Sunday, September 30, 2007
Oud man out - Lebanese virtuoso can’t be stopped
By TIM PERLICH
MARCEL KHALIFE performing as part of the SMALL WORLD FESTIVAL at Toronto Centre for the Arts (5040 Yonge), Sunday (September 30), 7:30 pm. $30-$50. 416-870-8000, www.smallworldmusic.com.
MARCEL KHALIFE performing as part of the SMALL WORLD FESTIVAL at Toronto Centre for the Arts (5040 Yonge), Sunday (September 30), 7:30 pm. $30-$50. 416-870-8000, www.smallworldmusic.com.
For a musician who doesn't consider himself particularly religious and says he'd rather not talk politics, Lebanese oud maestro Marcel Khalife has been embroiled in a lot of controversy.
The 57-year-old composer, currently living in exile in Paris, has written critically acclaimed works for solo oud as well as orchestras and chorales. He's scored numerous films, theatre productions and ballets, but he's best known for setting to music the verse of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, a former executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Although Khalife's Darwishian numbers haven't had much chart success in Israel, they've met with even harsher reviews in Arabic countries. In Lebanon, Khalife was brought to court and charged three times with what senior Sunni Muslim clerics deemed blasphemy and insulting religious values because his song I Am Yusuf, Oh Father, based on a Darwish poem alluding to the suffering of Palestinians, cited a two-line verse from the Qur'an. Khalife was ultimately found innocent and avoided a three-year prison sentence.
Then in 2005, the same year that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named Khalife an Artist for Peace, Tunisian authorities banned his music from state-controlled radio and television stations because he signed a petition protesting human rights violations in that country.
More recently, Khalife's collaboration with Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad on a musical production of the love story Qais And Laila a sort of Arabic Romeo And Juliet was denounced by a fundamentalist member of the Bahraini parliament who felt its dance routines were offensive to Muslims and called for a full investigation.
However, it's not just in the Middle East where Khalife has trouble with fundamentalists. A San Diego date on his current North American tour with his five-piece Al Mayadeen Ensemble (featuring his sons Rami on piano and Bachar on percussion) had to be moved to another venue when administrators of the Salvation Army's Kroc Center decided the performance would be "divisive" and "unbalanced" without an Israeli performer on the same bill. Unless the Salvation Army has started asking Christian artists to hire Buddhist or Taoist opening acts, it would appear to be a strange double standard.
"I'm used to these kinds of problems in the U.S.," sighs Khalife, speaking through a translator. "Still, it's puzzling to me that such things can happen in a democatic country where freedom of speech is valued so highly.
"We need to look more deeply into what's really going on, find out who is responsible and why, because these problems that may seem minor can lead to bigger problems that are much worse for everyone. But I'd prefer to focus on art, not politics."
What makes the whole San Diego situation even more perplexing is the fact that Khalife will be focusing on the instrumental music from his new Taqasim (Nagam/Connecting Cultures) disc, a salute to Darwish. A song cycle sans vocals might seem like an odd way to pay tribute to an artist admired for his passionate and persuasive use of language, but Khalife was looking at serious jail time for his prior Darwish-connected recording, so a wordless album may have been the safe way to go.
Asked point blank if his past run-ins with fundamentalist clerics had anything to do with his decision to leave off the potentially troublesome lyrics, Khalife sounds shocked.
"No, no, no, no! There was no political reason for my choice to make this an instrumetal album. It was a purely artistic decision based on the music I envisioned. To celebrate the 30 years I've worked with Mahmoud, this had to be a special recording. I wanted to create a work that would somehow convey the real spirit of Mahmoud's poetry, the beauty with which he writes about love and peace. To do that, I needed to free my compositions from the vocal element so the power of his words could be felt in my music.
"What happened to me in the past, whether in Lebanon or in Bahrain, has no influence on what I do as an artist. My work isn't governed by what goes on in the world. I will continue to create freely, as I always have. Just like whatever happens here on earth won't stop the sun from shining, nothing is going to get in the way of the music I make."
Camp defeat sends Lebanese militants into hiding
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, (AFP) — Fatah al-Islam's crushing defeat a month ago after a bloody showdown with the Lebanese army has forced other Sunni radical groups to go further underground, experts say.
The support of Islamist groups for Fatah al-Islam has been fading since the September 2 fall of Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon after 15 weeks of fierce battles with the army that cost around 400 lives.
Omar Bakri, an Islamist preacher barred from Britain for his radical views, said Fatah al-Islam could not count on other Sunni groups, even those with similar radical ideologies such as Osbat al-Ansar which is based in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
"I don't think Fatah al-Islam and Osbat al-Ansar have any relationship whatsoever, because it is in time of need that you see who is your friend," Bakri said.
"And nobody has offered support to them, a lot of people even joined together to condemn Fatah al-Islam," he said.
Bakri is a Lebanese of Syrian origin who infamously praised the Al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States as the "Magnificent 19."
He headed the radical Al-Muhajiroun group in London until 2004. He was declared an undesirable by London and deported, and has since lived in the northern port city of Tripoli where he runs a bookshop and religious centre.
Bernard Rougier, a French expert on Islamists in Lebanon, said that Osbat al-Ansar "hides its Jihadist (holy war) agenda, while they continue to operate in Iraq."
Osbat al-Ansar did not want to jeopardize what he called underground operations for the recruitment and export of young Islamists from Lebanon.
Bakri said that Fatah al-Islam, suspected of seeking to establish an Islamic emirate in northern Lebanon, had unwillingly engaged in the armed confrontation with the Lebanese army.
"They had no ideological objective. It was a reaction to what they saw as the aggression against them and they believed they had the right to react by attacking the Lebanese army," he told AFP.
The battle between the army and Fatah al-Islam broke out after government troops raided a militant hideout in Tripoli on May 20 following a bank robbery in north Lebanon.
The same day, Fatah al-Islam responded with a killing spree against troops -- many of them off-duty servicemen -- in a move that prompted the military to launch an offensive that crushed the group's bastion in Nahr al-Bared.
An expert on Islamist affairs who did not wish to be identified said "the security forces took the initiative (to attack Fatah al-Islam) after realising that the group had become dangerous.
"They were more than 1,000 militants," said the expert. "Without the battle, they would have been 2,000 or 3,000 today."
Bakri said that Lebanon's Sunni radical groups had already been keeping a low profile since the army crushed Islamists in the northern region of Donniyeh in 2000.
"The lessons of Donniyeh and Fatah al-Islam will send a signal to the Sunnis: don't embark on any adventure because it will be a deadly one and no one is going to support you, even Sunnis will stand against you," he said.
"Lebanon is not the right place, not a safe haven for any project. It's a safe haven to live and enjoy living, to listen to Islamic hymns if you are Islamist, or to (pop stars) Nancy Ajram and Haifa Wehbeh if you are secular."
The support of Islamist groups for Fatah al-Islam has been fading since the September 2 fall of Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon after 15 weeks of fierce battles with the army that cost around 400 lives.
Omar Bakri, an Islamist preacher barred from Britain for his radical views, said Fatah al-Islam could not count on other Sunni groups, even those with similar radical ideologies such as Osbat al-Ansar which is based in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
"I don't think Fatah al-Islam and Osbat al-Ansar have any relationship whatsoever, because it is in time of need that you see who is your friend," Bakri said.
"And nobody has offered support to them, a lot of people even joined together to condemn Fatah al-Islam," he said.
Bakri is a Lebanese of Syrian origin who infamously praised the Al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States as the "Magnificent 19."
He headed the radical Al-Muhajiroun group in London until 2004. He was declared an undesirable by London and deported, and has since lived in the northern port city of Tripoli where he runs a bookshop and religious centre.
Bernard Rougier, a French expert on Islamists in Lebanon, said that Osbat al-Ansar "hides its Jihadist (holy war) agenda, while they continue to operate in Iraq."
Osbat al-Ansar did not want to jeopardize what he called underground operations for the recruitment and export of young Islamists from Lebanon.
Bakri said that Fatah al-Islam, suspected of seeking to establish an Islamic emirate in northern Lebanon, had unwillingly engaged in the armed confrontation with the Lebanese army.
"They had no ideological objective. It was a reaction to what they saw as the aggression against them and they believed they had the right to react by attacking the Lebanese army," he told AFP.
The battle between the army and Fatah al-Islam broke out after government troops raided a militant hideout in Tripoli on May 20 following a bank robbery in north Lebanon.
The same day, Fatah al-Islam responded with a killing spree against troops -- many of them off-duty servicemen -- in a move that prompted the military to launch an offensive that crushed the group's bastion in Nahr al-Bared.
An expert on Islamist affairs who did not wish to be identified said "the security forces took the initiative (to attack Fatah al-Islam) after realising that the group had become dangerous.
"They were more than 1,000 militants," said the expert. "Without the battle, they would have been 2,000 or 3,000 today."
Bakri said that Lebanon's Sunni radical groups had already been keeping a low profile since the army crushed Islamists in the northern region of Donniyeh in 2000.
"The lessons of Donniyeh and Fatah al-Islam will send a signal to the Sunnis: don't embark on any adventure because it will be a deadly one and no one is going to support you, even Sunnis will stand against you," he said.
"Lebanon is not the right place, not a safe haven for any project. It's a safe haven to live and enjoy living, to listen to Islamic hymns if you are Islamist, or to (pop stars) Nancy Ajram and Haifa Wehbeh if you are secular."
Lebanese movie "Caramel" talks women, not war
Fri Aug 31, 2007
By Yara Bayoumy
BEIRUT (Reuters) - In a cinema industry traditionally dominated by the theme of war, "Caramel", a film by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, shies away from conflict and instead brings to light social dilemmas faced by Lebanese women.
"Caramel", or "Sukkar Banat" as the movie is titled in Arabic, revolves around the lives of five Lebanese women, each burdened with their own social and moral problems.
It is Labaki's first feature-length movie and was shown during the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has been showing in Lebanon to packed theatres, unusual in a country where audiences tend to prefer Hollywood blockbusters to Arabic films.
Most Lebanese films have tended to tackle themes revolving around the 1975-1990 civil war that destroyed much of the country's social fabric -- its social repercussions, sectarianism and post-war malaise.
But "Caramel" chooses to focus on modern social themes. Its main setting is a beauty salon in Beirut, where women talk frankly about men, sex, marriage and happiness. Their conversations are interspersed with touching and comical scenes.
"Lebanon is not only burning buildings and people crying in the street. When you say Lebanon, especially to foreigners, that's the first thing they think of," Labaki said on Thursday.
"For me Lebanon is about other things ... we live love stories like any other person in any country all over the world," Labaki, 33, told Reuters at a 1930s house in Beirut.
"That's why I wanted to talk about an issue that has no relation to the war and which shows a new picture of Lebanon, specifically that it's a people with imagination, who love life, people with warmth, people with a sense of humour."
BEIRUT (Reuters) - In a cinema industry traditionally dominated by the theme of war, "Caramel", a film by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, shies away from conflict and instead brings to light social dilemmas faced by Lebanese women.
"Caramel", or "Sukkar Banat" as the movie is titled in Arabic, revolves around the lives of five Lebanese women, each burdened with their own social and moral problems.
