Syrian National Congress
Following Ottoman repression, the Arabs were fed up with Ottoman rule. After the Turks were expelled from the Levant at the end of World War I, the Syrian National Congress in Damascus proclaimed independence and sovereignty over a region that also included Lebanon in 1920. In Beirut, the Christian press expressed its hostility to the decisions of the Syrian National Congress. Lebanese nationalists used the crisis to convene a council of Christian figures in Baabda that proclaimed the independence of Lebanon on 22 March 1920. Despite these declarations, the region was divided among the victorious British and French according to the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a secret 1916 pact of the UK and France.