Abstract EN:

The international and public contemporary law efinies the concepts of civil war and non-intervention on the ground of the principle of the equality of the peoples rights and self-determination. But in lebanon, the reference point of the legitimity of power is not the people but the community. This particularity gives to the lebanese conflicts a peculiar aspect. The lebanese political system is based since the middle of the nineteenth century on sharing out the state power between the various lebanese religious communities. So, any insurrection against the established government becomes difficult and even impossible, since the insurgents - the communities- have their own representatives inside the government. The numerous armed interventions in the libanese conflicts, launched either by states or by international organisations, proceed, beyond all question, from the arab-israeli conflict and from the "cold war" between the united states and the soviet union. They are also widely derived from the very nature of the lebanese political system. The lack of national cohesion between the lebanese populations, ussued from the political system, have encouraged these interventions. Israel and specially syria have found in this political system a precious ally in order to realize their aim to destabilize lebanon.