Word: gemayels
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...Gemayel fervently believes that the departure of all foreign forces is a prerequisite to solving his country's problems and forging national unity. He was particularly anxious to see the Palestinians go. Says an Arab diplomat who has known Gemayel for many years: "He is absolutely obsessed with the Palestinians...
...Gemayel made his reputation for ruthlessness by the way he imposed his leadership over the diverse Christian militia groups during and after the 1975-76 civil war. In June 1978, Gemayel's forces lashed out brutally against former President the Suleiman Franjieh, who was one of his chief political opponents among the Christian population. In a lightning raid on the Franjieh summer resort village of Ehden, Phalangist soldiers murdered the ex-President's son and political heir Tony, along with his wife and two-year-old daughter. Gemayel coldly dismissed the episode as a "social revolt against feudalism...
...baby-faced Gemayel consciously cultivates a macho image, often appearing in public in military fatigues, his feet squared in the "at ease" position, his arms folded across his chest. To his Phalangist followers, he projects the personal magnetism of a combat leader who has fought and suffered with them on the battlefields. After his family, he is most comfortable with his troops...
...President-elect's father Pierre Gemayel was the founder and original leader of the Phalangist Party, a hardline, fervently nationalistic faction of the country's large Maronite Christian community. The youngest of six children, Bashir Gemayel enthusiastically embraced his father's conservative ideology, which was inspired by the nationalist movements of Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini...
...Gemayel launched his military career when he was still a boy. During the brief age war of 1958, he officially joined the Phalangist militias at the age of eleven. He began regular military training two years later, and by 1969 was commander of a 100-man militia in his family's native village of Bikfaya, east of Beirut. Educated by the Jesuits, Gemayel took a law degree at St. Joseph's University of Beirut in 1971, but abandoned a short-lived law practice at the onset of Lebanon's civil war. In 1976 he became commander...