Kataeb Party
The Kataeb Party, officially the Kataeb Party – Lebanese Social Democratic Party, historically known as the Phalangist Party, is a Lebanese nationalist political party in Lebanon.
Founded by Pierre Gemayel in 1936, the party and its paramilitary wings played a major role in the Lebanese Civil War, opposing Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon as well as collaborating with Israel. The Phalangists were responsible for the Black Saturday massacre, the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, Ehden massacre, and the Karantina massacre. In 1982, Pierre's youngest son Bachir, the leader of the party's militia, was elected President, but was assassinated before he could take office. This led to Phalangist militiamen committing the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 war, with support from the IDF.
Bachir was succeeded by his older brother Amine, who led the party through much of the war. In decline in the late 1980s and 1990s during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the party slowly re-emerged in the early 2000s and is currently part of the Lebanese opposition. The party currently holds 4 out of the 128 seats in the Lebanese Parliament.
Names
The Lebanese Phalanges Party is also known as Phalanges Libanaises in French and either Kataeb or Phalangist Party in Arabic. Kataeb is the plural of Katiba which is a translation into Arabic of the Greek word phalanx which is also the origin of the Spanish term Falange. In 2021, the party changed its official name to "The Kataeb Party – Lebanese Social Democratic Party".Origins
The Kataeb party was established on November 5, 1936 as a Maronite paramilitary youth organization by Pierre Gemayel who modeled the party after the Nazi Party, the Spanish Falange, and Italian Fascist parties, all of which he had encountered as an Olympic athlete during the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, then Nazi Germany. The movement's uniforms originally included brown shirts, and its members used the Fascist salute.In an interview by Robert Fisk, Gemayel stated about Nazism and the Berlin Olympics:
I was the captain of the Lebanese football team and the president of the Lebanese Football Federation. We went to the Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin. And I saw then this discipline and order. And I said to myself: "Why can't we do the same thing in Lebanon?" So when we came back to Lebanon, we created this youth movement. When I was in Berlin then, Nazism did not have the reputation that it has now. Nazism? In every system in the world, you can find something good. But Nazism was not Nazism at all. The word came afterwards. In their system, I saw discipline. And we in the Middle East, we need discipline more than anything else.
Pierre founded the party along with four other young Lebanese: Charles Helou, who later became a President of Lebanon, Chafic Nassif, Emile Yared, and Georges Naccache. Gemayel was chosen to lead the organization, in part because he was not a political figure at that time.
During the first years of the Kataeb Party, the Party was strongly opposed to having any group dominate Lebanon. They opposed the pan-Arabists who tried to take over Lebanon and also the French, whom they saw as trying to infiltrate their culture and impose themselves within Lebanon. Gemayel and the Kataeb Party advocated for an independent and sovereign Lebanon free of all foreign influence. They actively took part in the struggle against the French Mandate, until Lebanese independence was proclaimed in November 1943. The party motto was "God, Nation and Family."
In the 1950s, the Phalanges, deliberately emphasized French personalist thinking in their ideological framework, particularly influenced by the works of French Christian Existentialist philosopher Emmanuel Mounier. Mounier's ideas, which gained prominence among Catholic students in France during the 1930s, were integral in shaping the party's philosophical underpinnings. In the Kataeb's first party program, presented at their inaugural congress in 1956, the party clearly reflected Mounier's personalist principles, which advocated for a society of citizens rather than mere collective nationalism. This approach starkly contrasted with the ideology of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which emphasized the primacy of the nation over the intrinsic value of the individual. The adoption of these ideas marked a significant shift within the party and was particularly popularized by young Phalangist intellectuals who had encountered Mounier's thought during their university studies in France.
The influence of the Phalangists was very limited in the early years of Lebanon's independence but came to prominence as a strong ally of the government in the 1958 crisis. In the aftermath of the crisis, Gemayel was appointed to the cabinet, and two years later, was elected to the National Assembly.
In 1968, the party joined the Helf Alliance formed with the two other big mainly Christian parties in Lebanon: the National Liberal Party of former President Camille Chamoun, and National Bloc of Raymond Eddé, and won 9 seats of 99 in the 1968 parliamentary elections, making it one of the largest groupings in Lebanon's notoriously fractured political system. By the end of the decade, the party created its own militia, the Kataeb Regulatory Forces and soon clashes began with the rising Palestinian militant guerrillas.
