Kataeb Party

The Kataeb Party (lit. 'Battalions Party'), officially the Kataeb Party – Lebanese Social Democratic Party (Arabic: حزب الكتائب اللبنانية – الحزب الديمقراطي الاجتماعي اللبناني Ḥizb al-Katā'ib al-Lubnānīya), also known as the Phalangist Party, is a Lebanese nationalist political party in Lebanon.

Founded by Pierre Gemayel in 1936, the party and its paramilitary wings played a major role in the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), opposing Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon as well as collaborating with Israel. The Phalangists were responsible for the Black Saturday massacre, the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, Ehden massacre, and the Karantina massacre. In 1982, Pierre's youngest son Bachir, the leader of the party's militia, was elected President, but was assassinated before he could take office. This led to Phalangist militiamen committing the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 war, with support from the IDF.

Bachir was succeeded by his older brother Amine, who led the party through much of the war. In decline in the late 1980s and 1990s during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the party slowly re-emerged in the early 2000s and is currently part of the Lebanese opposition. The party currently holds 4 out of the 128 seats in the Lebanese Parliament.

The Lebanese Phalanges Party is also known as Phalanges Libanaises in French and either Kataeb (الكتائب اللبنانية al-Katā'ib al-Lubnāniyya) or Phalangist Party (حزب الكتائب اللبنانية Ḥizb al-Katā'ib al-Lubnāniyya) in Arabic. Kataeb is the plural of Katiba which is a translation into Arabic of the Greek word phalanx ("battalion") which is also the origin of the Spanish term Falange. In 2021, the party changed its official name to "The Kataeb Party – Lebanese Social Democratic Party" (Arabic: حزب الكتائب اللبنانيّة – الحزب الديمقراطي الاجتماعي اللبناني, Hiẓb al-Katā'ib al-Lubnāniyya – Hiẓb al-dīmūqrāṭī al-ijtimāʿī al-lubnānī).

The Kataeb party was established on November 5, 1936 as a Maronite paramilitary youth organization by Pierre Gemayel who modeled the party after the Nazi Party, the Spanish Falange, and Italian Fascist parties, all of which he had encountered as an Olympic athlete during the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, then Nazi Germany. The movement's uniforms originally included brown shirts, and its members used the Fascist salute.

In an interview by Robert Fisk, Gemayel stated about Nazism and the Berlin Olympics:

I was the captain of the Lebanese football team and the president of the Lebanese Football Federation. We went to the Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin. And I saw then this discipline and order. And I said to myself: "Why can't we do the same thing in Lebanon?" So when we came back to Lebanon, we created this youth movement. When I was in Berlin then, Nazism did not have the reputation that it has now. Nazism? In every system in the world, you can find something good. But Nazism was not Nazism at all. The word came afterwards. In their system, I saw discipline. And we in the Middle East, we need discipline more than anything else.

Pierre founded the party along with four other young Lebanese: Charles Helou, who later became a President of Lebanon, Chafic Nassif, Emile Yared, and Georges Naccache. Gemayel was chosen to lead the organization, in part because he was not a political figure at that time.