It is Labaki's first feature-length movie and was shown during the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has been showing in Lebanon to packed theatres, unusual in a country where audiences tend to prefer Hollywood blockbusters to Arabic films.
Most Lebanese films have tended to tackle themes revolving around the 1975-1990 civil war that destroyed much of the country's social fabric -- its social repercussions, sectarianism and post-war malaise.
But "Caramel" chooses to focus on modern social themes. Its main setting is a beauty salon in Beirut, where women talk frankly about men, sex, marriage and happiness. Their conversations are interspersed with touching and comical scenes.
"Lebanon is not only burning buildings and people crying in the street. When you say Lebanon, especially to foreigners, that's the first thing they think of," Labaki said on Thursday.
"For me Lebanon is about other things ... we live love stories like any other person in any country all over the world," Labaki, 33, told Reuters at a 1930s house in Beirut.
"That's why I wanted to talk about an issue that has no relation to the war and which shows a new picture of Lebanon, specifically that it's a people with imagination, who love life, people with warmth, people with a sense of humour."
The movie's title is inspired by the mixture of sugar, water and lemon used by Arab women as a traditional depilation method, and also stars Labaki as Layale, a 30-year-old single Lebanese Christian who owns the salon and is involved with a married man.
TABOO ISSUES
The women face social issues that are quintessential in today's Lebanon, but which society marks as taboo. One character, Nisrine, is a Muslim woman about to get married, but her husband-to-be is unaware that she is not a virgin.
Rima's character is a tomboy who struggles with her feelings for an attractive female client, while Jamale goes out of her way to prove she is still young. Rose, a 65-year-old seamstress, sacrifices love to care for her elderly sister.
"These are stories that I've heard of, were inspired from people I know and people who told me their stories. The way in which the issues are tackled are not provocative," Labaki said.
"These are issues people are living, especially in Lebanon. The aim is not to give lessons, but to show things as they are."
Labaki first made her mark in 2000 directing music videos for young Lebanese pop stars.
Though the film is not intentionally political, it portrays the women, who are from a mixture of sects and backgrounds, as living in harmony -- a message one might see as trying to address the sensitive issue of sectarianism in Lebanon.
"Peaceful coexistence among the sects is apparent (in the movie) but it was unintentional. This is how I see Lebanon. We are a people from a number of sects who live together in a very natural way," Labaki said. (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam)
TABOO ISSUES
The women face social issues that are quintessential in today's Lebanon, but which society marks as taboo. One character, Nisrine, is a Muslim woman about to get married, but her husband-to-be is unaware that she is not a virgin.
Rima's character is a tomboy who struggles with her feelings for an attractive female client, while Jamale goes out of her way to prove she is still young. Rose, a 65-year-old seamstress, sacrifices love to care for her elderly sister.
"These are stories that I've heard of, were inspired from people I know and people who told me their stories. The way in which the issues are tackled are not provocative," Labaki said.
"These are issues people are living, especially in Lebanon. The aim is not to give lessons, but to show things as they are."
Labaki first made her mark in 2000 directing music videos for young Lebanese pop stars.
Though the film is not intentionally political, it portrays the women, who are from a mixture of sects and backgrounds, as living in harmony -- a message one might see as trying to address the sensitive issue of sectarianism in Lebanon.
"Peaceful coexistence among the sects is apparent (in the movie) but it was unintentional. This is how I see Lebanon. We are a people from a number of sects who live together in a very natural way," Labaki said. (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam)
الفيلم اللبناني سكر بنات إلى الأوسكار!
بعد مصر وترشيح فيلم المخرج الكبير محمد خان الأخير "شقة مصر الجديدة" لجوائز الأوسكار، يبدو أن لبنان سيكون المرشح العربي الثاني للمسابقة الأشهر في العالم، حيث أعلن في لبنان أن وزارة الثقافة والتعليم العالي اللبنانية قد رشحت فيلم المخرجة اللبنانية نادين لبكي ليمثل لبنان في المسابقة،ويكون أحد الأفلام المرشحة لمسابقة الأوسكار لأفضل الأفلام غير الناطقة باللغة الإتكليزية. مما يذكر أن الترشيحات النهائية والرسمية للأوسكار سوف يعلن عنها في 22 كانون الثاني المقبل. فيلم "سكر بنات" والذي بدأت عروضه في مهرجان كان السينمائي الأخير حصد إعجاب إعلامي كبير ليكون ظاهرة سينمائية عربية لافته، الفيلم بيع إلى 33 دولة حول العالم وحصد على المركز الثاني في قائمة الإيرادات في فرنسا والمركز الأول في لبنان. الفيلم سوف تبدأ عروضه في دول الخليج من الخامس والعشرين من شهر اوكتوبر/تشرين الأول القادم، كذلك سوف يحضر الفيلم في مهرجان الشرق الاوسط السينمائي والذي سوف تنضم دورته الاولى في مدينة ابو ظبي الامارتية في منتصف شهر اوكتوبر/تشرين الأول القادم ايضًا. فيلم سكر بنات بيع ايضًا الى الولايات المتحدة الاميركية وسوف توزعه شركة
الفيلم الذي يدور عن يوميات فتيات في صالون حلاقة نسائي في بيروت هو من انتاج آن دومينيك وتوزعه شركة الصباح للإعلام في لبنان والشرق الأوسط. الفيلم ما زال يحصد الجوائز السينمائية في غالبية المهرجانات السينمائية التي يعرض فيها، الفيلم حصل على 3 جوائز في مهرجان سان سيباستيان الاسباني والذي منح الفيلم جائزة الفيلم الشبابي وجائزة افضل فيلم التي يصوت عليها الجمهور.
إرجاء الاستحقاق دولياً الى ربع الساعة الأخير وفرنسا تراهن على رايس لإبعاده عن خطوط التماس - النهار
هيام القصيفي
ليست المرة الاولى تحاول القوى السياسية اشاعة اجواء تفاؤلية تعطي اللبنانيين أملا بقرب انتهاء الازمة الداخلية. فمنذ انعقاد طاولة الحوار العام الماضي
يسعى عدد من القادة السياسيين الى الايحاء ان الاتصالات على قاب قوسين من اتخاذ قرارات مصيرية ايجابية تخرج لبنان من عنق الزجاجة. لكن تجربة العامين الاخيرين اثبتت بما لا يقبل الشك، ان هذه الايحاءات لا تهدف سوى الى امرار الوقت في انتظار بلورة المنحى الاقليمي في اتجاه الحرب او السلم في المنطقة.لا يختلف ما حدث في اليومين الاخيرين عما سبق ذكره، ولم تخرج الحركة المكوكية بين بكركي وعين التينة وقريطم والرابية ومعراب، عن هذا السياق، ولم ينخدع بها احد من المعنيين والمتابعين. فالاستحقاق الرئاسي هو خط تماس بين واشنطن من جهة وايران وسوريا من جهة اخرى، تماما كما يمثل الوضع في افغانستان وباكستان والعراق وغزة، من تقاطع دولي واقليمي بين الغرب وايران وسوريا. من هنا فان معظم المطلعين من فريقي 8 و14 آذار، يحاولون قدر الامكان المحافظة على اكبر قدر من التواصل في انتظار اربعة استحقاقات دولية على مستويين.الاول هو الوضع العراقي والباكستاني.فالانظار العربية والغربية متجهة الى المنحى الذي سيتخذه القرار غير الملزم الذي اتخذه مجلس الشيوخ الاميركي بتقسيم العراق ثلاث دول طائفية. وخطورة هذا القرار، بحسب ما قرأته اوساط سياسية في لبنان، انه تقدم به سناتور ديموقراطي لا جمهوري هو جوزف بيدن، ولو ان الهدف منه التخفيف من الوجود الاميركي في العراق. وخطورته ايضا انه يعطي ملامح اولية عن الوضع الامني الذي تقبل عليه المنطقة. فكيف يمكن ان يكون المنحى الاميركي، ولو عبر قرار غير ملزم، تقسيم العراق، ويكون الوضع اللبناني في المقابل وضعا مستقرا، متجها الى اجراء انتخابات رئاسية ديموقراطية؟ وكيف يمكن ان تقابل سوريا وايران الوضع العراقي المترجح بين التقسيم والحرب، بفرض السلم في لبنان؟في المقابل فان الوضع الباكستاني بدأ يتقدم اولويات المفكرة الاميركية. اذ تخشى واشنطن اي تطور دراماتيكي في الملف الباكستاني، ومصير الرئيس برويز مشرف من دون ان ننسى ما تعنيه باكستان التي تمتلك قنبلة نووية يطلق عليها الاميركيون القنبلة النووية السنية. وهذان الملفان يطغيان حاليا على اهتمامات الدول العربية والاميركية على السواء
