Beirut MP Nadim Gemayel. (Credit: An-Nahar)
On the anniversary of the assassination of former President Bachir Gemayel on Sept. 14, 1982, his son, Beirut MP Nadim Gemayel, said he was “celebrating” the date for “the first time in 43 years” because “the entire axis responsible for Bachir’s assassination has fallen and ended up in the dustbin of history,” according to the state-run National News Agency.
The past year marked a political shift in Lebanon and Syria. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024, coincided with a broader decline of the Iranian axis, including Hezbollah’s weakening in Lebanon after its war with Israel and Israeli attacks against Iran in June.
Bachir Gemayel, founder of the Lebanese Forces militia — then the armed wing of the Kataeb Party — was killed in a bombing one floor above a party office in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood, three weeks after being elected president. The attack also killed 32 others.
In 2017, the Court of Justice sentenced two members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Habib Chartouni and Nabil Alam, to death in absentia for the assassination.
During a gathering on Sunday in Sassine Square, the Kataeb MP also raised the issue of the state monopoly on arms. “We cannot accept any arms, regardless of their source (...). A state will rise and we are done with all forms of arrangements,” he said.
Gemayel also called for consolidating Lebanon’s identity and territorial integrity. “Our goal is to protect Lebanon and its existence, and to confirm the 10,452 square kilometers as a space of freedom and security,” he said, urging the demarcation of Lebanon’s borders with Israel. “We want the delimitation of our borders with Israel, and we will not accept being outside of the Arab consensus and the higher interest of Lebanon.”
Since early August, Hezbollah and Amal have criticized the government for its decision to disarm the party. On Sept. 5, during a Cabinet meeting held one month after the government tasked the army with drafting a disarmament plan by year’s end, ministers “welcomed” the plan without setting a timeline for implementation. The plan was presented by army chief Rodolph Haykal after the government’s five Shiite ministers walked out of the session in protest.
President Joseph Aoun praised Bachir Gemayel on Saturday, saying “the principles for which he sacrificed himself have become national constants for all Lebanese, notably a Lebanon that is free, independent and strong thanks to the unity of its people and the solidarity of its components.”
Bachir Gemayel's opponents fault him for his alliance with Israel, which launched a major military intervention in Lebanon in 1982 to expel Palestinian leaders. He was recognized as a partner by the United States and sought dialogue with Arab countries to end the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991).
