"Sunni blood is boiling", chanted some protesters in the north of the country, burning pictures of prime ministerial nominee Najib Mikati and waving blue flags of Hariri's Future Movement. The movement has said it will not serve in any government dominated by the militant Shi'ite group.
In Beirut, the main road connecting the city with the airport was closed to traffic due to the protests and some reported that guns could be heard being fired in the area. The Arabic language Al Arabiya TV network reported clashes between police and protesters in the central part of the city.
Lebanon's power-sharing political system mandates that the post of prime minister be held by a Sunni, and Hariri supporters said any figure who accepted the nomination from Hezbollah to form a new government would be considered a traitor.
Mikati urged citizens to remain calm on Tuesday and said he wanted to represent all of Lebanon.
"This is a democratic process," he told reporters. "I want to rescue my country."
Protesters in Tripoli set fire to a truck used by the television station Al Jazeera. Journalists from the channel and other reporters said they were taking refuge in a nearby building.
"If the army does not hurry up and help us, we will be in danger," Al Jazeera reporter Majed Abdel-Hadi said in a live call broadcast by the channel.
With Lebanon's March 14 (pro-Western) coalition being abandoned by the United States and other Western countries, Lebanon's leaders are doing what they feel they have to do to ensure their personal survival and that of their people. On Friday, Druse leader Walid Jumblatt threw his lot in with Syria and Hezbullah, the murderers of his father and of his friend, Rafik al-Hariri.
“After the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) took a turn to become politicized par excellence, it has become a threat to national unity and security,” he added during a press conference held amid conflicting reports on his Democratic Gathering bloc’s choice for the nomination of Lebanon’s next prime minister.
Jumblatt also said that regional initiatives on the Lebanese political crisis called for the abrogation of Lebanon’s agreement with the STL and the country’s withdrawal of its judges from the tribunal, but added that international interference sabotaged the initiatives.
“These points were set by Assad, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Speaker Nabih Berri.”
Jumblatt holds 11 seats in Lebanon's parliament. 65 are required to win. Before Jumblatt's announcement, Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri led Hezbullah 60-57. But there is no guarantee that all of Jumblatt's MP's will follow him in voting for Hezbullah's candidate for Prime Minister (who is likely to be former Prime Minister Omar Karami - under Lebanon's constitution, the Prime Minister must be a Sunni Muslim).
Jumblatt's announcement has prompted warnings from two quarters. The first is Lebanese Christian leader Samir Geagea.
If Hizbullah dominates the next Lebanese government, Lebanon will “turn into Gaza,” Samir Geagea, leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces, warned at a press conference in Beirut on Saturday.
Geagea also warned that in such a scenario, Lebanon’s economy would be devastated and freedoms would be repressed.
The Christian leader was referring to Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007 and the devastation of its economy that followed. Both Hamas and Hizbullah are funded by Iran.
”Did any one wonder what will happen to the Lebanese pound if the other side assumes power in Lebanon?” Geagea asked.
Geagea is speaking only in terms of the economic devastation and religious persecution that he and his co-religionists are likely to face in the event of a Hezbullah takeover of his country. But there's a far bigger issue that ought to concern all Lebanese: What Israel's reaction might be. Hezbullah is much stronger than Hamas, and has much more (both in quantity and quality) devastating firepower to throw at Israel than Hamas has. And that, points out Michael Totten makes Israeli restraint much less likely (Hat Tip: Challah Hu Akbar).
Everybody in Lebanon needs to understand something: Israel is more likely than ever to target the entire country during the next round of conflict. Not since 1948 has Israel fought a war against the Lebanese government; its wars in Lebanon have always been waged against terrorist organizations that were beyond the control of the state.
But if Hezbollah leads the government, the government will be a legitimate target. That’s how it works. Regime-change in Lebanon would have been an insane policy with Hariri’s March 14 coalition in charge, but it won’t be if Hezbollah is calling the shots.
Totten is correct. Everyone here in Israel is watching the goings on in Lebanon with trepidation. This is Vice Premier and former Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom (Likud):
Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said Saturday that the decision of the Lebanese Druse Leader Walid Jumblatt to join Hizbullah in establishing a new government creates a real danger of the establishment of an Iranian government on the northern border with Israel.
In remarks at a cultural event in Bat Yam, he said "this is no longer a terrorist organization inspired and supported by Iran, but a real sovereign government."
He added that "this is a dangerous development that requires Israel to follow closely and be prepared for any future development."
Jumblatt's move is not surprising if viewed in the context of the Druse approach to politics. This is Totten in a different piece.
The Druze, like the Maronites, are too few to build their own state. They don’t even appear to want their own state, opting instead for caution to insure themselves against persecution. Kamal Jumblatt, the father of Lebanon’s current Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, once explained his people this way: “Ever alert, [Druze] gauge their surroundings and choose their words carefully, assessing what must be said and what can be said.”
They’re loyal to whoever is in charge of the country they live in. Syria’s Druze side with Bashar Assad and the Baath Party. Lebanon’s Druze forge alliances with the majority coalition of local political parties, or with whoever is ruling Lebanon from the outside. Israeli Druze support and defend the Zionist project.