.اما المستوى الثاني من الاستحقاقات فهو بلورة الاتصالات الهادفة الى عقد مؤتمر دولي في واشنطن في تشرين الثاني، وهو ما يبدو حتى الان انه يعقد من دون اجندة واضحة وحاسمة، وانه يعقد من دون توقع الخروج منه باي نتائج جدية. من هنا جاء الرد السعودي المتريث في بت مستوى المشاركة فيه. ويرتبط هذا المؤتمر بوضعين ميدانيين حساسين، الوضع في غزة ولبنان، وكلاهما حساس امنيا، ومرتبط مباشرة بدور سوريا وايران في المنطقة ووصولاً الى افغانستان. ولا ينكر احد ان احتمالات الرد السوري والايراني في غزة توازي احتمال الرد في لبنان اذا تعثرت كل الاستحقاقات الاقليمية الداهمة، وهو ما يعني ان حماس يمكنها في اي لحظة قلب الطاولة في غزة، وتفجير الوضع في اسرائيل. وهو امر تدرك تل ابيب خطورته، من هنا عدم قيام الرئيس الاسرائيلي حتى الان بتقديم اي تنازلات للرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس، خشية اطاحة كل التقديمات سلفا على مذبح الخلاف الاقليمي بين سوريا وواشنطن.كيف تنعكس هذه الاستحقاقات على لبنان؟لا شك في ان واشنطن لم تتخل عن الملف اللبناني، الا انه لم يعد ملفا اول وحيدا، بل تقدمته كل الملفات الداهمة السابقة الذكر. الا ان اهم ما يميز هذا الملف انه لا يزال يحظى برعاية مباشرة من وزيرة الخارجية الاميركية كوندوليزا رايس. وهذا الامر يثير الاطمئنان الفرنسي، لانها وحدها قادرة على دفع الملف اللبناني خارج الثلاجة وغرفة الانتظار الطويلة.فحتّى الان لا يبدو ان الاستحقاق الرئاسي يدرس بتفاصيله النهائية على الطاولة الاميركية الرسمية المنهمكة بوضع قواتها من المحيط الى الخليج، وهو ما يتيح للفرنسيين، بالاتفاق مع الدوائر الفاتيكانية في هذه المرحلة، متابعة الملف اللبناني، من اجل الاستحقاق الرئاسي. والفرنسيون بحسب ما ينقل زوار باريس اخيرا، يعرفون تماما ان واشنطن لن تسمح لهم بالتدخل في القضايا الكبرى كافغانستان وباكستان والعراق، لكنها يمكن ان تستفيد من وجودهم في المتوسط لالف سبب. والفرنسيون مرتاحون الى هذا الدور الذي يجعلهم مساهمين بجدية في انجاز الاستحقاق الرئاسي.والخرق الفرنسي الفاتيكاني، بالتعاون مع رايس، من شأنه في ربع الساعة الاخيرة ان يساهم في تقديم مرشح توافقي مقرب من البطريرك الماروني، يكون رئيسا لادراة الازمة، لا يزعج السوريين ولا الاميركيين، لان لا احد لديه وهم ان الرئيس المقبل قادر على حل كل المشاكل الامنية والسياسية بكبسة زر.الا ان رئيسا باقل قدر ممكن من الخسائر، قادر بحسب الفرنسيين على تجنيب الاميركيين والمنطقة جرحا نازفا جديدا في الوقت المستقطع لرسم خريطة المنطقة. والا فان السيناريو الاخر، بحسب ما ابلغته المعارضة، لن يكون باقل من حكومتين واعتصام مدني شامل ووضع اليد على الادارات الرسمية. لكن الاسوأ هو ذهاب المعارضة الى انتخاب رئيس للجمهورية، اذا انتخبت الاكثرية رئيسا بمن حضر. وحينها تكون مهلة الشهرين المقدمة الموسيقية لعزف لحن الانهيار
يسعى عدد من القادة السياسيين الى الايحاء ان الاتصالات على قاب قوسين من اتخاذ قرارات مصيرية ايجابية تخرج لبنان من عنق الزجاجة. لكن تجربة العامين الاخيرين اثبتت بما لا يقبل الشك، ان هذه الايحاءات لا تهدف سوى الى امرار الوقت في انتظار بلورة المنحى الاقليمي في اتجاه الحرب او السلم في المنطقة.لا يختلف ما حدث في اليومين الاخيرين عما سبق ذكره، ولم تخرج الحركة المكوكية بين بكركي وعين التينة وقريطم والرابية ومعراب، عن هذا السياق، ولم ينخدع بها احد من المعنيين والمتابعين. فالاستحقاق الرئاسي هو خط تماس بين واشنطن من جهة وايران وسوريا من جهة اخرى، تماما كما يمثل الوضع في افغانستان وباكستان والعراق وغزة، من تقاطع دولي واقليمي بين الغرب وايران وسوريا. من هنا فان معظم المطلعين من فريقي 8 و14 آذار، يحاولون قدر الامكان المحافظة على اكبر قدر من التواصل في انتظار اربعة استحقاقات دولية على مستويين.الاول هو الوضع العراقي والباكستاني.فالانظار العربية والغربية متجهة الى المنحى الذي سيتخذه القرار غير الملزم الذي اتخذه مجلس الشيوخ الاميركي بتقسيم العراق ثلاث دول طائفية. وخطورة هذا القرار، بحسب ما قرأته اوساط سياسية في لبنان، انه تقدم به سناتور ديموقراطي لا جمهوري هو جوزف بيدن، ولو ان الهدف منه التخفيف من الوجود الاميركي في العراق. وخطورته ايضا انه يعطي ملامح اولية عن الوضع الامني الذي تقبل عليه المنطقة. فكيف يمكن ان يكون المنحى الاميركي، ولو عبر قرار غير ملزم، تقسيم العراق، ويكون الوضع اللبناني في المقابل وضعا مستقرا، متجها الى اجراء انتخابات رئاسية ديموقراطية؟ وكيف يمكن ان تقابل سوريا وايران الوضع العراقي المترجح بين التقسيم والحرب، بفرض السلم في لبنان؟في المقابل فان الوضع الباكستاني بدأ يتقدم اولويات المفكرة الاميركية. اذ تخشى واشنطن اي تطور دراماتيكي في الملف الباكستاني، ومصير الرئيس برويز مشرف من دون ان ننسى ما تعنيه باكستان التي تمتلك قنبلة نووية يطلق عليها الاميركيون القنبلة النووية السنية. وهذان الملفان يطغيان حاليا على اهتمامات الدول العربية والاميركية على السواء
.اما المستوى الثاني من الاستحقاقات فهو بلورة الاتصالات الهادفة الى عقد مؤتمر دولي في واشنطن في تشرين الثاني، وهو ما يبدو حتى الان انه يعقد من دون اجندة واضحة وحاسمة، وانه يعقد من دون توقع الخروج منه باي نتائج جدية. من هنا جاء الرد السعودي المتريث في بت مستوى المشاركة فيه. ويرتبط هذا المؤتمر بوضعين ميدانيين حساسين، الوضع في غزة ولبنان، وكلاهما حساس امنيا، ومرتبط مباشرة بدور سوريا وايران في المنطقة ووصولاً الى افغانستان. ولا ينكر احد ان احتمالات الرد السوري والايراني في غزة توازي احتمال الرد في لبنان اذا تعثرت كل الاستحقاقات الاقليمية الداهمة، وهو ما يعني ان حماس يمكنها في اي لحظة قلب الطاولة في غزة، وتفجير الوضع في اسرائيل. وهو امر تدرك تل ابيب خطورته، من هنا عدم قيام الرئيس الاسرائيلي حتى الان بتقديم اي تنازلات للرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس، خشية اطاحة كل التقديمات سلفا على مذبح الخلاف الاقليمي بين سوريا وواشنطن.كيف تنعكس هذه الاستحقاقات على لبنان؟لا شك في ان واشنطن لم تتخل عن الملف اللبناني، الا انه لم يعد ملفا اول وحيدا، بل تقدمته كل الملفات الداهمة السابقة الذكر. الا ان اهم ما يميز هذا الملف انه لا يزال يحظى برعاية مباشرة من وزيرة الخارجية الاميركية كوندوليزا رايس. وهذا الامر يثير الاطمئنان الفرنسي، لانها وحدها قادرة على دفع الملف اللبناني خارج الثلاجة وغرفة الانتظار الطويلة.فحتّى الان لا يبدو ان الاستحقاق الرئاسي يدرس بتفاصيله النهائية على الطاولة الاميركية الرسمية المنهمكة بوضع قواتها من المحيط الى الخليج، وهو ما يتيح للفرنسيين، بالاتفاق مع الدوائر الفاتيكانية في هذه المرحلة، متابعة الملف اللبناني، من اجل الاستحقاق الرئاسي. والفرنسيون بحسب ما ينقل زوار باريس اخيرا، يعرفون تماما ان واشنطن لن تسمح لهم بالتدخل في القضايا الكبرى كافغانستان وباكستان والعراق، لكنها يمكن ان تستفيد من وجودهم في المتوسط لالف سبب. والفرنسيون مرتاحون الى هذا الدور الذي يجعلهم مساهمين بجدية في انجاز الاستحقاق الرئاسي.والخرق الفرنسي الفاتيكاني، بالتعاون مع رايس، من شأنه في ربع الساعة الاخيرة ان يساهم في تقديم مرشح توافقي مقرب من البطريرك الماروني، يكون رئيسا لادراة الازمة، لا يزعج السوريين ولا الاميركيين، لان لا احد لديه وهم ان الرئيس المقبل قادر على حل كل المشاكل الامنية والسياسية بكبسة زر.الا ان رئيسا باقل قدر ممكن من الخسائر، قادر بحسب الفرنسيين على تجنيب الاميركيين والمنطقة جرحا نازفا جديدا في الوقت المستقطع لرسم خريطة المنطقة. والا فان السيناريو الاخر، بحسب ما ابلغته المعارضة، لن يكون باقل من حكومتين واعتصام مدني شامل ووضع اليد على الادارات الرسمية. لكن الاسوأ هو ذهاب المعارضة الى انتخاب رئيس للجمهورية، اذا انتخبت الاكثرية رئيسا بمن حضر. وحينها تكون مهلة الشهرين المقدمة الموسيقية لعزف لحن الانهيار
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Tensions grow between Lebanon's Shia and Sunnis
From Newsday
BY MOHAMAD BAZZI
BY MOHAMAD BAZZI
September 30, 2007
BEIRUT, Lebanon - One morning in January, about 100 Sunni men stood outside a Beirut pharmacy, clutching wooden clubs and metal chains. Many of them were wearing blue headbands, the color of the U.S.- -- and Saudi-backed Future Movement. They were stopping the few cars coming into the area, looking for "strangers" -- a code word for Shias.That day, Jan. 23, Hezbollah and its allies had organized a nationwide strike as part of their campaign to topple the U.S.-backed Lebanese government. Before dawn, the Shia group dispatched young men, some wearing ski masks, to close roads by burning tires and cars. Hezbollah's Christian allies, especially the Free Patriotic Movement led by Maronite politician and former army commander Michel Aoun, also took to the streets in Christian areas. Three people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes throughout the country before the strike was called off that night.As soon as Hezbollah bused its supporters into Sunni areas of Beirut to close roads and force people to stay home, local Sunnis took to the streets. They saw it as an invasion by Hezbollah. "The Shias are occupying our area," said Bahi Amneh, 19, a finance student among those standing outside the pharmacy. "It's our duty to free it. They came here from the southern suburbs to force everyone into a strike. It's our duty to make them leave. If they don't, we will attack them."
