ABSTRACT
Except for a border that runs for 49 miles, Lebanon and Israel appear to share little in common. Israel is pre-eminently a country of immigration, and Lebanon one of emigration. Israel parades the largest per capita army in the Middle East, on which it spends relatively one of the highest sums each year; Lebanon has one of the smallest armies in the region and denies it modern weaponry. The Lebanese political system has become an oddity, not in the Arab lands alone where representative government has almost vanished, but among the world’s democracies. It beggars summary analysis. The cabinet is responsible, in constitutional theory, to the unicameral chamber of deputies. Jurisdiction over the Mountain, as Ottoman Lebanon was commonly known, was exercised by the Sublime Porte until 1832 through a system of authoritarian autonomy that could scarcely be labeled democratic or even representative.