By his words on Friday, Jumblatt showed that he sees Hezbullah as the stronger party in Lebanon. That is a direct result of the lack of support given to the March 14 coalition by the Bush administration (at least from mid-2008 when Hezbullah took over much of the country) and by the Obama administration. By their display of collective weakness, Bush and Obama have brought about a situation where Hezbullah is poised to take over the entire country of Lebanon, and bring about a far worse war than anything we have seen in the last 37 years. As Lee Smith would point out, Hezbullah has become the strong horse. To survive in this neighborhood, Israel may have to re-establish its deterrence.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is about to find himself facing Hezbullah alone in Lebanon, as the United States heads for the exits.
Now comes the next phase of this prolonged race between a legal process and an armed resistance. If the indictments so long in coming go long unfulfilled, if they leave untouched those widely believed to have instigated the assassination, then the region will conclude that the victims and their friends have little will left for this fight.
This will mark the final success of the perpetrators’ strategy. They will have understood well the lands against which they plotted. Pursuing these indictments will bring violence, or even civil war, Western experts on the politics of the Levant say, adding with knowing resignation that few there want more violence now. That, as far as it goes, may be true enough. But the judgments of the democrats in Beirut are based on the forces they have come to know for six bloody years. They have no cause to suspect that those who killed in 2005 have abandoned their goals. By contrast, Western support will seem to have brought but temporary solace to our friends; the Cedar Revolution, which began with a bang, may leave only smoke.
The finely tuned ears in the region have not failed to catch the sounds of Washington edging toward the door. Just last week, before sealed indictments were filed, Secretary Clinton, echoed by the State Department spokesman, already pronounced our readiness to treat charges as limited to “individuals,” not “the groups to which they belong.” This must strike oddly Middle Easterners, who have long heard us call Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” and repeatedly proclaim that the U.S. is determined to end impunity for political murder in Lebanon.
Ironically, even as the Saad Hariri government fell, Secretary Clinton lectured the region on the virtues of political courage and the strength of American will. In Doha, she urged Arab leaders “to put away plans that are timid and gradual” and make bold, democratic reforms. “This is a test of leadership for all of us,” said Clinton. “I am here to pledge my country’s support for those who step up to solve the problems that we and you face.” Did some in the chamber think, “Lebanon?”
The Hezbollah leader, in his first public comments since toppling the government, mocked America’s empty promises of support. He publicly warned Hariri that the West had promptly turned on its former ally, the recently toppled leader of Tunisia, by denying him sanctuary.
In days to come, the region will recall Hariri’s fate, much as the assassins intended. If your friends can neither protect you nor deter attacks to come, then you best curb your course or face your fate. There is nothing exotic in this wisdom of Beirut; it sounds the same coming from the streets of old Chicago.
I hope all those Israelis who want to give all our strategic depth to the 'Palestinians' based upon American guarantees are listening.
Shimon Shapira argues that Iran is behind the collapse of the Lebanese government on Wednesday, and that it is sending a message to the United States.
Iran had multiple interests at stake. In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia and Syria had been coordinating to head off a new Lebanese crisis. The two countries had reportedly taken the position that the decisions of the STL should be made public. Iran firmly objected and preferred to see Syria take its position of complete rejection of the STL. Furthermore, it did not want to see its main regional partner get drawn into Saudi Arabia's orbit on this matter. Collapsing the Lebanese government was one way for Iran to put the final nail in the coffin of the Saudi-Syrian initiative.3
There is a tendency in the West to underestimate the Iranian role in Hizbullah decision-making. But it should be remembered that Hizbullah was created in the offices of the Iranian ambassador to Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi in 1982. Deputy Secretary-General of Hizbullah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, admitted in 2007 that Hizbullah does not pursue its own policy but rather submits to the authority of the Iranian leadership, which instructs it even on military-operative issues. This is based on the ideology of the Iranian Islamic regime, set forth by Ayatollah Khomeini, whose key principle is the rule of the jurisprudent (vilayat al-faqih), the title presently used by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.4
What are the implications of this new crisis in Lebanon as it begins to unfold? First, Iran is signaling to the Obama administration, and to the West as a whole, that the main political developments in Lebanon are being decided today in Tehran and not in Washington. From Iran's viewpoint, Hariri can sit in the center of American power in the White House, but it is Iran, though Hizbullah, that decides what is happening on the ground. Iran is testing U.S. power and determination and Middle East states are closely following the outcome.
There is a view that Iran feels it has more freedom of action in Lebanon today than it did in the past: the Obama administration has not embraced the anti-Hizbullah March 14 movement to the same extent as the Bush administration. Meanwhile, Iran's other major ally in Lebanon, Syria, has restored much of the power and influence it lost a number of years ago when it was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanese territory.5
Hizbullah has also produced a fragile situation that could easily get out of control. Under present conditions, even an unimportant incident could spark a major political firestorm in the streets of Beirut that will bring about the complete collapse of Lebanon's central government.
The present situation Hizbullah has created marks the beginning of the countdown to a much bigger crisis that will enable both Hizbullah and its Iranian sponsors to complete their takeover of the Lebanese state.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