Near the intersection where some of Amneh's friends had set up a makeshift checkpoint, two men from the Future Movement sat in a black SUV with tinted windows, talking into walkie-talkies and directing their men. About 500 yards away, a group of Hezbollah supporters had closed Beirut's main seaside boulevard and milled around a burnt car in the middle of the street. They, too, had men with walkie-talkies directing them."You know, it's just unfair. We want to live in peace. But every time we try, Hezbollah makes trouble," Amneh said bitterly. "Hezbollah has its own country within Lebanon. They have weapons. They don't respect the laws." A few minutes later, shots rang out, and the two groups began throwing chunks of cinder blocks at each other as Lebanese soldiers rushed to separate them.New sectarian fracturesAside from Iraq, Lebanon is the other Middle Eastern country where the most severe Sunni-Shia tensions are playing out. With the war in the summer of 2006 and the continuing sit-in against the Lebanese government, Lebanon's Shia -- through Hezbollah -- are flexing their political muscle in a way they haven't done since the country's 15-year civil war ended in 1990.The Shia ascendance in Lebanon has created a new set of sectarian fractures in the country's delicate balance. Unlike the civil war, when the main conflict was between Muslims and Christians, the recent violence has been fueled by Sunni-Shia divisions. The Lebanese predicament is also an extension of the continuing proxy war in the region -- pitting Iran and Syria (which support Hezbollah) against the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab regimes (which support the Lebanese government).Fearing the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq and Iran's growing regional influence, Lebanese Sunnis feel besieged, and they're lashing out at Shias. As they confronted Hezbollah supporters during the January strike, some groups of Sunnis waved posters of Saddam Hussein. It was a contradiction that embodied the current state of the Middle East: U.S.-allied Sunnis carrying posters of Hussein, a dictator the United States spent billions of dollars and lost hundreds of lives to unseat."Why are Shias the only ones allowed to have weapons?" asked Ahmed Nasouli, 21, an engineering student and one of Amneh's friends. "Why aren't Sunnis allowed?"Hezbollah's leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, has repeatedly vowed that his group would never use its weapons against fellow Lebanese. But Sunnis are worried that, left unchecked, the militia will be tempted to take power by force.On the day of the strike, average Sunnis who were not affiliated with any political party went out into the streets to challenge Hezbollah supporters."This area is 100 percent Sunni," said Maher Amneh, 32, Bahi's cousin and a clothing store owner, who wore a wool cap and carried a metal pipe. "We all know each other. So if we see anyone strange, it means he doesn't belong here.""So there are no Shias in this area?" he was asked."No. And everyone knows that," he replied. (Amneh and his friends were standing opposite a restaurant owned by a Shia family from southern Lebanon.)"So what you would do if you saw a stranger?""We would ask him, 'What are you doing here, now, at this time?'" he said. "And if he doesn't give us an answer, it means he's coming from them , and he wants to take a look -- to count us."How did things deteriorate to this point, where Lebanese Sunnis and Shias are increasingly afraid of each other?Hezbollah wasn't disarmedAt the end of the civil war, all militias were disarmed and Syrian troops were tasked with keeping security in Lebanon under the Saudi-brokered Taif Accord. But Hezbollah was allowed to keep its weapons as a "national resistance" against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. After the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri -- Lebanon's most prominent Sunni leader -- international pressure and mass demonstrations forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The Bush administration then began pressuring the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, which took office after elections in June 2005, to disarm Hezbollah.The latest crisis erupted in July 2006, when Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. That set off a 34-day war with Israel. After the war, Hezbollah began accusing Saniora's government of being a U.S. puppet and demanded more seats in the 24-member cabinet. When talks to form a national unity government failed in November, six ministers representing Hezbollah and its allies resigned. Saniora's ruling coalition -- of Sunni, Christian and Druze parties -- accused Hezbollah of walking out of the cabinet to block a United Nations investigation into Hariri's murder, which has been widely blamed on Syria.When Hezbollah and its allies began an open-ended protest in downtown Beirut on Dec. 1, setting up hundreds of tents outside the main government palace, relations between Sunnis and Shias deteriorated quickly. Then came Saddam Hussein's execution on Dec. 30. Sunnis view the United States and the Shia-dominated Iraqi government as killing off the last vestiges of Arab nationalism by executing Hussein. In the Sunni view, America and its allies eradicated the idea of a glorious Arab past without offering any replacement for it, other than sectarianism."The Saddam execution and Hezbollah's drive for political power are making Sunnis very nervous about Shia actions," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on the Shia and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "Sunnis support Hezbollah wholeheartedly when it comes to resistance against Israel. But when it comes to political power, that changes the equation, and Hezbollah is seen as a threat when it directs its power inside Lebanon."Biggest sectarian groupBecause Shias are a plurality in Lebanon -- making up about 40 percent of a total population of 4 million -- and because they are more powerful militarily and politically than in many other countries, Sunni-Shia tensions are more pronounced in Lebanon. On Jan. 25, two days after the nationwide strike, rioting erupted around a university, killing four people, injuring dozens and forcing the army to impose a curfew in Beirut for the first time in 10 years. Lebanon teetered on the edge of another civil war.Since then, sectarian tensions had eased slightly -- until the assassination of Walid Eido, a Sunni member of parliament from the Future Movement. Eido's killing further inflamed the hatred between Sunnis and Shias. During Eido's funeral procession on June 14, hundreds of supporters carried the blue flags of the Future Movement."The blood of Sunnis is boiling," a crowd of young men shouted as they marched behind Eido's coffin. "Terrorist, terrorist, Hezbollah is a terrorist group." Quranic verses warbled from the minarets of every mosque along the route, mixing with loudspeakers that blared out: "Today is the funeral for a new martyr killed at the hands of Bashar Assad" -- the Syrian president. Other mourners insulted Hezbollah's revered leader, chanting, "Nasrallah is the enemy of God."After last summer's war, members of Saniora's coalition quickly demanded that Hezbollah disarm, as required by the UN cease-fire resolution. Many Shias, who viewed Hezbollah as their protector during the war, felt threatened by these demands, which drove them even closer to the militia."Some government leaders started demanding that Hezbollah give up its weapons, without leaving any time for the wounds to heal," said Wassef Awada, an editor at As-Safir, a Beirut newspaper. "Many Shias felt like their identity was under attack after the war. They became more attached to Hezbollah because they view this as a battle for their existence."
Shampress Story About Ghanem Assassination!!!!!
معلومات خطيرة تشير الى اسم قاتل النائب انطوان غانم .... المخابرات الفرنسية اخبرت النائب ميشيل عون ان الرئيس امين الجميل يعرف القاتل
شام برس - بيروت من جورج ابي رعد - مونتريال من خضر عواركة
سرب ضابط في قوى الأمن الدخلي اللبنانية حيثيات وتفاصيل المعلومات التي توصل إليها التحقيق الرسمي للشرطة اللبنانية وتفاصيل
أخرى حصل عليها من كوادر تعمل في فرع المعلومات اللبناني الذي يديره لحساب ال الحريري وسام الحسن ... المعلومات تقول :ان النائب المغدور أنطوان غانم كان على موعد في سن الفيل مع الرئيس الأعلى لحزب الكتائب أمين الجميل في حرش تابت ليس بعيدا عن مكان الإنفجار الذي أودى بحياته. وبما أن النائب هو جزء من جماعة الرابع عشر من شباط ممن يتولى حمايتهم حصرا جهاز فرع المعلومات في قوى الأمن الداخلي فقد خضع النائب المغدور لطلب هذا الفرع بعدم إستعمال أي هاتف خليوي إلا واحد تم تأمينه عبر ضباط الفرع لمعظم نواب الأكثرية ومنهم غانم وقيل لهم بأن هذا الجهاز محمي معلوماتيا ولا يمكن إختراقه ورصده والأهم لا يمكن لأي كان تحديد المكان الجغرافي لبثه. كما أن فرع المعلومات وضع خطط حماية لغانم تقتضي منه عدم السير بموكب بل بسيارت عادية مموهة وتبديلها بأخرى مستأجرة بعد كل محطة وقالوا له بأن أهم بند في خطة حمايته هي أنه خاضع لبرنامج مراقبة المراقب . أي أنهم يراقبون من بعيد أي هم يراقبلونهويلاحقونه وبالتالي هم خلفه ومن حوله ولهذا لن يظهروا بصفة لصيقة معه بل خلف المسافة التي تلزم من يراقبه ليرصده. النائب غانم فور خروجه من بيته إتصل بالرئيس أمين الجميل وأبلغه أنه في طريقه إليه. الرئيس الجميل رد على غانم بالقول أنه سيؤخر لقائهما ساعة عن الموعد المتفق عليه. حينها إتصل غانم بالمحامي سمير شبلي وأبلغه أنه قادم لزيارته وبالفعل جلس في مكتب شبلي فترة ساعة ونيف ولحظة خروجه من مكتب الأخير دوى الإنفجار الذي قتله. الضابط الذي يغامر بحياته لتسريب هذه المعلومات الخطيرة اضاف : تعلمون ان المخابرات الفرنسية تساعد في التحقيق بشكل غير معلن وهذه المخابرات توصلت إلى نتيجة مفادها أن هاتف فرع المعلومات الغير قابل للإختراق كان هو سبب تحديد مكان غانم وان مجموعة إتصالات خليوية وتحركات السيارة المتفجرة التي كانت مسروقة منذ عشر سنوات تشير إلى القاتل الذي نفذ عملية التفجير تلك. وهو المسؤول القواتي المفروز للعمل بإمرة وسام الحسن والمعروف بإسم أندريه عبيد. المصدر أكد ان الفرنسيين أبلغوا الرئيس أمين الجميل بهذه المعلومات ونقلوا للرئيس ميشال عون نفس المعلومات وأكدوا له بأن الرئيس أمين الجميل لديه نفس القناعة وهي أن القوات اللبنانية متورطة في مقتل أنطوان غانم..
Robert Fisk: Dinner in Beirut, and a lesson in courage
Published: 29 September 2007
Secrecy, an intellectual said, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Secrecy is exciting. Danger is darker, more sinister. It blows like a fog through the streets of Beirut these days, creeping down the laneways where policemen – who may or may not work for the forces of law and order – shout their instructions through loud-hailers.
No parking. Is anyone fooled? When the Lebanese MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated last week, the cops couldn't – or wouldn't – secure the crime scene. Why not? And so last Wednesday, the fog came creeping through the iron gateway of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's town house in Beirut where he and a few brave MPs had gathered for dinner before parliament's useless vote on the presidential elections – now delayed until 23 October. There was much talk of majorities and quorums; 50 plus one appears to be the constitutional rule here, although the supporters of Syria would dispute that. I have to admit I still meet Lebanese MPs who don't understand their own parliamentary system; I suspect it needs several PhDs to get it right.
The food, as always, was impeccable. And why should those who face death by explosives or gunfire every day not eat well? Not for nothing has Nora Jumblatt been called the world's best hostess. I sat close to the Jumblatts while their guests – Ghazi Aridi, the minister of information, Marwan Hamade, minister of communications, and Tripoli MP Mosbah Al-Ahdab and a Beirut judge – joked and talked and showed insouciance for the fog of danger that shrouds their lives.
In 2004, "they" almost got Hamade at his home near my apartment. Altogether, 46 of Lebanon's MPs are now hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel, three to a suite. Jumblatt had heard rumours of another murder the day before Ghanem was blown apart. Who is next? That is the question we all ask. "They" – the Syrians or their agents or gunmen working for mysterious governments – are out there, planning the next murder to cut Fouad Siniora's tiny majority down. "There will be another two dead in the next three weeks," Jumblatt said. And the dinner guests all looked at each other.
"We have all made our wills," Nora said quietly. Even you, Nora? She didn't think she was a target. "But I may be with Walid." And I looked at these educated, brave men – their policies not always wise, perhaps, but their courage unmistakable – and pondered how little we Westerners now care for the life of Lebanon.
There is no longer a sense of shock when MPs die in Beirut. I don't even feel the shock. A young Lebanese couple asked me at week's end how Lebanon has affected me after 31 years, and I said that when I saw Ghanem's corpse last week, I felt nothing. That is what Lebanon has done to me. That is what it has done to all the Lebanese.
Scarcely 1,000 Druze could be rounded up for Ghanem's funeral. And even now there is no security. My driver Abed was blithely permitted to park only 100 metres from Jumblatt's house without a single policeman checking the boot of his car. What if he worked for someone more dangerous than The Independent's correspondent? And who were all those cops outside working for?
Yet at this little dinner party in Beirut, I could not help thinking of all our smug statesmen, the Browns and the Straws and the Sarkozys and the imperious Kouchners and Merkels and their equally smug belief that they are fighting a "war on terror" – do we still believe that, by the way? – and reflect that here in Beirut there are intellectual men and women who could run away to London or Paris if they chose, but prefer to stick it out, waiting to die for their democracy in a country smaller than Yorkshire. I don't think our Western statesmen are of this calibre.
