Bachir Pierre Gemayel ( ; 10 November 1947 – 14 September 1982) was a Lebanese militia commander who led the Lebanese Forces, the military wing of the Kataeb Party in the Lebanese Civil War and was elected President of Lebanon in 1982.
He founded and later became the supreme commander of the Lebanese Forces, uniting major Christian militias by force under the slogan of "Uniting the Christian Rifle". Gemayel allied with Israel and his forces fought the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Syrian Army. He was elected president on 23 August 1982, but he was assassinated before taking office on 14 September, via a bomb explosion by Habib Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.
Gemayel is described as the most controversial figure in the history of Lebanon. He remains popular among Maronite Christians, where he is seen as a "martyr" and an "icon". Conversely, he has been criticized for committing alleged war crimes and accused of treason for his relations with Israel.
Early life
Bachir Gemayel was born in the Achrafieh neighborhood of Beirut on 10 November 1947, the youngest of six children. The Gemayel family originated from Bikfaya village in the Matn District of Lebanon and is one of the most influential Christian families in the country. He attended the Jesuit Collège Notre Dame de Jamhour and the Institution Moderne du Liban (IML) – Fanar. He completed his university education at St. Joseph University (Université Saint-Joseph – USJ) in Beirut. After teaching for three years at the Lebanese Modern Institute, he graduated in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in law and another in political sciences in 1973. In 1971, Gemayel studied at The Center for American and International Law near Dallas, Texas in the United States. Qualifying in 1972, he joined the bar association and opened an office in Hamra Street, West Beirut.
Gemayel family
Gemayel's father Pierre Gemayel studied pharmacology in Europe and founded the Phalange Party in 1936 (also known as Kataeb) upon his return to Lebanon, modelling the party after the Spanish and Italian Fascist parties he had observed there. It swelled to 40,000 members. Although he became a Lebanese minister, and was targeted in at least two assassination attempts, Pierre Gemayel never rose to the prominence of his sons, yet remained a powerful figure until his death in 1984.
A month after Gemayel's death, his brother Amine Gemayel was elected president in 1982, remaining in office until the end of his constitutional second term in 1988.
Many of Gemayel's other family members would go on to be elected into the Lebanese parliament: His widow Solange Gemayel (in 2005), his son Nadim Gemayel (in 2009 and 2018), his nephews Sami Gemayel (in 2009 and 2018) and Pierre Amine Gemayel (in 2000 and 2005) who also served as the Minister of Industry from 2005 until his assassination on 21 November 2006.
Early activities in the Kataeb Party
Gemayel became a member of the Kataeb Party's youth section when he was 12 years old. He realized the dangers that surrounded Lebanon in 1958, and spent a lot of time with the organized political wing of the Kataeb Party. He attended the meetings organized by the Kataeb Student Section, and was the president of the Kataeb Circle in St. Joseph University between 1965 and 1971.
In the late 1960s, he underwent paramilitary training in Bikfaya, and he was appointed squad leader of a militia unit of the Kataeb Regulatory Forces (RKF), the party's military wing formed in 1961. In the early 1970s, he formed the "Bikfaya Squad" within the RKF, where he became acquainted with the basics of military combat. In 1968, he participated in a student colloquium organized by the newspaper Orient, following events which occurred across Lebanese universities between the Muslim and leftist Pan-Arabist students supporting the Palestinians in Lebanon on one side, and Christian Lebanese nationalist students (whom Gemayel represented) on the other.
After the 1968–69 clashes between the Lebanese Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Gemayel gathered a group of Christian students, and started training them in the Kataeb-run Tabrieh training camp, located near Bsharri in the Keserwan District mountains. This was the start of what would later become the Lebanese Forces. At this stage, he was a junior militia commander under the orders of William Hawi, the founder and head of the KRF.