A Protectorate, Indeed

Protected against whom by a state with reserved parliamentary representation for Armenians and Assyrians, in marked contrast, both to the treatment of the former by NATO (and putatively EU) Turkey, and to the treatment of such of the latter as remain in "liberated" Iraq? What is the threat against which protection is required by the Levantine state that reserves the Presidency and half of parliamentary seats for Christians, and which has a European official language alongside Arabic? Required by the West's true outpost in the Levant that remained a bulwark against Islamist expansionism while it remained a civilisation of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Druze, with Arabic as its lingua franca and with its de facto capital at Damascus?

No wonder that the Holy Land – Latin Catholic and Greek Orthodox, Melkite and Maronite, Syrian Catholic and Armenian, Anglican and Lutheran – founded, and continues to give considerable support to, the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, whatever else one might think of those organisations. And no wonder that Lebanese Christians pray for the success of Hezbollah, which for all its many faults is closely allied to several of their own political parties, whether the Melkites of the Skaff Bloc, the Armenians of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the broad Christian base of the Solidarity Party, or the Maronites of El Marada (yes, it is called that) and of General Aoun's (yes, General Aoun's) Free Patriotic Movement. Even Amal was partly founded by the then Melkite Archbishop of Beirut.

It is the main line of defence of the state that reserves the Presidency and half of parliamentary seats for Christians, acknowledged as such by those parties and by their Christian voters. Acknowledged as such by the Levantine state in which there are predominantly Christian provinces, and Christian festivals as public holidays. And acknowledged as such by the nearby power that has reserved parliamentary representation for Armenians and Assyrians.

Would that it were not so, because would that there were no need of any such line. But there is, and it is.