Well, we talked about death and not long before midnight a man in a pony tail and an elegant woman in black (a suitable colour for our conversation) arrived with an advertisement hoarding that could be used in the next day's parliament sitting. Rafiq Hariri was at the top. And there was journalist Jibran Tueni and MP Pierre Gemayel and Hariri's colleague Basil Fleihan, and Ghanem of course. All stone dead because they believed in Lebanon.
What do you have to be to be famous in Lebanon, I asked Jumblatt, and he burst into laughter. Ghoulish humour is in fashion.
And at one point Jumblatt fetched Curzio Malaparte's hideous, brilliant account of the Second World War on the eastern front – Kaputt – and presented it to me with his personal inscription. "To Robert Fisk," he wrote. "I hope I will not surrender, but this book is horribly cruel and somehow beautiful. W Joumblatt [sic]." And I wondered how cruelty and beauty can come together.
Maybe we should make a movie about these men and women. Alastair Sim would have to play the professorial Aridi, Clark Gable the MP Al-Ahdab. (We all agreed that Gable would get the part.) I thought that perhaps Herbert Lom might play Hamade. (I imagine he is already Googling for Lom's name.) Nora? She'd have to be played by Vivien Leigh or – nowadays – Demi Moore. And who would play Walid Jumblatt? Well, Walid Jumblatt, of course.
But remember these Lebanese names. And think of them when the next explosion tears across this dangerous city.
No parking. Is anyone fooled? When the Lebanese MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated last week, the cops couldn't – or wouldn't – secure the crime scene. Why not? And so last Wednesday, the fog came creeping through the iron gateway of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's town house in Beirut where he and a few brave MPs had gathered for dinner before parliament's useless vote on the presidential elections – now delayed until 23 October. There was much talk of majorities and quorums; 50 plus one appears to be the constitutional rule here, although the supporters of Syria would dispute that. I have to admit I still meet Lebanese MPs who don't understand their own parliamentary system; I suspect it needs several PhDs to get it right.
The food, as always, was impeccable. And why should those who face death by explosives or gunfire every day not eat well? Not for nothing has Nora Jumblatt been called the world's best hostess. I sat close to the Jumblatts while their guests – Ghazi Aridi, the minister of information, Marwan Hamade, minister of communications, and Tripoli MP Mosbah Al-Ahdab and a Beirut judge – joked and talked and showed insouciance for the fog of danger that shrouds their lives.
In 2004, "they" almost got Hamade at his home near my apartment. Altogether, 46 of Lebanon's MPs are now hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel, three to a suite. Jumblatt had heard rumours of another murder the day before Ghanem was blown apart. Who is next? That is the question we all ask. "They" – the Syrians or their agents or gunmen working for mysterious governments – are out there, planning the next murder to cut Fouad Siniora's tiny majority down. "There will be another two dead in the next three weeks," Jumblatt said. And the dinner guests all looked at each other.
"We have all made our wills," Nora said quietly. Even you, Nora? She didn't think she was a target. "But I may be with Walid." And I looked at these educated, brave men – their policies not always wise, perhaps, but their courage unmistakable – and pondered how little we Westerners now care for the life of Lebanon.
There is no longer a sense of shock when MPs die in Beirut. I don't even feel the shock. A young Lebanese couple asked me at week's end how Lebanon has affected me after 31 years, and I said that when I saw Ghanem's corpse last week, I felt nothing. That is what Lebanon has done to me. That is what it has done to all the Lebanese.
Scarcely 1,000 Druze could be rounded up for Ghanem's funeral. And even now there is no security. My driver Abed was blithely permitted to park only 100 metres from Jumblatt's house without a single policeman checking the boot of his car. What if he worked for someone more dangerous than The Independent's correspondent? And who were all those cops outside working for?
Yet at this little dinner party in Beirut, I could not help thinking of all our smug statesmen, the Browns and the Straws and the Sarkozys and the imperious Kouchners and Merkels and their equally smug belief that they are fighting a "war on terror" – do we still believe that, by the way? – and reflect that here in Beirut there are intellectual men and women who could run away to London or Paris if they chose, but prefer to stick it out, waiting to die for their democracy in a country smaller than Yorkshire. I don't think our Western statesmen are of this calibre.
Well, we talked about death and not long before midnight a man in a pony tail and an elegant woman in black (a suitable colour for our conversation) arrived with an advertisement hoarding that could be used in the next day's parliament sitting. Rafiq Hariri was at the top. And there was journalist Jibran Tueni and MP Pierre Gemayel and Hariri's colleague Basil Fleihan, and Ghanem of course. All stone dead because they believed in Lebanon.
What do you have to be to be famous in Lebanon, I asked Jumblatt, and he burst into laughter. Ghoulish humour is in fashion.
And at one point Jumblatt fetched Curzio Malaparte's hideous, brilliant account of the Second World War on the eastern front – Kaputt – and presented it to me with his personal inscription. "To Robert Fisk," he wrote. "I hope I will not surrender, but this book is horribly cruel and somehow beautiful. W Joumblatt [sic]." And I wondered how cruelty and beauty can come together.
Maybe we should make a movie about these men and women. Alastair Sim would have to play the professorial Aridi, Clark Gable the MP Al-Ahdab. (We all agreed that Gable would get the part.) I thought that perhaps Herbert Lom might play Hamade. (I imagine he is already Googling for Lom's name.) Nora? She'd have to be played by Vivien Leigh or – nowadays – Demi Moore. And who would play Walid Jumblatt? Well, Walid Jumblatt, of course.
But remember these Lebanese names. And think of them when the next explosion tears across this dangerous city.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Rare Tour Reveals Lebanon Camp's Ruin
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI – Sept. 28
NAHR EL-BARED REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon (AP) — Shopping lists scribbled in a notebook, a blue doll's hat, a Valentine's Day card — these are some of the small pieces of Palestinians' shattered lives left behind in the rubble of this refugee camp.
Scenes of devastation — destroyed homes, blackened shops, burned vehicles, scorched tree trunks — greeted journalists allowed into the camp Friday for the first time since the Lebanese army defeated al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants 26 days ago after more than three months of fighting.
Reporters were able to inspect a stretch of about 500 yards of the camp's northern section. Army officers said the area beyond that was still riddled with mines and unexploded ordnance.
The northern district was once the better-off commercial area of the camp — a rare pocket of relative prosperity among Lebanon's 12 impoverished Palestinian refugee camps. But on Friday, bulldozers were removing debris and mounds of earth from the main road, lined with burned shops and multistory apartment buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons, the rubble of their walls piled at their bases.
Soldiers, many wearing surgical masks against the dust and smell of decaying bodies, flashed "V for victory" signs as they rode by in military trucks and armored personn
el carriers that kicked up heavy dust.
Soldiers said the stench was overpowering from the corpses — apparently of militants — still lying in the heart of the camp.
The devastation underlined how far authorities have to go to rebuild the camp to allow the return of the 30,000 residents who fled in the first week of fighting. Most of them are now packed into a nearby camp and fear the promises of return will never be fulfilled.
Officials of Palestinian factions in Lebanon, who are generally seen by the refugees to be out of touch with their plight, gave speeches in the rubble to a frenzied group of reporters about the need to quickly rebuild.
"Nahr el-Bared camp didn't fall. What fell was terrorism," said PLO envoy Abbas Zaki, wearing a gray suit and tie and standing underneath an empty flower pot on the twisted balcony railing of a heavily damaged two-story building.
Osama Hamdan, the representative of the Palestinian Hamas group, said he hoped more than 1,000 families could return in the next few weeks to the camp's northern section, where he claimed 60 percent of the buildings were safe.
The Lebanese government has estimated that $249 million would be needed to rebuild the seaside camp just outside the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. At a donor's conference in Beirut earlier this month, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said another $55 million was needed for emergency relief for the camp, and a further $28.5 million for nearby communities affected by the fighting.
The prolonged battles, which ended Sept. 2 with the collapse of Fatah Islam and the army's takeover of the nearly destroyed camp, left 164 soldiers dead and dozens of militants killed.
According to Zaki, the fighting also claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian civilians. About 310 others were injured.
Before the battle, Nahr el-Bared was a sprawling densely built town of low-built houses and taller buildings in the northern section — referred to as the new camp — along the Mediterranean coast. It was known for its businesses, where even neighboring Lebanese sometimes came for bargains at the shops of relatively well-off merchants — unlike other Palestinian camps in the country, most of which are impoverished and avoided by the Lebanese.
The months of fighting saw Lebanese troops that ringed the camp pound it with artillery and tank shells in prolonged bombardments, as the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside responded with rockets and mortars.
Now many of the tall buildings were shattered, with holes near the top and twisted steel reinforcement bars sticking out of chunks of mangled concrete.
Graffiti by the troops on what remained of the camp's walls and shutters included obscenities against Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi and his deputy Abu Hureira, who was killed in a shootout with security forces after he fled the army's siege of the camp before the battles ended. Al-Absi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, fled the camp hours before the army took over and is believed to still be at large.
"Al-Absi under the boots of army commandoes," says one scrawl on a shuttered shop. Other graffiti boasted of the army's valor, patriotism and dedication.
"We sacrifice our lives for the homeland," said one yellow slogan.
NAHR EL-BARED REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon (AP) — Shopping lists scribbled in a notebook, a blue doll's hat, a Valentine's Day card — these are some of the small pieces of Palestinians' shattered lives left behind in the rubble of this refugee camp.
Scenes of devastation — destroyed homes, blackened shops, burned vehicles, scorched tree trunks — greeted journalists allowed into the camp Friday for the first time since the Lebanese army defeated al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants 26 days ago after more than three months of fighting.
Reporters were able to inspect a stretch of about 500 yards of the camp's northern section. Army officers said the area beyond that was still riddled with mines and unexploded ordnance.
The northern district was once the better-off commercial area of the camp — a rare pocket of relative prosperity among Lebanon's 12 impoverished Palestinian refugee camps. But on Friday, bulldozers were removing debris and mounds of earth from the main road, lined with burned shops and multistory apartment buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons, the rubble of their walls piled at their bases.
Soldiers, many wearing surgical masks against the dust and smell of decaying bodies, flashed "V for victory" signs as they rode by in military trucks and armored personn
el carriers that kicked up heavy dust.Soldiers said the stench was overpowering from the corpses — apparently of militants — still lying in the heart of the camp.
The devastation underlined how far authorities have to go to rebuild the camp to allow the return of the 30,000 residents who fled in the first week of fighting. Most of them are now packed into a nearby camp and fear the promises of return will never be fulfilled.
Officials of Palestinian factions in Lebanon, who are generally seen by the refugees to be out of touch with their plight, gave speeches in the rubble to a frenzied group of reporters about the need to quickly rebuild.
"Nahr el-Bared camp didn't fall. What fell was terrorism," said PLO envoy Abbas Zaki, wearing a gray suit and tie and standing underneath an empty flower pot on the twisted balcony railing of a heavily damaged two-story building.
Osama Hamdan, the representative of the Palestinian Hamas group, said he hoped more than 1,000 families could return in the next few weeks to the camp's northern section, where he claimed 60 percent of the buildings were safe.
