grave Error 