Adel Osseiran - Legacy

Legacy

Throughout his long political career, Adel Osseiran was celebrated for being an independent thinker with brave and visionary ideas as well as sharp political acumen. He was also, throughout much of his life, a radical modernizer. Standing for election as an MP in 1937, he was the first candidate in Lebanon's history to have a campaign platform based on issues rather than traditional or emotional slogans.

He was, throughout his life, a firm believer in the value of education, seeing it as the way up the ladder for his underprivileged constituency in Southern Lebanon. Beyond that, he was known to have a high regard for scholarship, something illustrated by the close ties he kept with the American University of Beirut (AUB), serving as President of the AUB Alumni Club between 1959 and 1961.

During the 1950s he created an orphanage in Sidon and handed it over to private management. Beyond that, in the 1960s, he founded an agricultural academy in the village of Shoukin in Southern Lebanon to train local farmers in modern methods. It was built partly at his own expense and partly by donations from Lebanese emigres in West Africa. It was destroyed during the Israeli invasion of 1982 but has since been rebuilt, though it has yet to reopen its doors to students. In the 1950s, as Speaker of Parliament, he was one of the prime movers behind the legislation that brought about the Litani Plan, a development project which, though not completed until the present time, would have transformed Lebanon's rural economy.

Before 1943 he was outspoken in his opposition to the French Mandate, while during the 1958 crisis he curtly demanded the removal of the US Marines from Lebanese soil. Later, in his old age, he called for "armed resistance" to the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon.

Throughout the Lebanese Civil War he maintained the same stance, that the sectarian violence must come to an end and that there must be some kind of coexistence between all sects and groups in Lebanese society. Remaining in office and holding various Cabinet posts during the dark days of the war, he aligned himself with the Lebanese state and with the remaining symbols of legitimacy.

Adel Osseiran retired from politics in 1992 and retreated to his home near Sidon. He died on June 18, 1998. He was honored as a national hero and given a state funeral.

The Adel Osseiran Street in Sidon bears his name.