The Lebanese government has estimated that $249 million would be needed to rebuild the seaside camp just outside the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. At a donor's conference in Beirut earlier this month, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said another $55 million was needed for emergency relief for the camp, and a further $28.5 million for nearby communities affected by the fighting.
The prolonged battles, which ended Sept. 2 with the collapse of Fatah Islam and the army's takeover of the nearly destroyed camp, left 164 soldiers dead and dozens of militants killed.
According to Zaki, the fighting also claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian civilians. About 310 others were injured.
Before the battle, Nahr el-Bared was a sprawling densely built town of low-built houses and taller buildings in the northern section — referred to as the new camp — along the Mediterranean coast. It was known for its businesses, where even neighboring Lebanese sometimes came for bargains at the shops of relatively well-off merchants — unlike other Palestinian camps in the country, most of which are impoverished and avoided by the Lebanese.
The months of fighting saw Lebanese troops that ringed the camp pound it with artillery and tank shells in prolonged bombardments, as the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside responded with rockets and mortars.
Now many of the tall buildings were shattered, with holes near the top and twisted steel reinforcement bars sticking out of chunks of mangled concrete.
Graffiti by the troops on what remained of the camp's walls and shutters included obscenities against Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi and his deputy Abu Hureira, who was killed in a shootout with security forces after he fled the army's siege of the camp before the battles ended. Al-Absi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, fled the camp hours before the army took over and is believed to still be at large.
"Al-Absi under the boots of army commandoes," says one scrawl on a shuttered shop. Other graffiti boasted of the army's valor, patriotism and dedication.
"We sacrifice our lives for the homeland," said one yellow slogan.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wine Tasting and vineyard tours in Lebanon!
Weekend Breaks
Overview of Lebanons vineyards and their wines:
Clos St Thomas Thomas founded by Mr Said T. Touma is beautifully situated at an altitude of 1000m on the Eastern slope of Mount Lebanon, overlooking the Bekaa Valley. It is spread over 50 hectares (123.5 acres). The most locally known wine they produce is their Chateau St Thomas. As with their other varieties the grapes are hand sorted and stripped, then fermented. It is then aged for 18 months in oak casks, before bottling. It is drinkable at two years. The other interesting white wine is their Blac Les Gourmets which differs in production process from the Kefraya white, in that the white grape skins are also crushed with the juice and allowed a short period of contact in the fermentation vats. (At Kefraya, the skins of the white wine are separated at the beginning of the process). Still this produces a light white wine that is very drinkable. There are six other wines produced at Clos St Thomas and their website is http://www.closstthomas.com/. It is recommended that you visit this as it will give you a more intimate knowledge before arrival.
Chateau Kefraya is the largest wine producer in Lebanon (over 1 million bottles per year). The rose is good, though a little heavy and sweet and they have a very drinkable light red. They have more complex bottles like their white Blancs de Blancs which blends St Emilion, clairette, bourboulenc and sauvignon grapes. Their wines are readily available in Beirut to sample. Their website address is http://www.chateaukefraya.com/
Chateau Musar is the smallest of these commercial producers and yet it has the best reputation for quality. Most of its wine is exported (mainly to England). It was established in 1930 by Gaston Hochar and is still a family business. It is characterised by its complex full-bodied, mature red wines. Unfortunately one of the best vintages on record was in 1984, but most of the harvest was destroyed in the war and only a few bottles survive. Their white wines are also excellent. The website is http://www.chateaumusar.com.lb/
Ksara Ksara is beyond ones expectations! The wines are stored in a fascinating cave system where the temperature needs little regulating (other than a plastic draft excluder as you enter the system). This natural wine cellar was a grotto discovered by the Romans who consolidated part of the vault and dug several narrow tunnels from the cave into the surrounding chalk. They have a wide selection of differing wines. Half of their production are reds, based on the cinsaut and grenache grapes. The heavy reds are cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes. Their whites are sauvignon blanc and chardonnay grapes. The website is http://www.ksara.com.lb/
Wardy- Domain Wardy is interesting in that it is the leader in producing the largest range of monocepages such as Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Perle du Chateau and Chateau les Cedres have won international awards. They offer a wide variety of red, white and rose wines. http://www.domaine-wardy.com/.
Massaya, which means twilight, is given its name from the sun when it sets on the mountains beyond, turning the vineyards purple. This is a new vineyard and these new wines come from a Lebanese/Franco partnership between the Ghosn bothers and the leading French wine maker Hebrard. Like the other vineyards it is located at around 1000m where the slopes are protected by the Mount Lebanon range. The grapes are free of frost and disease and the climate averages 25 degrees. Again the favoured varieties of grape Cabernet-Sauvignon and syrah are used. Massaya also has a website http://www.massaya.com/ which is very informative.
Overview of Lebanons vineyards and their wines:
Clos St Thomas Thomas founded by Mr Said T. Touma is beautifully situated at an altitude of 1000m on the Eastern slope of Mount Lebanon, overlooking the Bekaa Valley. It is spread over 50 hectares (123.5 acres). The most locally known wine they produce is their Chateau St Thomas. As with their other varieties the grapes are hand sorted and stripped, then fermented. It is then aged for 18 months in oak casks, before bottling. It is drinkable at two years. The other interesting white wine is their Blac Les Gourmets which differs in production process from the Kefraya white, in that the white grape skins are also crushed with the juice and allowed a short period of contact in the fermentation vats. (At Kefraya, the skins of the white wine are separated at the beginning of the process). Still this produces a light white wine that is very drinkable. There are six other wines produced at Clos St Thomas and their website is http://www.closstthomas.com/. It is recommended that you visit this as it will give you a more intimate knowledge before arrival.
Chateau Kefraya is the largest wine producer in Lebanon (over 1 million bottles per year). The rose is good, though a little heavy and sweet and they have a very drinkable light red. They have more complex bottles like their white Blancs de Blancs which blends St Emilion, clairette, bourboulenc and sauvignon grapes. Their wines are readily available in Beirut to sample. Their website address is http://www.chateaukefraya.com/
Chateau Musar is the smallest of these commercial producers and yet it has the best reputation for quality. Most of its wine is exported (mainly to England). It was established in 1930 by Gaston Hochar and is still a family business. It is characterised by its complex full-bodied, mature red wines. Unfortunately one of the best vintages on record was in 1984, but most of the harvest was destroyed in the war and only a few bottles survive. Their white wines are also excellent. The website is http://www.chateaumusar.com.lb/
Ksara Ksara is beyond ones expectations! The wines are stored in a fascinating cave system where the temperature needs little regulating (other than a plastic draft excluder as you enter the system). This natural wine cellar was a grotto discovered by the Romans who consolidated part of the vault and dug several narrow tunnels from the cave into the surrounding chalk. They have a wide selection of differing wines. Half of their production are reds, based on the cinsaut and grenache grapes. The heavy reds are cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes. Their whites are sauvignon blanc and chardonnay grapes. The website is http://www.ksara.com.lb/
Wardy- Domain Wardy is interesting in that it is the leader in producing the largest range of monocepages such as Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Perle du Chateau and Chateau les Cedres have won international awards. They offer a wide variety of red, white and rose wines. http://www.domaine-wardy.com/.
Massaya, which means twilight, is given its name from the sun when it sets on the mountains beyond, turning the vineyards purple. This is a new vineyard and these new wines come from a Lebanese/Franco partnership between the Ghosn bothers and the leading French wine maker Hebrard. Like the other vineyards it is located at around 1000m where the slopes are protected by the Mount Lebanon range. The grapes are free of frost and disease and the climate averages 25 degrees. Again the favoured varieties of grape Cabernet-Sauvignon and syrah are used. Massaya also has a website http://www.massaya.com/ which is very informative.
Vineyards represent Lebanon's rich diversity (Ya Libnan)
Monday, 17 September, 2007 @ 6:07 PM
By Andrew Lee Butters It's harvest season in Lebanon, so on Monday I drove over the coastal mountain range and down to the Bekaa Valley, the fertile basin that is both home to Lebanon's wine industry and to a significant number of the country's Shia Muslims.
It's a very Lebanese experience to watch Bedouin farm workers in the early morning light, mosques in the distance, carry grapes by the crate-load to be pressed into a liquid that they and most of the neighbors are forbidden by Islamic law to drink.
Though alcohol production might seem incongruous in the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East, vinticulture is an integral part of Lebanese culture, and not just because of the country's large Christian minority. Winemaking was first developed in the ancient Middle East, and such was the importance of wine making in the Bekaa during classical antiquity, that the Romans built a massive temple in Baalbek to the wine god Bacchus which still stands today.
Arabs themselves invented the art of distilling fermented beverages into alcoholic spirits, exported it during the Islamic conquests of the Middle Ages, and practice it still by making arak, a grape based anise flavored drink. Today, the majority owners of Lebanon's two largest wineries are Druze and Sunni Muslims respectively. The workforce that picks the grapes, and the landowners who grow them are almost all Muslims. And perhaps God only knows how many of Lebanon's wine drinkers are also Muslims.
"The whole existence of wine making is a contradiction to most of the preconceived notions people have Lebanon, " said my host, Ramzi Ghosn, who along with his older brother Sami, owns Massaya, one of Lebanon's newer winemakers. The Ghosn brothers are part of the generation that left Lebanon during the country's brutal 15-year civil war, and who began returning in the 1990's to rebuild the country with skills they learned in exile. For Ramzi, who studied marketing in the United States, wine is a perfect vehicle for changing the perception that Lebanon is haven for religious fanaticism and terrorism. "Wine is a message of tolerance and sophistication."
Admittedly, Lebanon -- which makes about 6 million bottle of wine a year -- is one of the world's smallest producers. But a few of the country's dozen or so commercial producers make wines that are internationally renowned, and most of them make wine that is very easy on the way down. Over a traditional dinner of frogs legs, thick yogurt, and sauteed liver, Ramzi and I drank a Massaya classic red, not one of his fanciest, but one that best reflects the region, with a peppery taste and smells of mint and thyme. The humble cinsualt grape he uses doesn't have a strong personality of its own, but absorbs the surrounding environment like a sponge. Much like Lebanon itself.
Votes and assassinations in Lebanon
By Jim Muir BBC News, Beirut
The Lebanese parliament failed to elect a new president again this week - and after nearly a year of political deadlock, the deadline for a handover of presidential power is fast approaching.
By Lebanese standards, this presidential election has been relatively normal. So far, that is, because there is still a very long way to go, and plenty of potential for it to go spectacularly wrong.
At least it is being held - again, so far - where it should be: in the parliamentary chamber in downtown Beirut.
That is still something of a novelty in recent decades.
It is hard to forget my introduction to Lebanese presidential elections, way back in May 1976.
The first phase of the civil war was in full swing. The downtown area where parliament was, had been smashed and paralysed by the fighting. The battlefront now ran right through that area, dividing mainly Christian east Beirut, from the mainly Muslim west.
So the MPs had to meet at the Villa Mansour, a gracious residence taken over as a temporary refuge.
At least it is being held - again, so far - where it should be: in the parliamentary chamber in downtown Beirut.
That is still something of a novelty in recent decades.
