stephen  d. leece

Founded at the American University of Beirut by Anton Saade this pro-Syrian group consists of largely Eastern Orthodox members,

Their over-ambitious aim is to create a ‘Greater Syria’ composed of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, parts of Iraq, Jordan and Turkey.

Founder Anton Saade was executed in Syria in 1947 after the quickest trial ever in Syrian legal history.

More trouble followed for them in 1961 with the failed coup in Lebanon which resulted in the banning of the party and the imprisonment of the leadership.

It has been speculated that it was the SSNP, and not the PFLP, who were responsible for the botched drive-by shooting targeting Pierre Gemayal that triggered the Lebanese Civil War in April 1975.

The FBI believes the SSNP were responsible for the assassination of newly-elected pro-Western President Bachir Gemayal in September 1982- an action that sparked the SLA and IDF to retaliate with action against the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

The SSNP are notable for carrying out the first act of resistance to the Israeli Occupation of Lebanon in September 1983 when Khalid Alwan shot and killed two IDF soldiers at the Wimpy Café on Beirut’s fashionable Hamra Street.

Other notable tactics during the Civil War years included turning teenaged and 20-something women into human bombs and pointing them in the direction of IDF convoys.

The SSNP is responsible for presenting the world with the world’s first female suicide bomber when 16 year old Sana’a Mehaidli drove an explosive-laden Peugeot into an Israeli convoy killing two and herself. Her near-contemporary, Norma Abi Hassan, 26, succeeded in killing only herself- an operation, even her SSNP handler disapproved of.  

The SSNP are a minority party now, but they do control Hamra Street and do put on displays of force several times a year on Hamra Street and elsewhere.

They were memorably described by Christopher Hitchens as a group for ‘Orthodox wankers.’

History does not record the SSNP’s response.