John Keiger John Keiger

What’s up with Macron’s Lawrence of Arabia stunt?

Emmanuel Macron waves as he visits a devastated street in Beirut (Getty images)

President Macron neither lacks chutzpah nor a lust for drama. His walkabout yesterday amid the devastation of Lebanon’s Beirut, following the massive chemical explosion that killed over 150, wounded 5000 and razed a whole section of the city, evoked David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia with Macron as the strutting Peter O’Toole denouncing the factionalism that had thwarted the unity of the Arab peoples. 

‘I am here… to launch a new political initiative’ Macron intoned before shell-shocked crowds baying for a change of regime. ‘I expect clear answers from the Lebanese authorities about their commitments.’ And he warned that he would be back on 1 September to check that aid had been distributed properly and ‘does not fall into corrupt hands’. Meanwhile back in France condemnation of Macron’s stunt spanned the gamut of French politics: ‘Lebanon is not a French protectorate’ came the cry from an array of political leaders from left to right.

It is clear that Macron’s communications director needs a crash course in colonial history and a refresher in gilets jaunes studies. It is an irony of history that this remarkable flashback to France’s imperial past should come in the centenary year of Lebanon becoming a French protectorate at the end of the First World War in 1920. The Elysée appears to be suffering from ‘historical deficit syndrome’ (to quote my former doctoral supervisor) in failing to grasp that Lebanon achieved independence from France in 1943, when ironically France was herself under foreign rule.

France, of course, was awarded her mandate over Lebanon and Syria – at the same time as Britain was given Iraq and Palestine – as a result of the secret Franco-British carving up of the Middle East in the notorious Sykes-Picot agreements of 1916, the same agreements denounced by Lawrence of Arabia as contrary to promises made of an Arab national homeland.

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John Keiger
Written by
John Keiger

Professor John Keiger is the former research director of the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge.

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