Flag of Lebanon

How to read it

Article 5 of Lebanon’s constitution describes the flag: red, white and red horizontal stripes, the white stripe the size of both red stripes together, and a green cedar in the centre of the white, its top touching the upper red stripe and its base the lower one, its size a third of that of the white stripe. The flag was adopted on 7 December 1943, as Lebanon freed itself from France, which had governed it under a League of Nations mandate since 1920, Store norske leksikon records. It gives the proportions as 2:3 and credits the first sketch to Henri Pharaon (1901–1993), a member of parliament and later foreign minister. The flag is used on land and at sea, by the state, by civilians and by the navy.

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The flag drawn in a locked parliament in 1943

Under the mandate Lebanon’s flag was the French tricolour with a green cedar in the middle, the historian Sami Moubayed writes in Al Majalla. In 1943 President Bechara al-Khoury’s constitutional amendments raised the question of the flag. Former presidents led by Émile Eddé proposed turning the French colours horizontal with the cedar in the middle; Khoury and his prime minister, Riad al-Solh, wanted an independence flag with no reference to France, and most deputies agreed. France arrested Khoury, Solh and several ministers on 11 November 1943. Some deputies forced their way into the locked parliament building, where seven of them, under the Speaker, Sabri Hamadeh, held an extraordinary session and drew the independence flag, today’s flag, in rough colours. A police officer, Halim Ghorghor, smuggled it out hidden in his clothes. Pharaon undertook to win the Christians’ agreement to it and Saeb Salam the Muslims’. The prisoners were freed from the citadel of Rashaya on 22 November 1943, now Lebanon’s Independence Day.

Telling it from Canada’s and Peru’s flags

Canada’s flag is also red, white and red with a plant in the middle, but its bands are vertical: a white square in the centre with a red maple leaf, and red bands half as wide at each side, in the proportions 1:2. Peru’s flag has red, white and red vertical stripes and no tree. Lebanon’s stripes run across the flag and its cedar is green.