ABSTRACT
After World War I, the infusion of Western economic, political, and ideological concepts in the Middle East accelerated forcing traditional and communal loyalties to compete with the nascent appeals of nationalism, class, and ideology. Lebanon, after all, has probably been more intensely exposed to Western economic and ideological concepts than any other Arab state. Examination of Sunnite political behavior involves Sunnite perceptions of the two main protagonists in the civil conflict, the Maronites and the Palestinians. According to a purely communal model of group relations one would expect the Lebanese Sunnites to be uniformly hostile to the Maronites. The percentages indicate in striking fashion that the Sunnites are sharply divided in their attitudes toward Maronites and Palestinians and that there appears to be limited support for both. The traditional/historical model of communal conflict in Lebanon led to a hypothesis that Sunnite Muslims should manifest hostility toward the Maronite community regardless of the economic or status position of its numbers.
