Without Lebanon, the land of the cedars, there is no Israel in the biblical sense! Don’t they say “the Promised Land of Canaan?” Is not Lebanon part of the “Land of Canaan” which was given to the descendants of Abraham as an inheritance which was theirs to have? In Deuteronomy, doesn’t Moses sing at the gates of the Promised Land: “Let me pass, I pray Thee, let me see the good land across the Jordan, that goodly mountain and Lebanon?” But to which Lebanon Moses is referring to, and to what Promised Land? The Promised Land, as well as the Kingdom of God, to use the very words of Jesus, are in our heart … and in our love for our neighbor, because whether we like it or not, man is the brother of Man! But what a disastrous idea it was to have detached Lebanon from Syria, and Palestine from Lebanon, to name only these neighboring kindred countries who have always been in dire want of a truthful and lasting entente. Everything in them unite them—be it through their people or their adjoining borders!  Should we take a step back in the documents and historical archives of that time which was responsible for the tearing apart of that region, we would be stunned and particularly pleased to discover that the majority of Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians at the time the Ottoman Empire was dismembered into small States, did not want this fait accompli: not the Jews of Jerusalem, not the Mufti of Damascus, and not the Maronites of Baabda. This is to say, if we want peace to prevail in the region, we must return to the original idea of social unity, a biblical unity … the very total unity of the family of Canaan: an ethnic, economic, and religious unity, which is to bring the Land of Canaan as dreamt by Abraham, who is the common father of all children of that region: Jews, Christians and Muslims. Only then will that region shine to a bright luster and live happily ever after. I think that just like the European countries, who spent endless years tearing one another apart, through endless internecine struggles which delayed their development, like also America, India, or Pakistan … the Land of Canaan will be united or will not be at all!