Should Lebanon become a neutral country?  That is the question addressed by André Patry, professor emeritus of international law at Laval University, in an article appearing in the French-language Quebec magazine “Forces.”  To begin, Patry distinguishes between two kinds of neutrality.Neutrality can be either perpetual or circumstantial.  Switzerland is a country whose perpetual neutrality is well known.  While Patry does not cite this example, the United States proclaimed its neutrality initially in both World Wars, later becoming involved in both.  American neutrality was clearly circumstantial rather than perpetual.Patry looks at the history of modern Lebanon, beginning with events in the latter half of the 19th Century.  Internecine conflicts, often instigated by European countries, especially France and England, who wanted to move in on the Ottoman Empire, the “Sick Man of Europe,” reached their peak in 1860 when thousands of Christians were slaughtered by the Druze in Damascus and elsewhere in Syria.  This event led to intervention on the part of European powers and to an expedition of Ottoman forces. The League of Nations gave France a mandate to control Syria, and France proceeded to carve the country up, establishing Lebanon as a separate entity.  Lebanon eventually escaped French control, but Syria never resigned itself to the loss of Lebanon. Patry believes that Lebanese history, back to the time of the Phoenicians, its current cultural and religious diversity, and its place among Arabic-speaking countries, makes Lebanon deserving of a status similar to that of Switzerland: perpetual neutrality.  He argues that the current internal conflicts in the country would not necessarily prevent such neutrality, citing the Swiss conflict of 1847, when the Catholic cantons revolted, a revolt resolved by a combination of constitutional revision and federal force. However, he suggests, neutrality is not in the cards at this time.  Syria would not tolerate such a move, considering its support for some Palestinian factions and for, he says Sunnis but probably means, Shi’a.  To get Syrian acquiescence would probably require substantial economic concessions and possibly also revising the borders.  Finally, until the Palestinian question is resolved and Israel in its Zionist form is accepted by its neighbors, there can be no perpetual neutrality for Lebanon, even though such a status is highly desirable, he says