Despite a certain sense of pride among many Lebanese for having
withstood the Israeli onslaught, there is an even stronger sense of
desperation following the war. People have had enough of the constant
conflict that seems to afflict their country, disturbs their lives and
destroys their livelihoods with upsetting regularity. Some who stayed
throughout the 1975-1990 civil war are now talking of leaving, others
will stay to rebuild their hard-hit businesses and careers but they
wonder how often they will have to go through this again. And there is
an enormous sense that this is not finished yet, that even if the UN
sends its troops and the Lebanese army deploys up to the border for
the first time in decades, the next round will not be far off. Israeli
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already said that his country should
prepare for just that.
.
I haven't figured out the political leanings of 'bitterlemons'
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> yet. However, IMHO, the
preceding quote seems to imply: "If we keep the pressure on, the people
of Lebanon would reject Hizbollah, even if they were saints".
A symptom of the Lebanese system
Ferry Biederman
Having won the war, is there a chance that Hizballah will lose the
peace? Judging by the pace at which the fundamentalist Shi'ite movement
is acting to compensate the Lebanese victims of the violence and the
speed with which it has started its reconstruction effort, literally
leaving the government in the dust, there seems to be very little chance
of Hizballah falling behind in the internal Lebanese political game. The
war and now reconstruction have tightened the movement's hold, at least
for now, on its core Shi'ite constituency. It has reasserted itself as
the resistance, against Israel and against American intentions for the
country, and it has pushed the internal Lebanese debate back by at least
several years, to when it was considered close to treason for
politicians to criticize the movement.
At the same time, it is facing more internal criticism than ever before,
even from within its own Shi'ite community. During the war criticism was
certainly muted and even now, when a lot of people are still waiting for
handouts, it has not yet become overwhelming. But certainly among the
other communities there is a feeling that things cannot continue the way
they were before Hizballah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed
eight others on July 12, sparking more than a month of death and
destruction for Lebanon. There is also a realization, brought on both by
what is seen as Israel's indiscriminate use of force and its failure to
strike a real blow at Hizballah, that the only way to deal with the
movement is internally. No outsider, whether Israel, the UN or anybody
else, will solve the issue of Hizballah's arms and its ability to
undermine Lebanon's stability.
Despite a certain sense of pride among many Lebanese for having
withstood the Israeli onslaught, there is an even stronger sense of
desperation following the war. People have had enough of the constant
conflict that seems to afflict their country, disturbs their lives and
destroys their livelihoods with upsetting regularity. Some who stayed
throughout the 1975-1990 civil war are now talking of leaving, others
will stay to rebuild their hard-hit businesses and careers but they
wonder how often they will have to go through this again. And there is
an enormous sense that this is not finished yet, that even if the UN
sends its troops and the Lebanese army deploys up to the border for the
first time in decades, the next round will not be far off. Israeli
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already said that his country should
prepare for just that.
The government in which Hizballah participates but which is dominated by
the anti-Syrian majority that came to power after elections last year
has shown itself incapable of tackling Hizballah. The so-called March 14
movement, named after the date of the mass demonstration against the
Syrians last year following the assassination of former Prime Minister
Rafiq Hariri, has tried to co-opt Hizballah by drawing it into the
cabinet and adopting many of the movement's positions during a national
dialogue that was still underway when the two Israeli soldiers were
captured. The main idea was to "take the cards out of their hands", or
"not let them have any more excuses" by adopting seemingly essential
Hizballah demands such as the return of the Shebaa Farms area that
Lebanon now claims but that according to the UN is part of the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Even more worryingly for the international community, the government
seemed to have been on the verge of adopting Hizballah's stance on the
issue of its arms. The group is the last Lebanese faction to have
retained its arms after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war because it
was engaged in a fight with Israel. UN resolution 1559 of 2004 demands
the disarming of all groups outside the army. The March 14 movement had
originally supported 1559 but its hold on power was so weak--and in
general, so is the power of the Lebanese central authority--that
Hizballah was able to push it into the direction of a non-compromise
whereby the movement would have indefinitely retained its arms and its
hold on southern Lebanon, at most coordinating with the army, as long as
the government had not worked out a defense strategy that could defend
the country against Israel. Since everybody knows that this is an
impossibility, it was tantamount to refusing to disarm and Hizballah is
using the same language today to avoid a discussion on its arms.
The March 14 majority is now talking about a new agreement with
Hizballah that would make the movement commit to not involving the
country in a war through unilateral action, the way it did on July 12.
But leaders of the March 14 grouping have maintained that they already
had exactly such an agreement and Hizballah clearly did not abide by it.
Still, they have few options, given the demonstrated military might of
Hizballah and the political impossibility of forcing the movement into
any arrangement that it does not agree to. Above all, the March 14
politicians are pre-occupied with avoiding new civil strife.
Politically there may be only one way forward, by recognizing the
growing Shi'ite demographic and political weight in the country. This
would involve breaking open the Taif agreement that ended the civil war
and reducing in particular Christian but also Sunni power in Lebanon, a
step that nobody thinks is currently viable.
Even without changing Taif, the other groups could try to strengthen the
central state. But then they would have to give up their own patronage
system that lets small groups or families run the different communities
like fiefdoms, such as Druze leader Walid Jumblatt or the Hariri family
among the Sunnis. In the end, there is not such a huge difference
between Hizballah's arms-assisted stranglehold on the Shi'ite community
and the way other groups in Lebanon conduct their affairs. The
instability caused by Hizballah is really the instability of the
Lebanese system itself.- Published 24/8/2006 ©
bitterlemons-international.org
Ferry Biederman is a journalist for the Financial Times and de
Volkskrant of Holland and is based in Beirut.