By the 1970s, the party had become a political giant in Lebanon, with an estimated membership of 60,000 to 70,000. The vast majority of members were Maronites, but some were members of minority Christian communities, Shiites, Druze, and Jews.
Kataeb Regulatory Forces
The Phalange party's militia was not only the largest and best organized political paramilitary force in Lebanon but also the oldest. It was founded in 1937 as the "Militants' organization" by the President of the Party Pierre Gemayel and William Hawi, a Lebanese-American glass industrialist, who led them during the 1958 civil war. Fighting alongside the pro-government forces, the Phalangists defended the Metn region.Disbanded in January 1961 by order of the Kataeb Party's Political Bureau, Hawi created in their place the Kataeb Regulatory Forces. In order to coordinate the activities of all Phalange paramilitary forces, the Political Bureau set up the Kataeb War Council in 1970, with William Hawi being appointed as head. The seat of the Council was allocated at the Kataeb Party's Headquarters at the heart of Ashrafieh quarter in East Beirut and a quiet expansion of KRF units followed suit, complemented by the development of a training infrastructure.
Two company-sized Special Forces units, the "1st Commando" and the "2nd Commando" were created in 1963, soon followed by the "Pierre Gemayel" squad and a VIP protection squad. To this was added in 1973 another commando platoon and a "Combat School" was secretly opened at Tabrieh, near Bsharri in the Keserwan District. Another special unit, the "Bashir Gemayel brigade" – named after Pierre Gemayel's youngest son, Bashir – was formed in 1964, absorbing the old "PG" company in the process.
Considered by many analysts as the best organized of all militia "fiefs" in the whole of Lebanon under the leadership of "chef" Boutros Khawand, it was administered by a network of Phalangist-controlled business corporations headed by the GAMMA Group "brain-trust", backed by the DELTA computer company, and the SONAPORT holding. The latter had run since 1975 the legal commercial ports of Jounieh and Beirut, including the infamous clandestine "Dock Five" – "Cinquième basin" in French – from which the Phalange extracted additional revenues by levying illegal taxes and carried out arms-smuggling operations. The KRF was served by a clandestine-built airstrip, the Pierre Gemayel International Airport, opened in 1976 at Hamat, north of Batroun, and had its own radio station "The Voice of Lebanon" or "La Voix du Liban" in French set up in 1976.
In July–August of that same year, the Phalangists headed alongside its allies, the Army of Free Lebanon, Al-Tanzim, NLP Tigers Militia, Guardians of the Cedars, the Tyous Team of Commandos and the Lebanese Youth Movement in the sieges – and subsequent massacres – of Karantina, al-Masklah and Tel al-Zaatar Massacres at the Muslim-populated slum districts and adjacent Palestinian refugee camps of East Beirut, and at the town of Dbayeh in the Metn.
During the 1975–76 phase of the Lebanese Civil War, the Kataeb Regulatory Forces' own mobilization and street action skills allowed the Kataeb to become the primary and most fearsome fighting force in the Christian-conservative camp.
At Beirut and elsewhere, Phalange militia sections were heavily committed in several battles against Lebanese National Movement leftist militias and suffered considerable casualties, notably at the Battle of the Hotels in October 1975 where they fought the al-Murabitoun and the Nasserite Correctionist Movement, and later at the 'Spring Offensive' held against Mount Lebanon in March 1976.
Main events
1936–1943
In 1943, the Kataeb played an instrumental role in attaining Lebanon's first independence from the French mandate. During this period, Kataeb led many social struggles to consolidate national cohesion and promote individual liberties and social welfare. The Kataeb elaborated the first Lebanese "labour charter" in 1937. It was a pioneering initiative as it called for a minimum wage, a limitation of working hours, and paid leaves. The Kataeb was one of the first Lebanese parties to have a solid avant-garde economic program and organized social activism throughout Lebanon.1941 saw the creation of the first women section in a Lebanese Party. It called openly for stopping any kind of discrimination towards women. Since 1939, the Party has issued Al Amal, a leading bilingual political publication.