Abd al-Majid al-Rafei
Lebanese politician
Abd al-Majid al-Rafei (in Arabic عبد المجيد الرافعي; 11 April 1927 – 12 July 2017), born in Tripoli, Lebanon, was a Lebanese politician and member of the Lebanese Parliament. He was at one time the head of the Iraqi faction of the historical Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party and its Iraqi wing. Later, until his death in July 2017, he was the head of the Socialist Arab Lebanon Vanguard Party.
Biography
He was born Abdel Majid Mohamed Tayeb Rafei on 11 April 1927 in a family in Tripoli, Lebanon which was pre-occupied by Arab nationalist ideas. During the French Mandate of Lebanon, in May 1941, Al-Rafei demonstrated in support of the Iraqi nationalist officers uprising against the British Mandate in Iraq. In 1943, he also demonstrated in Tripoli in support of Lebanese independence from French rule with one of his closest friends being killed in the demonstrations and another friend, Amin Hajar being injured by French bullets.
After Lebanese Independence, he studied medicine in University of Lausanne, Switzerland and practiced medicine in the 1950s in Tripoli. In 1957 he attended a general Baath gathering and became an official member and one of the highest figures in the unified Baath Arab Socialist Party in Lebanon. With the split of the party between the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath branch and the pro-Syrian Ba'ath branch, both factions initially became part of the National Front against the rule of President of the Republic Camille Chamoun in the 1958 Civil War.
With tensions increasing between the two factions, the two Baathist parties of Lebanon were on a war footing.
The public source identifies “Abd al-Majid al-Rafei” as lebanese politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around al-Majid, al-Rafei and Lebanese.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12223733. VIAF identifies the subject as 305214723. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2017, 1941 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abd al-Majid al-Rafei” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.