Riad el-Solh
Riad el-Solh negotiated the arrangement that made Lebanon a country rather than two communities sharing a coast, and was assassinated for his politics eight years later. Born in Sidon in 1894 into a prominent Sunni family, he was educated in Istanbul, joined the Arab nationalist societies before the First World War, and was sentenced to death in absentia by the Ottomans and later exiled twice by the French. His nationalism was Arab and Syrian, and for years he opposed the existence of Greater Lebanon as a French creation carved out of Syria — which is what makes the settlement he reached significant. The National Pact of 1943 was an unwritten agreement between him and the Maronite Bishara al-Khoury. Its terms were a trade: the Christians would give up French protection and accept that Lebanon had an Arab face, and the Muslims would give up union with Syria and accept an independent Lebanon within its existing borders. Offices were divided by confession on the 1932 census — a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, a Shia speaker, and a six-to-five Christian majority in parliament. He became the first prime minister of independent Lebanon, and when the French arrested him and the president in November 1943, the protests that followed forced their release and the date became the national day. He was shot in Amman in July 1951 by members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, in revenge for the execution of their founder. The pact he made held for thirty years and broke in 1975. Lebanon still allocates its offices by the confessional formula he agreed, on a census taken in 1932 that has never been repeated.
- Lived: 1894 CE – 1951 CE
- Nationality: Lebanese
- Roles: Prime Minister of Lebanon (1943-1945, 1946-1951)
