Dead and Alive: A United Nations tribunal is about to blame Hezbollah for assassinating the one on the left. That's Rafik Hariri, former Lebanese prime minister. Hezbollah just got the one on the right appointed prime minister. That's Najib Mikati, who'll be channeling Hezbollah's power to Lebanon's helm. (najib-mikati.net)
In 1977, Kamal Jumblatt, Lebanon's Druze leader at the time, made a trip to Damascus, as he often did, and had a disagreement with the Syrian president, Hafez el Assad. Lebanon was in the second year of its civil war. Jumblatt had been the leader of the Palestinian-Sunni coalition against Christian militias. Quite successfully so. He was assassinated soon after his trip to Damascus. His son Walid took over--and six years ago explicitly blamed Syria for his father's murder.
Earlier this month Jumblatt, who's nothing if not a political windsock, visited Syrian President Bashar el-Assad. Jumblatt had been among the strongest critics of Hezbollah, the Shiite-led militia and political party in Lebanon, accusing it, correctly, of dividing the country. Jumblatt must have had no disagreements with Assad. He returned to Lebanon, and today announced that he would throw his support behind Hezbollah, essentially allowing Hezbollah to form a new government and lead Lebanon for the first time in its quarter-century history. Jumblatt must have memories of his father's assassination in mind.
The government of Saad Hariri collapsed last week when Hezbollah walked out, crumbling the national coalition it had been part of. Hezbollah is opposed to Hariri's tilt toward the United States and Europe, and angry that a United Nations-backed tribunal is about to release findings that likely will indict members of Hezbollah in the assassination of Hariri's father, Rafik, six years ago. Lebanon has been on the verge of serious new clashes, possibly another civil war, over the tension.
Hezbollah named Najib Mikati, a former prime minister and a Sunni, and a billionaire real estate mogul (with his own website), to form the new government. He may be a Sunni. And a billionaire. But he is Hezbollah's Sunni. And Lebanon today has taken a radical turn away from the West and back into the Syrian-Iranian sphere of influence. It is, for Hezbollah, the culmination of a seemingly inexorable rise from shadowy terrorist group in the early 1980s to Lebanon's most powerful political and military force. It is also an indication of the divisions within Lebanon: Hezbollah's coalition doesn't depend on Jumblatt's alliance alone, but on a Christian faction led by former Gen. Michel Aoun, a political renegade with ambitions to be president.
That tension isn't abating with Jumblatt's move. And Lebanon's press isn't holding back. "Day of Rage," is how Lebanon's Daily Star headlined its lead story, though the words were in quote marks. It's how Lebanese Member of Parliament Mohammed Kabbara, a member of Hariri's parliamentary Future bloc, declared Tuesday, condemning what he called Hezbollah's "intervention in the affairs of the Sunnis."
"We say from Tripoli, the capital of Lebanese Sunnis, and the capital of openness, coexistence and national unity, that tomorrow is a day of rage in all Lebanon and a day for general strike in condemnation of meddling in the affairs of Lebanon and Sunni Lebanese," Kabbara said during a news conference held in Tripoli, Lebanon's second city, near the Syrian border to the north. "Insulting the Sunni sect ... is unacceptable," Kabbara added. Another member of parliament called Hezbollah's move a "coup."
Not that thousands of Lebanese are waiting for Tuesday to sling their rage. "Supporters of caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri's Future Movement took to the streets in the northern city of Tripoli, the Bekaa region in the east, the southern city of Sidon and some Beirut neighborhoods in a show of support for Hariri and a denunciation Mikati's nomination by Hezbollah and its allies in the March 8 coalition," the Daily Star is reporting.
"In the Cola and Tariq al-Jdedih neighborhoods of Beirut, hundreds of Hariri supporters took to the streets, overturning garbage dumpsters and firing guns into the air before the army and Internal Security Forces deployed, dispersing the protests. A thick smell of burning rubber also filled Corniche al-Mazraa, after demonstrators there blocked roads by setting fire to car tires," the Daily news is reporting in language reminiscent of Lebanon's other days of rage, the ones immediately preceding the outbreak of the war in April 1975, when the smell of burning tires also filled Beirut's and other cities' air, though back then Sunnis were among those rebelling against Christian rule.
In Tunisia, a nation is hoping to seize the reins of democracy and move away from three decades of repression. In Lebanon, the Middle East's most pluralist nation (Israel included), and its second-most democratic (after Israel), is moving in opposite directions. With Hezbollah almost fully in control of Lebanon's direction, the dismal consequences of the American invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan are made sharply clearer: American influence and credibility have not only dwindled, but they've done so in proportion to the rise of Iranian and Syrian influence, despite those two police states' utter lack of credibility on the world stage.
Meanwhile in Israel, the reaction, understandable, is dread tempered by a cynical sort of hope. Dread, because now Hezbollah Nation is officially bordering Northern Israel. Cynical hope, because Israelis, like the Lebanese themselves, know one thing about the Lebanese: internal strife is what makes them the champions paralysis. Israel is hoping that the Lebanese will be so busy battling among themselves that for a while, anyway, Hezbollah's Israel obsession will be distracted. But the possibility of war is very real--civil war in Lebanon, and a war of opportunity for Israel, as both Israel and Hezbollah are itching for a rematch of their devastatingly pointless 2006 war.
There are unhappy, bitter days ahead for Lebanon, disorienting days for Israel, and more of the same for the Obama administration's dismal quests in the Middle East: debilitating days.
See Also:
Comments