Word: gemayels
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...solution, said Gemayel, was to build a strong army that could guarantee Lebanon's own security. He had in mind an army of 100,000 to 150,000 men and women. With the calm self-confidence that was characteristic of him, the stocky President-elect said: "I know how to build an army...
...show the Muslims and Palestinians that we were as tough and mean as they were," a young member of Gemayel's Phalange said at the time. "I once studied to be a doctor, but I had to drop out of medical school after two years because I was too squeamish for vivisection. Now, after what I have done to Muslims and Palestinians...
...could get my medical degree easily." In that charged and bloody time, Gemayel emerged as a leader of the Maronite community. He got his chance originally because he was the second son of Pierre Gemayel, founder of the Phalange back in the '30s. Brother Amin, nominated by the Phalangists as their new candidate for the presidency, chose to handle the political side of the party, and Bashir went to work to build Maronite military muscle...
...leadership, Bashir had to fight not only Palestinians and leftist Muslims but also some of his fellow Maronites. In the tense atmosphere, a minor automobile mishap could touch off a firefight between Bashir's Phalangist warriors and the "tigers" of former President Camille Chamoun, often with bloody results. Gemayel's Phalangists were accused of murdering a son and granddaughter of former President Suleiman Franjieh (whose own followers, according to local belief, had once gunned down 17 members of a rival family in a church in northern Lebanon...
Eventually Gemayel concluded that to defend the community successfully he could not afford the luxury of internal strife. His Phalangists took on Chamoun gunners and won. As the undisputed leader of the Maronites, young Bashir Gemayel welded the Phalangist, Chamounis and other Christian militias into one fighting group called "the Lebanese forces...