French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon that local leaders had could easily be overruled by French officials. The French did everything in their power to prevent people in the Levant from developing self-sufficient governing bodies. In 1930, France extended their constitution on to Syria. On August 3, 1920, 299 of the "Haut-commissariat de la République française en Syrie et au Liban" linked the cazas of Hasbaya, Rachaya, Maallaka and Baalbeck to what was then known as the Autonomous Territory of Lebanon. Then on 31 August 1920, General Gouraud signed Arrêté 318 delimiting the State of Greater Lebanon, with explanatory notes stating that Lebanon would be treated
Lebanon viper Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. The original syntypes of "M. bornmuelleri" were collected in Lebanon at 1800 m (5,900 ft) and in the Bolkar mountains of western Turkey at 2200 m (7,200 ft) as described by Franz Werner in 1898. In 1922, Werner restricted the type locality to Lebanon in his designation of his specimen as a lectotype, and in 1938 separated out the southern varieties as a separate species ("Daboia palaestinae"). In 1967 Mertens raised the name "bornmuelleri" to valid species rank for the Lebanese populations, thus leaving the name "xanthina" for all Turkish populations, which arrangement was accepted