BEIRUT: On April 26, 2005, the last soldier of a roughly 30,000-strong Syrian force withdrew from Lebanese territories days after at least a million people from across the country rallied in Beirut, demanding, among other things, the complete withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon.The withdrawal was preceded by a series of rallies against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, protests that culminated on March 14, 2005. The demonstrations, initially called the Independence Intifada, and later the Beirut Spring, were referred to by a U.S. State Department official as the “Cedar Revolution,” a name which quickly caught on in Lebanon and around the world.

But a ministerial committee recently decided to scrap the phrase “Cedar Revolution” from a national middle school history curriculum currently being developed, and decided instead to describe the event as a “wave of demonstrations,” eliciting anger from the country’s politicians who took part in the rallies against the foreign army’s presence in Lebanon.

Metn MP Sami Gemayel told The Daily Star Monday that it is a dangerous act to remove key phases from the country’s history. “The Cedar Revolution of 2005 resulted in Lebanon’s second independence,” said Gemayel.

In recent months, many political commentators and officials have also said that the so-called “Arab Spring,” which has now witnessed the overthrow of four Arab regimes, was a inspired by the democratic changes that occurred in Lebanon in the midst of the Cedar Revolution.

According to Gemayel, the Lebanese history curriculum should include all events that took place in the country, without any exception.

But one of the ministerial committee’s members, Culture Minister Gaby Layyoun, said that “Cedar Revolution” is a phrase fabricated by the U.S. and its “Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.”

The name was actually coined during a news conference by another U.S. official, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula J. Dobriansky.

“We cannot keep such a phrase in the curriculum ... [It] is sensitive to many in the country and it might create problems between people,” said Layyoun.

Layyoun said that he is not against mentioning the demonstrations of March 2005 in the new middle school history curriculum that is being developed by the committee. But he said: “I personally took part in the demonstrations that led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon ... this was not the Cedar Revolution ... only some people are trying to portray it that way.”

Responding to Layyoun, Gemayel asked whether it would be reasonable to scrap Liberation Day, which marks the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon in 2000. “I don’t think we have the right to remove Hezbollah’s liberation of south Lebanon from the history curriculum,” said Gemayel.

“Such a curriculum should be studied by officials and historians from all sides, not by a one-sided government.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt also criticized those who refuse to recognize the Cedar Revolution of 2005.

“Is it possible to deny historical facts and bright pages from Lebanese modern history as Culture Minister Gaby Layyoun did by refusing to recognize the Cedar Revolution?” he asked.

“Does disagreement in politics erase historical events?” said Jumblatt in a column to be published Tuesday in the PSP’s weekly newspaper Al-Anbaa.

Meanwhile, several historians said Tuesday that if a unified Lebanese history textbook is to be written, it should be written in full because history requires all that has ever happened to be recorded.

Toni Nissi, the head of the International Council for the Cedar Revolution, said the ministerial committee’s actions are just one of several attempts to rewrite history in the interest of the Syrian and Iranian regimes.

“One of the achievements of the [pro-Syria groups] is that they set a history curriculum by force after the Taif Accord,” said Nissi.

But Nissi says that the Cedar Revolution is not over and it is an ongoing struggle for reform to make the state strong and sovereign.

“The current government is trying through the use of arms to return Lebanon to the period prior to the withdrawal of Syrian troops,” Nissi added.

Issam Khalifeh, professor of history at the Lebanese University said that a discussion of the development of a new history curriculum is not currently possible.

“It is not possible to agree on a unified curriculum or a unified book since the war in Lebanon is not really over yet ... you still have armed factions throughout the country,” said Khalifeh.

Khalifeh says that efforts to develop a unified history curriculum would fail as long as there is still a danger of civil strife in Lebanon.

“Let us first get over with the history of the Civil War ... let us write how much it cost us in money, deaths, injuries, displaced.”

Meanwhile on social networking websites, Lebanese voiced their own points of view on the country’s recent history.

“It is part of our history, it is a fact. We can’t deny something that has happened, we need to put it in our history books,” Fady Adhamy said in a comment on Facebook in response to The Daily Star’s poll on whether the Cedar Revolution should be taught at schools.