It is hard to forget my introduction to Lebanese presidential elections, way back in May 1976.
The first phase of the civil war was in full swing. The downtown area where parliament was, had been smashed and paralysed by the fighting. The battlefront now ran right through that area, dividing mainly Christian east Beirut, from the mainly Muslim west.
So the MPs had to meet at the Villa Mansour, a gracious residence taken over as a temporary refuge.
Its appeal was that it lay close to one of the main crossing-points on the confrontation line, near the national museum, so people could get to it from both sides.
A narrow quorum duly turned up. But somebody did not like what was going on.
Hanging around outside, we had to throw ourselves down behind walls for shelter, as mortars suddenly came crashing down into the immediate area, scattering dust and fragments. There must have been a message there.
But it did not make much difference. Elias Sarkis, the former governor of the central bank, was duly elected, to the din of exploding shells.
Under siege
Six years on, and it was time for Mr Sarkis to stand down. The situation had changed radically.
Israel had invaded, and was even besieging west Beirut. This time, the election was held in an army barracks in east Beirut, with Israeli troops holding the ring.
The only candidate was the feisty young Christian militia leader, Bashir Gemayel, who had thrown in his lot with the Israelis.
MPs were rounded up at gunpoint and herded in to make up the quorum.
I remember hearing gunfire outside as the voting went ahead.
Bashir Gemayel was duly elected. But somebody did not like that, either.
Just three weeks later, before he could take office, he was crushed to death in the ruins of his Phalangist Party headquarters, demolished by a massive explosion.
The most immediate consequence, just a few days later, was the massacre by Christian militiamen of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Bashir's brother Amin - less controversial and more conciliatory - was elected relatively smoothly, to take his place.
A narrow quorum duly turned up. But somebody did not like what was going on.
Hanging around outside, we had to throw ourselves down behind walls for shelter, as mortars suddenly came crashing down into the immediate area, scattering dust and fragments. There must have been a message there.
But it did not make much difference. Elias Sarkis, the former governor of the central bank, was duly elected, to the din of exploding shells.
Under siege
Six years on, and it was time for Mr Sarkis to stand down. The situation had changed radically.
Israel had invaded, and was even besieging west Beirut. This time, the election was held in an army barracks in east Beirut, with Israeli troops holding the ring.
The only candidate was the feisty young Christian militia leader, Bashir Gemayel, who had thrown in his lot with the Israelis.
MPs were rounded up at gunpoint and herded in to make up the quorum.
I remember hearing gunfire outside as the voting went ahead.
Bashir Gemayel was duly elected. But somebody did not like that, either.
Just three weeks later, before he could take office, he was crushed to death in the ruins of his Phalangist Party headquarters, demolished by a massive explosion.
The most immediate consequence, just a few days later, was the massacre by Christian militiamen of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Bashir's brother Amin - less controversial and more conciliatory - was elected relatively smoothly, to take his place.
Peace agreement
Fast forward again.
It is 1989, and Lebanon is divided.
There are two prime ministers and no president, because when Amin Gemayel had to stand down a year earlier, it proved impossible to elect a successor.
But under Arab pressure, a peace agreement is finally reached at Taif, in Saudi Arabia, and the way was clear for another election.
And what a strange one that was. Because Beirut was still very unsafe, MPs and journalists were bundled into special planes and flown up to an abandoned air strip in the far north of the country.
There, this time with no violence in the background, Rene Muawwad was duly elected. But once again, somebody did not like that either.
Just 17 days later, he too was blown up in a huge car bomb explosion back in Beirut.
And another exceptional election followed two days later.
This time it was held under tight security at a hotel in the town of Shtaura, in east Lebanon, near the border with Syria.
The election of Elias Hrawi ushered in a decade when most of Lebanon fell quietly under Syrian sway. It allowed a period of intense reconstruction, although many underlying problems remained unresolved.
The only normal election in recent times - in 1998 - saw the current, pro-Syrian incumbent, Emile Lahoud, voted in with near unanimity. This included many who have since turned against him and the Syrians.
For things have changed, again.
And what a strange one that was. Because Beirut was still very unsafe, MPs and journalists were bundled into special planes and flown up to an abandoned air strip in the far north of the country.
There, this time with no violence in the background, Rene Muawwad was duly elected. But once again, somebody did not like that either.
Just 17 days later, he too was blown up in a huge car bomb explosion back in Beirut.
And another exceptional election followed two days later.
This time it was held under tight security at a hotel in the town of Shtaura, in east Lebanon, near the border with Syria.
The election of Elias Hrawi ushered in a decade when most of Lebanon fell quietly under Syrian sway. It allowed a period of intense reconstruction, although many underlying problems remained unresolved.
The only normal election in recent times - in 1998 - saw the current, pro-Syrian incumbent, Emile Lahoud, voted in with near unanimity. This included many who have since turned against him and the Syrians.
For things have changed, again.
Syria was obliged to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in 2005, under international pressure and a wave of Lebanese outrage following the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri.
But Syria's power and influence here simply cannot be ignored.
With their ally Iran, and through Lebanese factions such as Hezbollah and its allies, the Syrians have enormous assets. As a result, the political process is deadlocked.
'Turmoil and tension'
Until the meeting on Tuesday, parliament had not convened for nearly a year.
The prime minister has to reach his office through a back entrance, since the government building is besieged by Hezbollah tents.
That deadlock is now focused on how to replace the Syrian-backed president when his term expires in November.
It is a deadline that will not go away. The gulf between the Western-backed, anti-Syrian government and the opposition, supported by Syria and Iran, is enormous.
And their outside patrons have the whole region in the grip of turmoil and tension, with fears of worse to come, especially between the US and Iran.
So anything is possible in the coming weeks here. Dialogue and agreement, division, war.
If the Lebanese are very lucky, this could turn out to be a normal election.
But Syria's power and influence here simply cannot be ignored.
With their ally Iran, and through Lebanese factions such as Hezbollah and its allies, the Syrians have enormous assets. As a result, the political process is deadlocked.
'Turmoil and tension'
Until the meeting on Tuesday, parliament had not convened for nearly a year.
The prime minister has to reach his office through a back entrance, since the government building is besieged by Hezbollah tents.
That deadlock is now focused on how to replace the Syrian-backed president when his term expires in November.
It is a deadline that will not go away. The gulf between the Western-backed, anti-Syrian government and the opposition, supported by Syria and Iran, is enormous.
And their outside patrons have the whole region in the grip of turmoil and tension, with fears of worse to come, especially between the US and Iran.
So anything is possible in the coming weeks here. Dialogue and agreement, division, war.
If the Lebanese are very lucky, this could turn out to be a normal election.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday 27 September 2007 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Lebanon crisis (Reuters)
Last reviewed: 29-06-2007
INSTABILITY IMPEDES LEBANON'S RECOVERY
Years after the end of its lengthy civil war, Lebanon's ongoing instability is impeding its reconstruction and recovery.
15 years of factional fighting ended in 1990
Sectarian divisions remain
$2.8 billion damage caused by 2006 Israeli bombardment
Lebanon is a tiny country with a bewildering number of different religious groups including Christian sects, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and Druze. Many of these formed armed divisions during its 1975-1990 civil war - which also involved Syria, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation - and are represented in a power-sharing government installed at the end of the war.
Lebanon also has a large refugee population - 400,000 Palestinians are housed in camps across the country. Lebanese security forces are not allowed to enter the camps under a 1969 Arab accord, leaving a security vacuum filled by Palestinian armed groups. These groups include the Al Qaeda-inspired militants Fatah al-Islam. The Lebanese government says that the group, which emerged late 2006, is a tool used by Syria to stir up instability. Both Syria and Fatah al-Islam deny any connection.
In May 2007, the worst internal violence since the civil war began as the Lebanese army engaged in a bitter struggle with Fatah al-Islam militants, who were based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared north of Tripoli.
Over 27,000 Palestinian civilians fled the fighting, while thousands more endured a humanitarian crisis within the camp.
Militias in Lebanon are in defiance of the Taif Accord that ended the civil war and a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for all groups in Lebanon to be disarmed.
Lebanon's biggest armed group, Hezbollah or the 'Party of God', emerged in the 1980s as a resistance force against the occupation of the south of the country by Israeli troops. Israel withdrew in 2000, and since then it has retained widespread support among the Lebanese for its role in defending the country.
Hezbollah, while backed with Iranian funding, is also a political and social force within Lebanon, providing healthcare and education for the country's Shi�ite community. Until November 2006, it formed part of the multi-confessional Lebanese government.
In July 2006, a month-long war with Israel resulted in a massive military bombardment of Lebanon by Israeli forces. The conflict re-ignited when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid. Israel retaliated with air strikes and ground offensives, destroying infrastructure and effectively cutting Lebanon off from the outside world. Hezbollah, for its part, launched waves of rocket attacks on northern Israel.
By the time a ceasefire was declared in August 2006, nearly 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, two-thirds of them soldiers, had been killed in the conflict. More than 900,000 Lebanese had been displaced and the country faced a humanitarian crisis.
Unexploded cluster bombs dropped by the Israelis in the closing days of the conflict have turned large swathes of farmland into no-go areas. The United Nations Environment Programme warned in January 2007 that de-mining of the bombs -which number as many as 4 million - could take up to 15 months.
A U.N. peacekeeping force that had been in Lebanon since the civil war was expanded to help the Lebanese army monitor developments in the south and allow humanitarian work to be done. In April 2007 it numbered 13,251 peacekeepers.
However, in the aftermath of the war, internal tensions within Lebanon worsened. A split emerged between those who backed the coalition behind the government led by Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora known as March 14th and the Opposition, led by Hezbollah and followers of the Christian leader Michel Aoun.
In November 2006, the government came close to collapse when six pro-Syrian Shi'ite cabinet ministers resigned in a bid for a greater share of political power. The opposition's campaign has been accompanied by ongoing sit-in protests outside the government buildings in central Beirut.
The political division also turns on a disagreement over the role of Syria in Lebanese affairs, in particular about the formation of a U.N. tribunal to investigate the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a car bomb in February 2005.
The assassination sparked massive anti-Syrian rallies by those who blamed Syria for his death. International pressure on Syria to withdraw its troops, which had been in Lebanon since 1976, resulted in the departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon in April 2005.
Since Hariri's death, a string of anti-Syrian politicians and journalists have been targeted, with the assassination of parliamentary deputy Walid Eido MP as the latest victim, in a series of bombings that accompanied the Nahr al Bared conflict.
Key facts
Population: 3.6 million (U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2006)
65 percent are Muslim, half of whom are Shi'ites. There is a large Christian population, and a sizeable Druze minority. [Reuters]
Population: 3.6 million (U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2006)
65 percent are Muslim, half of whom are Shi'ites. There is a large Christian population, and a sizeable Druze minority. [Reuters]
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon: 400,000 (214,093 in camps) (UNRWA, 2006)
Area: 10,452 square km (4,036 square miles)
Number of cluster bombs dropped by Israelis in 2006: Up to one million (U.N. Environment Programme, 2007)
Damage caused by Israeli bombardment: $2.8 billion
FACTBOX-Can Lebanon's rival camps elect president?
