A Turkish soldier wearing the Ottoman Empire traditional soldier costume symbolically stands guard at Turkish General Staff headquarters in Ankara. (Photo: AFP - Tarik Tinazay)
Legendary south Lebanese fighter Ali Harb died in exile after fighting Ottoman rule and French Occupation. Today, dozens of his descendants who currently live in Jordan continue to be denied Lebanese citizenship.
Touline - The town of Deir Abu Said, near Irbid in Jordan, has been home to hundreds of Lebanese for the past few decades. These relatives of the late Ali Harb hail from the Southern Lebanese town of Touline, yet they are denied Lebanese citizenship.
Their ordeal dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Back then, their ancestor, Ali Harb, fought in Lebanon against both the Ottomans and the French. After he was sentenced to death and denied citizenship by the latter in 1925, he fled to Jordan with his brothers, Mohammad and Abbas.
Bilal Yassine, a historian from the southern Lebanese village of Majdal Selem, visited his cousins from the Harb family in Jordan and was shocked to learn that more than 500 Lebanese from the same family live in the area.
In addition to the Harbs, Yassine found out that there are hundreds of other Lebanese who “were denied their Lebanese nationality, and instead obtained Jordanian citizenship and took up government jobs in Jordan including high-level and army jobs.” Yet, despite this, “they hang on to their Lebanese identity, they fly Lebanese flags in their houses and on their cars, and follow the Lebanese media.”
They have also made efforts to regain their Lebanese citizenship. “Their representatives met with Speaker Nabih Berri in the 1990s,” Yassine explains, “and asked for help in obtaining citizenship.”
Abbas Harb, who maintains contact with his relatives in Jordan, says that “they come to [Touline] on a regular basis and petition the Lebanese authorities, but they are always turned down. They continue to dream that they will be able to return to their ancestor’s home and officially call it theirs.”
“A large number of these people filed a lawsuit to obtain citizenship in 1998, again in vain. They are waiting for a political solution that may resolve the matter,” he continues.
Harb also notes that Deir Abu Said, where they live, is close to the Syrian border and not far from South Lebanon: “Had it not been for the Israeli occupation of Palestine, they would reach Bint Jbeil in South Lebanon on a two hour walk. These people, along with members of the Charara family of Bint Jbeil and the Tabaja family of Nabatiyeh, made this journey as they fled on foot to escape the French army.”
“The Harb family urged me to present their case again,” Yassine says, adding, “It upsets them that they are treated as foreigners in Lebanon despite the fact that their ancestors fought for the country and despite the fact that their relatives live in Lebanon and they own land in Touline and elsewhere.”
Yassine traces the Harb family’s problem to the fact that “the French removed Ali Harb and his brothers from the Lebanese citizen registry, which made it impossible for Ali to get a Lebanese identification card.”
The ex-mayor of Touline, Mohammad Ibrahim Awaleh, says that the residents of the area were registered with the Lebanese state in the 1950s, enabling most to obtain Lebanese citizenship.
However, he adds that “Ali Harb was not registered because he spent his youth fighting the French occupation, along with his famous companions Adham Khanjar and Sadiq Hamza Al-Faour, participating in heroic acts of resistance in Wadi al-Hujair.”
The ex-mayor adds that Harb was not the only one denied Lebanese nationality at that time: “A large number of Harb’s sons and relatives were denied citizenship, even though they spent years defending the country, only to pay the price in years of exile after they were chased out by the French army.”
Yassine recounts that the French army occupied much of southern Lebanon citing the burning of the Ain Ebel church in Bint Jbeil as an excuse: “Their motto was to get rid of the gangsters, taking advantage of poisonous propaganda published by the right-wing al-Bashir newspaper that was notorious for its allegiance to the French.”
“Bint Jbeil was destroyed by the French as they sought to arrest the resistance fighters, especially Adham Khanjar, Sadiq Hamza Faour, and Ali Harb, after Khanjar shot and wounded General Gouraud, the commander of the French army in the Levant. Khanjar and Faour managed to escape to Syria but the French occupation would later arrest Khanjar in the house of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash,” he adds.
Yassine says that “Khanjar was executed and buried in Beirut. Harb and Faour sought refuge in Jordan, where a Lebanese agent managed to assassinate Faour. Finally, Harb asked King Faisal for assylum and was granted land where he lived for the rest of his life with his family until he died in the 1990s.”
In his book A Revolutionary from My Country, the late writer Ali Murtada al-Amin describes Harb as “one of the leaders of the resistance movement in south Lebanon against the Ottoman and the French occupiers, as well as one of the participants in the 1920 Hujair Conference, along with Khanjar and Faour. Each of these led an armed group that struggled against the French occupation.”
