Back to Lebanon

Friday, March 04, 2005

The entire drama was sparked by the February 14th car bomb assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, who had quit his position last October in a huff after Syrian forced a constitutional change that gave their puppet president Emil Lahoud another three years in office.

Immediately, fingers were pointed at Syria, worried by an emerging alliance between Hariri, a Sunni politician (and billionaire with interests in construction and media) and Druze and Maronite opposition politicians who had a common goal: to get Syria out of Lebanese affairs and a tsunami of anti-Syrian sentiment burst into the open, with street protesters not only chanting ‘Syria out,’ but perhaps more significantly, ‘we’re no longer afraid.’ The international pressure on Syria, which actually began last fall with the French-American UN Security Resolution 1559 demanding a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon, was quickly stepped up.

And according to Haaretz this morning, Lebanese opposition members have contacted Uri Lubrani, the longtime Lebanon expert for Israeli prime minister since the 1970s, asking for Israel to encourage the U.S. to keep up the pressure Syria into withdrawing its troops from Lebanon. The Haaretz report also says that senior officials in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office were in touch with some Lebanese leaders even before the current crisis. According to the Haaretz report, Israeli government sources are saying that the Lebanese opposition figures indicated they have no claims from Israel whatsoever, that they don't understand Hezbollah's insistence to perpetuate conflict over the Shaba Farms, the small Syrian-owned area near the Lebanon-Israel border that remained in Israeli hand after its withdrawal from the southern Lebanon security zone in 2000.

But while there is certainly appreciation in Israel for the Lebanese impulse for independence and admiration for the Ukrainian-style demand for democracy, a Syrian departure from Lebanon is not necessarily only a plus for Israel. True, Syria has long been a conduit for Iranian aid to Hezbollah, as well as a direct provider of its own aid. When Hafez Assad was alive, he controlled it with a tight set of reins, but in recent years, with Bashar Assad as president, the Hezbollah often seemed to be controlling Damascus. But if Syria quits Lebanon, it will mean a dramatic change in Hezbollah’s stature. The Party of God, as its name means, would still have its seats in parliament, but with its patron out of the way, it would be out from under the Syrian thumb.

Analysts, including National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, are saying that while Israel should be “cautiously optimistic” about the developments in Lebanon, it must beware of two dangerous scenarios.

The first is that if and when Syria departs its remaining supporters in Lebanon will feel cornered, and could resort to violence in an effort to protect what they believe to be their interests. That could quickly lead back to a civil war, meaning the kind of anarchy in which anti-Israeli forces could thrive.

The second scenario being described as dangerous by Eiland is even darker. Shiites are a third of the Lebanese population, the largest single ethnic-religious group in a patchwork society of Shiites, Sunnis, Maronite Christians, Druze and Palestinian refugees. As the largest group – and the only one left with a well-organized, trained militia – the Shiites, under Hezbollah leadership, might try to fill the vacuum left by the Syrians.

The pressure on Syria to leave – and soon – meanwhile mounts and it is coming not only from the U.S. and France, which worked together on UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that was unanimously passed, and calls for the removal of all foreign forces in Lebanon (meaning the Syrian troops and Iranian Revolutionary Guards affiliated with Hezbollah). As the weekend approached, Egypt and Saudi Arabia both were pressing Assad to speed up his timetable, and while the powerless Arab League was calling for the international community to ease its pressure on Damascus, an Arab summit scheduled for the end of this month will find Lebanon at the top of its agenda – and the entire world watching to see what it instructs Assad to do. So, this weekend much attention will be on Assad’s announced speech to the Syrian parliament, presumably on the latest developments. There are reports that he has ordered an investigation into the disappearance of a ton of explosives from the Syrian army – as if the Syrian army routinely loses a ton of explosives.

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