Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 26-27, 29

Two Views

The Crisis in Lebanon: Who Benefits?

Gemayel, Syria, Israel and the War in Iraq

By Patrick Seale

THERE ARE TWO main theories about who killed Pierre Gemayel in Beirut on Nov. 21—one points the finger of blame at Syria, the other at Syria’s enemies. Both theories are plausible. But, such is the murky nature of Lebanon’s politics and the murderous intrigues of foreign powers that it would be exceedingly rash, in the absence of firm evidence, to plumb for one or the other.

Gemayel, 34, was a member of a prominent Maronite family which, for the past 70 years, has championed the cause of Lebanese independence under Christian leadership, in opposition to Arab nationalists who advocated pan-Arab unity under Muslim leadership—or simply close ties between Lebanon and its Syrian hinterland.

Impressed by what he had seen of Nazi youth movements at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, Gemayel’s grandfather, Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, founded the Phalanges libanaises (in Arabic, the Kata’ib). As both a political party and a Christian paramilitary force, it has played a major, if controversial, role in Lebanese politics from the 1930s to the present day.

In 1982, Sheikh Pierre’s son, Bashir, collaborated with Israel in its invasion of Lebanon and was elected president, only to be assassinated shortly afterward by a member of a pan-Syrian party. Bashir’s brother Amin succeeded him as president and, with American backing, concluded a separate peace with Israel in May 1983, which would have put his country into Israel’s orbit.

Syria mobilized its local allies against the accord and managed to abort it. Israeli forces, however, remained in occupation of south Lebanon until 2000, when they were finally driven out by Hezbollah, a resistance movement of the Shi’i community, allied to Syria and Iran.

True to his family’s heritage, Amin’s son, the young Pierre Gemayel who was killed this week, was a minister in Fuad Saniora’s anti-Syrian government, itself a product of the parliamentary majority which emerged as a result of popular revulsion at the murder in February 2005 of the former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri—a murder for which Syria and its local allies were widely blamed.

Headed by a Belgian judge, Serge Brammerz, a commission of enquiry into Hariri’s murder is expected to publish its findings within the next month or two. Syria’s enemies are confident Syria will be held responsible. Syria clamors its innocence and points the finger at Israel and its local agents.

As may be seen, Lebanon’s unfortunate fate is to be a battleground between Syria and Israel for dominance in the Levant. The issue is far from resolved. This past summer, encouraged by the United States (and with the tolerance of Britain), Israel mounted an all-out assault against Lebanon in an attempt to destroy Hezbollah and bring Lebanon into the Israeli-Western camp. The attempt failed.

Hezbollah has emerged stronger than ever. It is, very probably, the single most powerful political and military force in Lebanon today. It remains the close ally of Syria and Iran—part of the so-called Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis which is determined to challenge American and Israeli regional hegemony, and indeed that of France in Lebanon as well.

Hezbollah and its allies—who include Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian leader who broke ranks with his community—have been pressing for the replacement of the Saniora government by a government of national unity, in which they would have what they consider their rightful place. Their case is that only such a government can unify the country, heal the sectarian divide, prevent a lurch back into civil war—such as destroyed Lebanon between 1975 and 1990—and rebuild Lebanon after Israel’s devastating assault.

Syria’s enemies argue vociferously that the killing of Pierre Gemayel, ahead of the publication of the Brammerz report, was a pre-emptive move by Damascus to derail the formation of a special international tribunal to bring Hariri’s killers to justice. Plans for the tribunal were finalized by the U.N. in late November, but still need to be approved by the Lebanese government and indeed by the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud. Bringing down the Saniora government would clearly doom the tribunal to futility.

This is the prime argument of the anti-Syrian camp, which includes Sunni Muslims led by Saad Hariri, bent on avenging his father; Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze community, who has come out stridently against Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad; and, Gemayel’s own Phalanges libanaises—all partners in the “14 March movement” formed after Hariri’s murder.

Denouncing Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon’s affairs, they have no doubt that Pierre Gemayel’s killers were acting on orders from Damascus.

The “Who Benefits?” Theory

There is an alternative theory, which is equally plausible, in which the more likely culprits are Israel and its local agents. Those who advance it ask who benefits from the crime. Certainly not Syria and its Hezbollah allies who, to their great embarrassment, now find themselves denounced once again as criminals before world public opinion.

This accusation of a new heinous murder comes just at a time when Syria was on the point of re-engaging with Europe and the United States and when Hezbollah was hoping to reap political rewards from its stalwart resistance to Israel during last summer’s war.

The murder of Pierre Gemayel has had the immediate effect of paralyzing Hezbollah and throwing it on the defensive: It can no longer consider bringing its supporters out on the street in peaceful demonstrations, as it had planned and announced, to press its demand for a national unity government.

Similarly, the murder is a grave setback for Syrian diplomacy. It occurred when Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem was in Baghdad, where he announced the resumption of diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq after a breach of a quarter of a century. At the same time, Iran called for a tripartite summit of Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian presidents to help end the appalling violence in Iraq.

By these moves Syria and Iran were signaling that Iraq’s neighbors could not be excluded from an eventual settlement in Iraq; that they were able and ready to play a constructive role; and that they were, in fact, key players with whom the United States needed to engage if it was to find an honorable exit from the Iraqi quagmire.

Damascus and Tehran are also seeking to convey the message that peace in Iraq will necessarily require a withdrawal of U.S. troops; that the Iraqi problem cannot be separated from other conflicts in the region; and that a global settlement will involve resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of the Golan to Syria.

