Becoming prime minister should be the pinnacle of any politician’s career; for Salim al-Hoss, who has died aged 94, holding that post in Lebanon proved to be something of a curse. Yet he willingly did so four times. Regarded as exceptional for his integrity and probity, he drily observed: “The main constant in Lebanese politics is that there are no constants.”
Hoss, a Sunni Muslim and a former economist, first took office in December 1976, 18 months into a civil war that would last for another 14 years. President Elias Sarkis allowed his non-partisan cabinet of technocrats to rule by decree. Yet Syrian troops and militant Lebanese and Palestinian factions continued fighting in various lethal combinations. An invasion by Israel in March 1978 added to the mayhem. Despite Hoss’s best efforts, Beirut’s government and army split along sectarian lines, and he resigned in July 1980.
His second prime ministerial stint proved equally arduous. In June 1987 he was education minister when the prime minister, Rashid Karami, was assassinated. Hoss took the job despite surviving a bomb blast the same year. Syria’s “protective” presence exacerbated tensions, and Hoss clashed with Amin Gemayel, the president, and leader of the rightist Christian Phalange.
Hoss boycotted cabinet meetings and in September 1988 Gemayel, nearing the end of his term, dismissed him in favour of a Maronite Christian general, Michel Aoun. While formally constitutional, the decree broke a long-held custom of reserving the prime ministership for Sunnis. Politically it seemed to concentrate power in Christian hands.
Two rival entities emerged: Aoun’s military administration in Christian east Beirut, and Hoss, in his third premiership, with a civilian one, operating from the Summerland hotel, in Muslim west Beirut. For a year Hoss also acted as interim president, but his remit was pitiably small. Rival militias had turned Lebanon into a patchwork of cantons. Israel, having captured Beirut in 1982, still held sway south of Sidon.
In 1989 assassins killed Lebanon’s Sunni grand mufti, and then the recently elected Christian president René Moawad.
Eventually Hoss persuaded parliament to ratify the Syrian-sponsored Taif agreement in September 1990; soon afterwards Damascus crushed Aoun, ending the civil war. By now Hoss was exhausted and left office in December.
His fourth incarnation began in December 1998. Friends hoped that at last he could apply his extensive economic expertise. Sadly, his predecessor, Rafik Hariri, had borrowed heavily to fund Beirut’s ambitious reconstruction and ran up a $22bn national debt. Even Hoss’s stringent austerity measures could not clear the shortfall.
Hariri dramatically won national elections in August 2000. Hoss became the first Lebanese premier to lose a parliamentary seat, having represented a Beirut constituency since 1992. He resigned as prime minister soon afterwards, having held a range of ministerial portfolios, including foreign affairs, and mostly devoted himself to writing.
Hoss was born into a Beiruti family of limited means. His father died when he was seven months old, and fled Beirut with his mother during the second world war, aged 11. Unlike the traditionally pro-Syrian, pan-Arabist Sunni dynasties of Tripoli and Sidon, he favoured a pragmatic Lebanese union of sects.
He broke norms by marrying Laila Pharaoun, a Christian, and was “the voice of Sunni and Lebanese moderates who believed in dialogue and peaceful compromise, before financial and political corruption became official policy”, wrote the commentator Samir el-Youssef.
Hoss believed merit should determine advancement, not religious affiliation, family lineage, wealth or access to arms. He cherished national sovereignty where other leaders seemed beholden to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel or France. Hoss amplified these themes in his books Lebanon at the Crossroads (1984) and Sectarianism and Us (2003). The last three of his 16 books were Sound Without Echo (2005), Stance As Weapon (2006) and Epoch of Agonies (2008).
Soft-spoken, sagacious and modest, Hoss lived in a humble Beirut apartment block. John Gunther Dean, the former American ambassador to Beirut, called him “one of Lebanon’s most honest and upright leaders, a perfect gentleman”.
Initially Hoss had embarked on an academic career, taking a master’s degree in business administration at the American University of Beirut (1957), and a doctorate in economics from in the US, at Indiana University (1961). He lectured at the AUB until 1969; advised the Kuwait Fund for Economic Development, the Arab League and the Arab Monetary Fund; and chaired Lebanon’s bank supervisory committee.
Hoss insisted that peace could only come once Israel left Lebanese soil, as mandated by UN resolution 425. Eventually in May 2000 Israeli troops vacated southern Lebanon. However, the militant Shia group Hezbollah took the credit and in effect barred Lebanese soldiers from manning the border with Israel.
In 2004 Hoss launched a legal fund to assist Palestinian “victims of Israeli aggression” in Gaza and the West Bank. Lebanon was thrown into turmoil in 2005 when Hariri was blown up and killed in Beirut. Hoss declined an invitation to replace Omar Karami as prime minister, however, citing ill health, but continued writing and working for peace organisations.
Syria ended its 29-year Lebanese sojourn in April 2005, and a month later Lebanon held its first supposedly free elections in decades. Unconvinced, Hoss said that Lebanon enjoyed freedom, but not yet true democracy.
In 2017, aged 87, he went on hunger strike in solidarity with 1,200 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, while condemning suicide bombing in Israel and Iraq alike.
Laila died in1990; he is survived by his daughter, Wadad, and grandson, Salim.
• Salim Ahmed al-Hoss, politician, born 20 December 1929; died 26 August 2024
