Saadeh knew this illness and prescribed an antidote. He exemplified the antidote by his own character. He reached a place where no one thought a man could reach in this regard. He killed and extracted the cancerous cells of sectarianism from the souls of his party comrades. He infused them with the cells of national unity. Sectarianism and religious sects were wiped out from the SSNP dictionaries. This can be considered the miracle of Saadeh. Extracting the cells of division and infusing the cells of unity in the souls of the people.
Saadeh's Execution
Until this hour I cannot explain the feelings we were engulfed in on that notorious day when Saadeh was executed. We slept at night on the news of his arrest. The arrest that [the Syrian president] Husni al Za'im had arranged in cohort with the Lebanese authorities.
I met Mohammed al Baalbaki early in the morning at the Kul Shay' magazine offices. We were joking about the headline news of the daily newspapers that mentioned Saadeh's execution. We saw a picture of him in front of a military tribunal yet we never believed that a court proceedings and the execution could be so swift.
We were wrong. We both started to cry. Baalbaki almost fell to the ground.
Yes, until this hour, and over fifty years later I exactly remember the fear that struck us. Baalbaki was trembling in an emotional state. He had given his oath to the leader himself and became a party member only two days ago in a special ceremony in Damascus.
My mind takes me to these events again. I and Labib Qaddura, the younger brother of Adib Qaddura, went almost every day to the place where our leader was executed. We sat on the very soil that was nurtured by his blood. Days later we saw other comrades visiting the place too. It became a party tradition to visit the burial site of the leader at the St. Elias Church every year on the eighth of July…
The July 8th Directorate
The party developed a secret organization called the July 8th Directorate. After the execution of Saadeh, the members of this directorate met in secret at the home of the new general secretary Amin al Husayni (Abu Jihad) the directorate was run by Munir Ido, on of the first SSNP members.
Several party members were taken into the directorate. I remember-since I was one of its members-asking al Husayni why other members like Kamil al Asaad, Bahij Taqiy al Din, and Nqula Rizqalla-all in the beginning of their political careers-were absent from the meetings of the directorate? The first was the son of the Shiite political leader Ahmad al Asaad. The second was just becoming a shining star as an attorney at law, while the third was the governor of the capital, Beirut. I remember that I told al Husayni that “if those guys are afraid to be known as SSNP members, we then don not need them at all!” Husayni replied to me saying that these guys had their special circumstances. That we understand their situation and it is better that their status be kept a secret.
Husayni's home adjacent to the Raml [Sand] prison… The leader went into hiding there after the Jimmayzeh incident. The incident occurred when some of the party members had skirmishes with pistols with some Kata'ib party members. The SSNP headquarters and its newspapers offices were in the Jimmayzeh area, which was a Kata'ib stronghold. Anyway, Saadeh was wanted and he preferred to hide in Husayni's house. Husayni told me that at the time the leader would go to the roof and hear his party members in the prison singing the famous party anthem “Suriyya Laki al Salam” [O Syria, our salutations to you] and tears would come down his cheeks.
Currents that Shocked the Party and Demoralized It
The party had undergone several hardships and shocks during its existence. It always came out of them stronger. The deviation from the principles of the party that the Naameh Tabit, Ma'mun Elias, and Asad al Ashqar triumvirate called for did not materialize. We have mentioned that these three were the nearest to the leader and almost the first members of the SSNP. However, they were pragmatic and wanted quick results. They were not ready for the long and tumultuous road Saadeh had anticipated. Moreover, the triumvirate's new policy of having the party deal only as a Lebanese entity and which Tabit elaborated so eloquently in the Baaaqlin meeting of 1944 were refuted completely by Saadeh in a lectures he delivered on January 7, 1948. It was during this lecture that he announced that he had dismissed the three musketeers from the SSNP. We know also that at least one of the “knights,” Asad al Ashqar came back to the leader when he was in Duhur al Shuwayr and pleaded him to accept him back into the party, since he now knew that he was wrong and that he would be “at the leader's disposal.”