Ali Harb’s name remains engraved in the memory of Touline today, especially with the hundreds of his relatives living in exile as a direct consequence of his legacy.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Touline - The town of Deir Abu Said, near Irbid in Jordan, has been home to hundreds of Lebanese for the past few decades. These relatives of the late Ali Harb hail from the Southern Lebanese town of Touline, yet they are denied Lebanese citizenship.
Their ordeal dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Back then, their ancestor, Ali Harb, fought in Lebanon against both the Ottomans and the French. After he was sentenced to death and denied citizenship by the latter in 1925, he fled to Jordan with his brothers, Mohammad and Abbas.
Bilal Yassine, a historian from the southern Lebanese village of Majdal Selem, visited his cousins from the Harb family in Jordan and was shocked to learn that more than 500 Lebanese from the same family live in the area.
In addition to the Harbs, Yassine found out that there are hundreds of other Lebanese who “were denied their Lebanese nationality, and instead obtained Jordanian citizenship and took up government jobs in Jordan including high-level and army jobs.” Yet, despite this, “they hang on to their Lebanese identity, they fly Lebanese flags in their houses and on their cars, and follow the Lebanese media.”
They have also made efforts to regain their Lebanese citizenship. “Their representatives met with Speaker Nabih Berri in the 1990s,” Yassine explains, “and asked for help in obtaining citizenship.”
Abbas Harb, who maintains contact with his relatives in Jordan, says that “they come to [Touline] on a regular basis and petition the Lebanese authorities, but they are always turned down. They continue to dream that they will be able to return to their ancestor’s home and officially call it theirs.”
“A large number of these people filed a lawsuit to obtain citizenship in 1998, again in vain. They are waiting for a political solution that may resolve the matter,” he continues.
Harb also notes that Deir Abu Said, where they live, is close to the Syrian border and not far from South Lebanon: “Had it not been for the Israeli occupation of Palestine, they would reach Bint Jbeil in South Lebanon on a two hour walk. These people, along with members of the Charara family of Bint Jbeil and the Tabaja family of Nabatiyeh, made this journey as they fled on foot to escape the French army.”
“The Harb family urged me to present their case again,” Yassine says, adding, “It upsets them that they are treated as foreigners in Lebanon despite the fact that their ancestors fought for the country and despite the fact that their relatives live in Lebanon and they own land in Touline and elsewhere.”
Yassine traces the Harb family’s problem to the fact that “the French removed Ali Harb and his brothers from the Lebanese citizen registry, which made it impossible for Ali to get a Lebanese identification card.”
The ex-mayor of Touline, Mohammad Ibrahim Awaleh, says that the residents of the area were registered with the Lebanese state in the 1950s, enabling most to obtain Lebanese citizenship.
However, he adds that “Ali Harb was not registered because he spent his youth fighting the French occupation, along with his famous companions Adham Khanjar and Sadiq Hamza Al-Faour, participating in heroic acts of resistance in Wadi al-Hujair.”
The ex-mayor adds that Harb was not the only one denied Lebanese nationality at that time: “A large number of Harb’s sons and relatives were denied citizenship, even though they spent years defending the country, only to pay the price in years of exile after they were chased out by the French army.”
Yassine recounts that the French army occupied much of southern Lebanon citing the burning of the Ain Ebel church in Bint Jbeil as an excuse: “Their motto was to get rid of the gangsters, taking advantage of poisonous propaganda published by the right-wing al-Bashir newspaper that was notorious for its allegiance to the French.”
“Bint Jbeil was destroyed by the French as they sought to arrest the resistance fighters, especially Adham Khanjar, Sadiq Hamza Faour, and Ali Harb, after Khanjar shot and wounded General Gouraud, the commander of the French army in the Levant. Khanjar and Faour managed to escape to Syria but the French occupation would later arrest Khanjar in the house of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash,” he adds.
Yassine says that “Khanjar was executed and buried in Beirut. Harb and Faour sought refuge in Jordan, where a Lebanese agent managed to assassinate Faour. Finally, Harb asked King Faisal for assylum and was granted land where he lived for the rest of his life with his family until he died in the 1990s.”
In his book A Revolutionary from My Country, the late writer Ali Murtada al-Amin describes Harb as “one of the leaders of the resistance movement in south Lebanon against the Ottoman and the French occupiers, as well as one of the participants in the 1920 Hujair Conference, along with Khanjar and Faour. Each of these led an armed group that struggled against the French occupation.”
Ali Harb’s name remains engraved in the memory of Touline today, especially with the hundreds of his relatives living in exile as a direct consequence of his legacy.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
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