WI: Bachir Gemayel wasn't assassinated?

4:10 PM, September 14th, 1982. Bachir Gemayel, the recently Lebanese president elect, was assassinated by a SSNP member.

I wonder what would've happen if there was no assassination or the attempt would've failed. would Lebanon become a second western country in the middle east? would a peace treaty be signed between Lebanon and Israel? would Syria attempt to conquer Lebanon, probably causing a war against Israel?
 
Gemayel would have a chance of pacifying the country, but it is not assured and the odds are probably against him. He'll do better than his brother though. I don't think an actual peace treaty would be possible, although the part of Lebanon under his control would be at peace with Israel. Israeli PM Shamir's insistence Germayel make official peace was just unrealistic given the need of Gemayel to satisfy concerns of domestic legitimacy. IF Gemayel was able to end the civil war entirely and control the country, then he might be able to sign a peace agreement in the long term. However, he'll need disarm all the other groups first and kick out the Syrians. He might even need to remove all the Palestinians in Lebanon before he could feel secure enough to sign an official peace.

The bigger issue is whether Gemayel can defeat the other factions, and how long this will take. Presumably, Israel will need to withdraw slowly and allow the Lebanese government to assert control over all of southern Lebanon - levy taxes, administer the land, and recruit for the army while preventing any militias. He needs to avoid military defeat as he expands his control of the country. It was the Lebanese Army's defeat during the Mountain War (against the Druze and PLO) that demoralized the army and caused it to fracture and collapse in February 1984. Gemayel needs to always win. He either needs to defeat the Druze outright, or somehow convince them to reintegrate with the country under Gemayel's leadership. I find it unlikely they will agree to do so while not being defeated militarily. So that is another challenge. Honestly, this can't be done in only a few years. Gemayel will need several good breaks and perhaps a decade.

At that point he'll need to somehow remove the Syrians in north Lebanon. Most likely, he first begins by asking the Arab League to withdraw its mandate justifying the presence of Syrian troops. At that point, Syria's army there transitions from a force with a legal justification into an illegal occupying force. If Gemayel has made peace with Israel, this probably won't happen. But if the Arab League does vote against the continued Syrian presence (the "Arab Deterrent Force") then Syria must decide to either withdraw or to stay. If it stays, some kind of confrontation will happen. The Lebanese Army is likely unable to do so alone. If the IDF intervenes again, the internal legitimacy of Gemayel will suffer. So instead, he'll need outside support from the West (perhaps the US and France) as well as Syria's other Arab rivals - particularly Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Gemayel has a hard task ahead. He needs Israeli support, but he cannot deliver to them the one thing they want - an official peace treaty. The only way he can stay in power is to secure internal legitimacy which is to not be seen as an Israel puppet, but as a defender of Lebanon. He'll need a very understanding government in Israel, and he'll need great diplomacy to help push out the Syrians.

Only after he controls the entire country can he even possibly begin to contemplate how to finally deliver to Israel the thing they want. The safest thing to do is stall and never deliver with an official peace while doing everything he can to cooperate unofficially. When diplomatic conditions change in Israel's favor, say in the post-Oslo push that sees Jordan make official peace with Israel in 1994, he (or whoever is in charge by that time) may be able to piggyback on and make peace in a way that does not diminish his legitimacy among the greater Lebanese population.

But if we assume that 10+ years after the POD, that Lebanon is a stable country without armed political factions (likely ruled by a semi-dictatorship of the Maronites whose authoritarianism has a figleaf of democratic credentials) and a peace treaty with Israel, the country would be well positioned to prosper. It might have a good chance to redefine itself as a Phoenician culture instead of as an Arab people and thus point itself more towards the West.

However, that is a long and difficult task. Given the actual make up of Israel's government of the time, and the likelihood that the Lebanese Armed Forces will not be strong enough to crush the Druze and others during the necessary preliminaries before he can take on the Syrians, I think his chances are maybe 1/4 to 1/3. However, he has a much better chance at achieving lesser aims that would at least strengthen the Maronite Christians and slowly expand his base of support to other areas. Everything depends on his diplomacy and political skills.
 
Maybe have Peres win a total victory in the election, so you wouldn't have Shamir. Israel with a far more capable Prime minister would act differently in Lebanon.
 
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