Letter to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) from Mgr. Ignatius Moubarakis, Archbishop of Beirut, Aug. 5, 1947.

Lebanon had been dragged willy nilly within its neighbors’ orbit, but that its current leaders represented no one but themselves. As for Palestine, its inhabitants had been forcibly converted to Islam, although Palestine was the cradle of the Jews and the early Christians, neither of them of Arab origin. The Holy Places and all the monuments of the two religions bore witness to the fact that Palestine was not Arab, and should not be included among the Arab countries, any more than Lebanon. Lebanon had always been the refuge of persecuted Christians. Lebanon and Palestine should continue to be the permanent homes of minorities.

…there were as many men of culture and intellect among the Jews and Lebanese as in the rest of the Near Eastern counties put together. An ignorant majority should not be allowed to impose its will. A million progressive human beings should not be the plaything of a few leaders supported by millions of human beings of less advanced ideas. There was a certain order in the world which helped to maintain the necessary equilibrium. If the United Nations wished to save that order, it must consolidate it. A Christian home in Lebanon, a Jewish home in Palestine – the two countries geographically and economically linked would form the necessary bridge between the East and the West, and would maintain in the Near East that peace which existing rivalries rendered so precarious. The so-called legitimate representatives of Lebanon had only repeated what they had been told to say by their lords and masters in the neighboring Arab countries. True Lebanese opinion had been stifle d by the group which had faked the elections of 25 May. The Lebanese demanded liberty for the Jews of Palestine, just as they hoped for liberty and independence themselves.

United Nations Official Records, general Assembly, Second Session, Summary Records of Meetings, 25 September – 25 November 1947, pp. 57-58.