Camille Nemer Chamoun was born on the third of April 1900 in Deir El Kamar, into a reputable Maronite Christina family. Received his Higher education in France, and became a lawyer.
In 1934 he was elected for the first time as member of the Lebanese Parliament, than reelected in 1937 and 1943.
He is considered a champion of Lebanese independence from France in 1943: he was arrested on the 11th of November of that year and imprisoned in the Rashaiya Castel, where he was held for eleven days, along with other Independence heroes such as Bechara El-Khoury, and Riad El-Solh, who were to become, respectively, the first President and Prime Minister of the newly independent Lebanese Republic. Massive public protests led to their release on the 22nd of November, which has since been celebrated as the Lebanese Independence Day.
Chamoun was reelected to parliament, now called the National Assembly, in 1947 and 1951. He was frequently absent, however, as he served as the Lebanese Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1944 to 1946, and to the United Nations thereafter.
Chamoun played a leading role in the 1958 revolt. When President Bechara El Khoury was forced to resign amid corruption allegations in 1952, Chamoun was elected to replace him. Near the end of his term, Pan-Arabists and other Nasser backed groups, with considerable support in Lebanon’s politically disadvantaged Muslim community, attempted to overthrow Chamoun’s government in June 1958. Chamoun appealed to the United States for help and as a result Marines forces landed in Beirut in response. The revolt was smashed and that lead to mounting opposition to Chamoun in the Muslim community.
In order to appease Muslim anger, General Fouad Chehab, who although Christian enjoyed considerable popularity in the Muslim community, was elected to succeed Chamoun. The American diplomat Robert D. Murphy, sent to Lebanon as personal representative of President Eisenhower, played a significant role in persuading Chamoun to resign and Chehab to take his place.
Founding the National Liberal Party
After he steeped down as president, Chamoun founded the National Liberal Party. He was elected to the National Assembly again in 1960, much to the consternation of President Chehab. He was defeated in 1964, due to a gerrymandered electoral law changes. He was reelected to the National Assembly, however, in 1968, and again in 1972 - Lebanon’s last parliamentary election held in his lifetime. Following the 1968 elections, the National Liberal Party held 11 seats out of 99, becoming the largest single party in the notoriously fractured National Assembly and the only party to elect representatives from all of Lebanon’s major religious confessions.
During the Civil War
Chamoun held offices in many ministries in the 1970s and 1980s although his party took part of the crisis by the means of a militia called “The Tiggers”. In the early stages of the war, he was one of the architects behind the foundation of the Lebanese Front, a coalition of mostly Christian politicians and parties, whose united militia - dominated by the Kataeb Party, became known as the Lebanese forces (LF). Chamoun was chairman of the Front in 1976-78.
Though initially aligned with Syria, , and inviting the neighboring army to intervene against the Muslim-leftist Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and their Palestinians allies in 1976, Chamoun then gravitated towards opposition to the Syrian presence. In 1980,”the Tigers” militia was virtually destroyed by a surprise attack from Chamoun’s Christian rival Bachir Gemayel and the LF forces under his command. After the Israeli invasion in 1982, Chamoun decided to enter a tactical cooperation with Israel, in order to oppose what he considered a Syrian occupation.
In 1984, Chamoun agreed to become a member of the National Unity government as Deputy Prime Minister, a post he held until his death in Beirut on the 7th of August 1987, at the age of 87.
He is remembered as one of the main Christian nationalist leaders, and one of the last significant figures of the Lebanese Independence and Lebanon’s pre-war generation of politicians, whose political influence was eclipsed during the war by that of younger militia commanders and warlords.
Camille Chamoun was survived by his two sons, the latter Dany and Dory, both of whom followed in his footsteps as NLP leaders and politicians in their own right.