To the alarm of hard-liners in Israel and in the United States, these ideas were beginning to make their way in American and European opinion. Calls for a global settlement were coming from many quarters, including in mid-November from the leaders of Spain, France and Italy. Even Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair has seemed to distance himself from Washington in stressing the need for a “whole Middle East strategy,” with priority given to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

In these circumstances, it seems hardly likely that Syria—eagerly seeking dialogue with the West, emerging from isolation, and pressing hard for the United States to re-launch the Middle East process—would put all this in jeopardy by ordering a squalid murder of a relatively unimportant Lebanese politician.

On the other hand, Syria’s enemies—Israel and its Lebanese agents first among them—would have every motive to seek to check Syria’s return to international respectability and to prevent the restoration of Syrian influence in Lebanon, even in a milder form than before.

These, then, are the rival theories. Both Israel and Syria have in the past resorted to murdering their political opponents. Israel continues to do so routinely in the Palestinian territories. Which of the two is guilty this time? Hard evidence either way will not be easy to find. But until it is found, it would be wise to suspend judgement.

Patrick Seale is the author of The Struggle for Syria; Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire (available from the AET Book Club). Copyright ©2006 Patrick Seale.

An Historic and Frightening Moment in Beirut

By Rami G. Khouri

There is something at once both historic and frightening about the open-ended mass street protest that was launched in Beirut Dec. 1 by Hezbollah and its allies, aiming to topple the government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The historic element is that this is a rare instance of mass political action that is declared to be peaceful and designed to change a government. We simply do not have this tradition in the Arab world, which has been characterized more commonly by violent coups and long-running police states. It is also relatively positive that Hezbollah is focused on domestic political engagement, rather than fighting regional or internal wars. Its substantial clout and legitimacy, not to mention its armed capability, cannot long remain outside the structures of political governance or on their periphery.

It is historically useful, if slightly unsettling on the nerves, to find out exactly how the government and the opposition line up in terms of popular and political strength. The so-called March 14 forces of the government coalition and the March 8 forces of Hezbollah and its allies have now squared off in, hopefully, a peaceful, democratic, political contest of wills. The important new element here is not just Hezbollah’s aggressive domestic challenge to the government; it is also the government’s resolute resistance to Hezbollah’s challenge.

Never before has a Lebanese government stood its ground before a challenge from Hezbollah and its allies, as the Siniora government is doing now. This is a moment of historical reckoning for Hezbollah, its allies, and its supporters in Syria and Iran, as it is for the Siniora government and its backers in Lebanon, the Arab world, the United States and the West. We are in uncharted territory now.

Lebanon must renegotiate a new political compact based on a realistic rather than an imagined balance of power and demography that safeguards the interests and integrity of all Lebanese. If the current events represent phase two of such a renegotiated power balance—phase one being the adjustments in the Taif accord that ended the civil war in 1989—then something positive might emerge from these street demonstrations and their associated political confrontations, assuming they lead peacefully to a new government or fresh elections.

The bad news is that this protest and what it may portend in the near future reflect several worrying realities. The Lebanese domestic political system of consensus-building in a multi-confessional society seems to have broken down. The executive cabinet, the parliament, and the special national dialogue of top factional leaders all simultaneously failed to address the political disputes that have plagued Lebanon recently. This is the common predicament of much of the modern Arab world, whose dysfunctional and often dishonest structures of governance do not accurately reflect popular sentiments.

For Hezbollah and its allies to drop the existing political structures and opt for mass street demonstrations, after participating in the government and parliament for years, seems perplexing to many, myself included. If this government is illegitimate, as Hezbollah charges, why did Hezbollah join the government in the first place? If the government’s illegitimacy is mainly a function of its determination to proceed with the mixed Lebanese-international tribunal that will try those accused of killing the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and others since February last year, then we have the bigger and more vexing problem of Lebanese-Syrian tensions. If so, this should be acknowledged and resolved as an act of honest and courageous leadership, rather than camouflaged as a perpetual charade that demeans the self-respect of Lebanese and Syrians alike.

It has always been both a weakness and a strength of Lebanese and Arab politics that honesty and clarity are sacrificed for the sake of an ambiguity that allows all sides to make compromises and achieve a usually unstable consensus. In Lebanon, this has always been referred to as the political system of “no victor, no vanquished.” Unfortunately, it also usually means no resolution of fundamental political disagreements.

This tradition cannot prevail if the real issue at hand is a Syrian-American confrontation in Lebanon through the proxy of Hezbollah and the Siniora government, which seems to be the case (just as this summer’s war was a proxy military battle between Iran and the United States). If Hezbollah wants to bring down the Siniora government mainly to stop or dilute the Lebanese-international Hariri murder tribunal on behalf of Syria, while a majority of Lebanese clearly wants the Hariri killers held accountable, there are no easy or quick solutions.

One option is to perpetuate the political clashes, and probably the assassinations and bombings, in Lebanon until the Hariri murder investigation is finished, the accused are named and
tried, and, consequently, the fate of the Syrian regime and Syrian-Lebanese relations both become more clear. The other option is to force Hezbollah and its allies—usually described as “pro-Syrian”—to reveal if their main aim is to serve Syria or serve Lebanon, perhaps by giving them the one-third of the cabinet they want in return for their approval of the tribunal.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award. Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri/Agence Global.

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