Abdullah Aref al-Yafi

Abdullah Aref el-Yafi

Abdullah Aref al-Yafi or Aref el-Jafi ( Arabic عبد الله عارف اليافي, DMG ʿAbd Allāh ʿĀrif al-Yāfī , born September 7, 1901 in Beirut , Ottoman Empire ; † November 4, 1986 in Beirut, Lebanon ) was a Lebanese lawyer and politician. Between 1938 and 1969 he was Prime Minister of his country seven times .

El-Yafi attended the Jesuit college at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut and received a doctorate in law from the Sorbonne in Paris . From 1926 he worked as a lawyer and as a journalist. In 1937 he was elected to the Beirut city parliament, and from October 1938 to September 1939 he was Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for the first time in the government of Lebanon, which was still formed by the French mandate authorities. Back in the Beirut city parliament in 1943, el-Yafi was a member of the Lebanese delegation at the conference preparing the establishment of the Arab League in 1944 , and in 1945 he represented his country at the San Francisco Conference , at which the UN was founded. From December 1946 to April 1947 he was again Minister of Justice.

From June 1951 to February 1952 he was again Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior at the same time, in September 1952 he initially failed because the attempt to form a government again. In August 1953 he was then Prime Minister for the fourth time (as well as Interior Minister, Defense Minister, Information Minister and Finance Minister) and held until September 1954, from which he resigned for the time being "permanently". He was appointed head of government for the fifth time in March 1956 (as well as home secretary and planning minister) but resigned in November 1956 when President Camille Chamoun refused to break ties with France and Great Britain during the British-French-Israeli intervention in Egypt cancel.

Together with his two predecessors and successors in office, Saeb Salam and Rashid Karami , el-Yafi led the “National Congress”, which in 1957 brought together Muslim dignitaries, Druze socialists , Lebanese communists , Maronite Chamoun opponents, the Maronite patriarch and the Shiite parliamentary president to the “front of the National Association ”against Chamoun. The conflict with Chamoun in 1958 led to civil war and US intervention .

El-Yafi then withdrew from political life until 1965, but then joined Karami's cabinet as finance minister. After Karami's resignation, el-Yafi was unexpectedly appointed Prime Minister, Interior Minister, Information Minister and Planning Minister for the sixth time in April 1966. However, when he started with the promise to maintain a liberal economic policy, el-Yafi failed as early as December 1966 because of the fight against widespread corruption, which Karami had previously failed. Nevertheless, Karami succeeded him again as head of government, and el-Yafi again took over the post of finance minister in his cabinet until 1968. For the seventh and last time el-Yafi became Prime Minister and at the same time Minister of the Interior, Minister of Defense, Minister of Information, Minister of Planning, Minister of Social Affairs and Minister of Education. However, after an Israeli raid on Beirut airport (December 28, 1968), he had to resign for good in January 1969.

literature

• Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 6 (The struggle for the development path in the Arab world). Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1983
• Gustav Fochler-Hauke : The Fischer World Almanac 1967 . Frankfurt am Main 1966
• The International Who's Who 1988-89, page 1650. Fifty-Second Edition. Europa Publications Limited 1988 London

Web link

• Abdullah Aref al-Yafi in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rathmann, page 55
2. ↑ Rathmann, page 56
3. ^ FWA, page 361
4. ↑ Rathmann, page 63