Word: hizballah
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Beirut is boiling, as a Lebanese friend called to tell me. Over the weekend, Hizballah announced it would defy a government ban and hold mass, open-ended demonstrations until the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora resigns - a slow-rolling coup d'etat, if you like. Then on Tuesday, the anti-Syrian minister Pierre Gemayel was assassinated. His father, Amin Gemayel, is the pro-American former president, his grandfather was the founder of the Christian Phalange party, and you can count on his assassination having momentous political consequences for Lebanon. I asked my friend what happens if the government doesn...
...were last week. But I think a couple of things have to happen before the Lebanese start filling sandbags. One likely trigger could be Lebanon's going ahead with an international tribunal to try the suspects accused of assassinating former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Neither Syria nor Hizballah will stand for a tribunal, believing it would be little more than a U.S. and French show trial intended to isolate them. And that's not to mention that several Syrian officials are actually implicated in Hariri's murder...
...tribunal aside, the real problem is with Hizballah, which does not consider itself just another Lebanese political party. Hizballah is firmly convinced it won its 33-day war with Israel this summer - if only by holding off the Israeli army and not returning the soldiers it kidnapped. The war turned Hizballah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah into an icon of resistance across the Islamic world. One Lebanese Shi'a told me Nasrallah's standing now is higher than that of Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khameini - which if true would be an earthshaking shift in the Middle East. Finally, considering that Hizballah...
...Syria, its interests in Lebanon may not be identical to Hizballah's, but they're just as vital. You have to go back to 1982 to understand what's at stake for Syria. On February 2 the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood seized Hama, one of the country's largest cities. Then Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad (the current president's father), convinced his regime was about to fall to the Islamic opposition, ordered his Special Forces to level Hama. Some 35,000 people were killed, most of them hostages. In the aftermath, what surprised and shook Assad was his discovery that...
...factions within Lebanon. Many of the killings have been sophisticated, well-timed operations that bear the hallmarks of a highly trained intelligence organization. Several former leaders of Lebanon's own police and security services are in prison in this country under suspicion for involvement in the Hariri assassination. Hizballah, which itself has this kind of operational capability, has accused Israel of staging these assassinations to sow disunity...