Levantism, or Arab Levantism, is a new call being made today by voices and parties that support the Syrian regime. Even former security officer and current Syrian ambassador to Amman, Bahjat Suleiman, has volunteered his views on the matter, setting it against Zionist Middle-Easternism (Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, 8/11/2013). In reality, it is not odd for a regime that professes the use of terminology that it itself detests, to put into circulation a new term for use, and implicitly, for contempt. This reflects a need that is perhaps quite urgent today, with the growing regional face of the conflict in Syria. Since the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has "united" the Levant and Iraq, the Levantist call is closer to being the answer to ISIS, but aims through its "unionism" to provide channels of support for the Syrian regime, or justify what is already happening in this regard, whether this is military intervention by Lebanon's Hezbollah or Iraq's Abu al-Fadl Abbas militia, or political and religious rallying of religious and sectarian minorities, as we saw in a certain conference in Beirut a few days ago. But, away from vulgar argumentativeness, the concept of Levantism could have had a decent connotation. To be sure, it would have been able to constitute a kind of cultural environment that enriches the nation-state in the Levant, especially if linked to two other cultural frameworks, one Arab and one Islamic, inspired by the shared Ottoman heritage. Needless to say, a bond as such almost always creates economic and investment opportunities for the Levantine countries and their peoples. Note, however, that this is unrelated to the call of Syrian nationalism, which seeks to establish a chauvinist nation and nationalism based on archaeological foundations and an imaginary map of a supposedly refined and superior lineage. But who destroyed that Levantine bond, in the positive sense of the word? We would not be saying anything new when we stress that a healthy relationship between Iraq and Syria, the largest two countries in the Levant, is a sine qua non for any feasible and useful Levantism. Yet we would be saying nothing new either, when we stress that no one destroyed this bond like the two ruling Baath parties in Syria and Iraq had done. To be sure, the assumption on the basis of which both Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein ruled required perpetuating the conflict between them, so that the two men's authority survives and endure. This is an equation that did not give way, except for a few months in 1979, throughout decades. Furthermore, Levantism loses a lot of its meaning without Lebanon. For one thing, the latter remains, in spite of everything, the clearest image of the pluralism of the Levant, if not its cosmopolitan potential also. But if we suffice ourselves with the testimonies of Michel Aoun alone, in the long interval between 1990 and 2005, we would become only more certain that the Syrian regime was the deadliest, most harmful force among the many other forces, internal and external, to be unleashed on Lebanon, especially its Christian minority. Moreover, while the desired form of Levantism involves, by definition, an Arab cultural moment, and another Ottoman – helping it overcome any chauvinist tendencies – the pro-Syrian regime environment only pits it against the "Bedouin Arabs" and "Neo-Ottomanism," two things that are supposed to smear Gulf regimes and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This discourse does not try hard to suppress its racism, which reconnects it to the ideas of Antoun Saadeh, leader and founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. In short, what is being proposed to us, in the name of an inclusive Levantine bond, is no more than to justify the path trodden by Lebanese and Iraqi fighters to the Syrian interior, to support a regime that represents not the Syrian homeland, but the sect and the narrow region, instead of rising to the level of representing the future Levant!