Sept 23 (Reuters) - Lebanon's protracted political crisis now revolves around choosing a new president to succeed Emile Lahoud, a pro-Syrian figure whose term expires in November.
Rifts between the anti-Syrian governing coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition cast doubt on parliament's ability to choose a replacement for Lahoud, whose own term was controversially extended in 2004 at Syria's behest.
The pro-government coalition wants to ensure the next president shares its goals of keeping Lebanon free of Syrian control and backing U.N. efforts to bring the assassins of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and others to justice.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, and its allies favour a president who will not allow Lebanon to fall into Washington's orbit or pursue U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that the Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group disarm.
Here are answers to questions about the election and what might happen if it fails to take place.
Rifts between the anti-Syrian governing coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition cast doubt on parliament's ability to choose a replacement for Lahoud, whose own term was controversially extended in 2004 at Syria's behest.
The pro-government coalition wants to ensure the next president shares its goals of keeping Lebanon free of Syrian control and backing U.N. efforts to bring the assassins of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and others to justice.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, and its allies favour a president who will not allow Lebanon to fall into Washington's orbit or pursue U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that the Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group disarm.
Here are answers to questions about the election and what might happen if it fails to take place.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Lebanon's 128-member parliament elects a president, by tradition a Maronite Christian in the sectarian power-sharing system, for a six-year term. The president retains substantial powers, even though these were reduced under the Taif Agreement that ended the 1975-90 civil war. Parliament has in the past mustered at least two-thirds of its members to pick a president.
There are five declared candidates -- Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb and Robert Ghanem for the anti-Syrian bloc known as March 14; Michel Aoun for the opposition; and outsider Chibli Mallat.
But the president may well be chosen from an array of potential compromise candidates, who include Michel Suleiman, the army commander, and Central Bank Governor Riyad Salameh.
Lebanon's 128-member parliament elects a president, by tradition a Maronite Christian in the sectarian power-sharing system, for a six-year term. The president retains substantial powers, even though these were reduced under the Taif Agreement that ended the 1975-90 civil war. Parliament has in the past mustered at least two-thirds of its members to pick a president.
There are five declared candidates -- Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb and Robert Ghanem for the anti-Syrian bloc known as March 14; Michel Aoun for the opposition; and outsider Chibli Mallat.
But the president may well be chosen from an array of potential compromise candidates, who include Michel Suleiman, the army commander, and Central Bank Governor Riyad Salameh.
WHAT ARE THE OBSTACLES?
The March 14 coalition insists on electing one of its own to consolidate the freedom, sovereignty and independence it says Lebanon gained after Damascus withdrew its troops in April 2005.
The opposition says this would effectively put Lebanon under Western instead of Syrian tutelage. Its candidate, Aoun, was once a fierce critic of Syria, but is now allied to Hezbollah and Amal, another Syrian-backed Shi'ite faction.
The two sides are evenly balanced, with the March 14 bloc holding a razor-thin majority in the assembly. Efforts to win agreement on a compromise candidate have yet to bear fruit.
Internal disputes are complicated by the links of Lebanese factions with the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and other powers vying for influence in the Middle East.
The March 14 coalition insists on electing one of its own to consolidate the freedom, sovereignty and independence it says Lebanon gained after Damascus withdrew its troops in April 2005.
The opposition says this would effectively put Lebanon under Western instead of Syrian tutelage. Its candidate, Aoun, was once a fierce critic of Syria, but is now allied to Hezbollah and Amal, another Syrian-backed Shi'ite faction.
The two sides are evenly balanced, with the March 14 bloc holding a razor-thin majority in the assembly. Efforts to win agreement on a compromise candidate have yet to bear fruit.
Internal disputes are complicated by the links of Lebanese factions with the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and other powers vying for influence in the Middle East.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is also the leader of Amal, has called parliament to convene a session to elect a president on Tuesday, but there is no chance of achieving a two-thirds quorum without a prior agreement between the opposing camps. Berri could then set a new date for a session in October.
Apart from settling on a compromise candidate, the challenge would be to agree a broader package deal on ending Lebanon's 10-month-old political crisis with a national unity government.
If the deadlock persists -- and an opposition boycott prevents a two-thirds quorum in parliament -- the March 14 group has threatened to elect a president by simple majority.
The opposition, which considers Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government lost its legitimacy when all Shi'ite ministers and one Christian resigned in November, says any such move would be an unconstitutional recipe for conflict and chaos.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is also the leader of Amal, has called parliament to convene a session to elect a president on Tuesday, but there is no chance of achieving a two-thirds quorum without a prior agreement between the opposing camps. Berri could then set a new date for a session in October.
Apart from settling on a compromise candidate, the challenge would be to agree a broader package deal on ending Lebanon's 10-month-old political crisis with a national unity government.
If the deadlock persists -- and an opposition boycott prevents a two-thirds quorum in parliament -- the March 14 group has threatened to elect a president by simple majority.
The opposition, which considers Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government lost its legitimacy when all Shi'ite ministers and one Christian resigned in November, says any such move would be an unconstitutional recipe for conflict and chaos.
WHAT IF NO PRESIDENT IS ELECTED?
Lahoud has said he will refuse to hand power to Siniora's government if no president has been elected when his term expires on Nov. 23. He has floated the idea of naming Army Commander Michel Suleiman as head of an interim cabinet.
That would set the stage for the emergence of rival governments competing for power in a re-run of a 1988-90 experience which produced only bloodshed and disaster.
A contest between two governments could split the army, provoke violence or even plunge Lebanon back into civil war.
Lahoud has said he will refuse to hand power to Siniora's government if no president has been elected when his term expires on Nov. 23. He has floated the idea of naming Army Commander Michel Suleiman as head of an interim cabinet.
That would set the stage for the emergence of rival governments competing for power in a re-run of a 1988-90 experience which produced only bloodshed and disaster.
A contest between two governments could split the army, provoke violence or even plunge Lebanon back into civil war.
Hope for the best - but expect the worst of Lebanon's failed politicians (Daily Star)
By The Daily Star Monday, September 24, 2007
Editorial
Editorial
Don't expect much from the "ice-breaking" scheduled to take place on Tuesday, the much-ballyhooed date when the Lebanese Parliament is theoretically scheduled to convene for the election of a new president. Earlier meetings have taken place both inside and outside Lebanon, and participants indicate that they amounted to little more than exercises in futility. If substantive changes had taken place, there would have been some indication, even from behind closed doors. These have yet to emerge, so while every Lebanese should be hoping for the best, each and every one of us should also be preparing for the worst.
All signs point, instead, to a very dangerous period ahead, one in which those accustomed to using violence to further their goals are liable to strike again at any moment. Lebanon's political class, it seems, has not yet figured out the fact that its usual way of doing things is inadequate to the monumental task at hand. With the government and the opposition having all but declared war on one another, the impasse can only be broken by an unshakable commitment to placing the national interest above all else. Patently, neither side has taken that step thus far, so the political forecast has to be for stormy weather in the coming weeks.
Other countries with more stable histories, stronger economies and less troublesome neighbors can afford logjams that temporarily paralyze their governments and spark arguments among their citizens. Lebanon cannot. Francois Bassil, who heads the Association of Banks of Lebanon, has warned that the current situation is not sustainable: If it continues much longer, he says, the national economy will go into free-fall. With all the other tensions prevailing in the country, that in itself could spark all manner of public discord that throws the entire population back into the chaos witnessed far too often in both the distant and recent past.
There is still a chance that a breakthrough will be engineered at the last moment, that after almost a year of gambling with their constituents' destinies, the two camps will agree to a workable compromise. It is a thin one, though, and it would demand better judgment, clearer vision and incalculably more maturity than this country's politicians have demonstrated. Barring a miracle, therefore, the best that can realistically be hoped for on Tuesday is that MPs from rival parties who encounter one another can be prevented from engaging in an embarrassing episode of fisticuffs - or worse. Once a follow-on session has been scheduled, perhaps they will at last get down to the business of serious negotiations aimed at protecting Lebanon's future instead of stonewalling designed to safeguard the narrow interests of individual politicians and their lackeys. But don't count on it.
All signs point, instead, to a very dangerous period ahead, one in which those accustomed to using violence to further their goals are liable to strike again at any moment. Lebanon's political class, it seems, has not yet figured out the fact that its usual way of doing things is inadequate to the monumental task at hand. With the government and the opposition having all but declared war on one another, the impasse can only be broken by an unshakable commitment to placing the national interest above all else. Patently, neither side has taken that step thus far, so the political forecast has to be for stormy weather in the coming weeks.
Other countries with more stable histories, stronger economies and less troublesome neighbors can afford logjams that temporarily paralyze their governments and spark arguments among their citizens. Lebanon cannot. Francois Bassil, who heads the Association of Banks of Lebanon, has warned that the current situation is not sustainable: If it continues much longer, he says, the national economy will go into free-fall. With all the other tensions prevailing in the country, that in itself could spark all manner of public discord that throws the entire population back into the chaos witnessed far too often in both the distant and recent past.
There is still a chance that a breakthrough will be engineered at the last moment, that after almost a year of gambling with their constituents' destinies, the two camps will agree to a workable compromise. It is a thin one, though, and it would demand better judgment, clearer vision and incalculably more maturity than this country's politicians have demonstrated. Barring a miracle, therefore, the best that can realistically be hoped for on Tuesday is that MPs from rival parties who encounter one another can be prevented from engaging in an embarrassing episode of fisticuffs - or worse. Once a follow-on session has been scheduled, perhaps they will at last get down to the business of serious negotiations aimed at protecting Lebanon's future instead of stonewalling designed to safeguard the narrow interests of individual politicians and their lackeys. But don't count on it.
The wait for a leader (Gulf News)
By Dr Joseph A. Kechichian, Special to Weekend Review
(Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.)
Published: September 21, 2007, 00:17
Eleven men have held the post of elected president since Lebanon gained its independence from France on November 22, 1943. Bisharah Al Khoury was followed by Camille Chamoun, Fuad Chehab, Charles Helou, Sulaiman Franjieh, Elias Sarkis, Bashir Gemayel, Amine Gemayel, Rene Moawad, Elias Hrawi and Emile Lahoud. Both Bashir Gemayel and Rene Moawad were assassinated before they could serve, and three candidates acceded to power following constitutional emendations (Al Khoury, Hrawi and Lahoud), which permitted them to extend their constitutionally mandated terms. One man refused an extension (Chehab), another left politics for philanthropy and writing (Helou) while one supervised (some say, accelerated) the 1975 civil war (Franjieh). Another was powerless vis-à-vis both Syria and Israel (Sarkis). Amine Gemayel replaced his brother — who had been murdered — but left the office vacant after General Michel Aoun assumed prime ministerial functions when the country operated under two competing governments. Gemayel's term witnessed an Israeli invasion and occupation and an ill-advised, US-drafted and imposed peace treaty with Israel, which was never ratified. Hrawi, the most unpretentious president, acted as a powerbroker after he secured the critical Taif Accord to reformulate the 1943 National Pact. He was more than a caretaker leader as Lebanon emerged from two decades of internecine wars. Failed by the leader The present officeholder assumed the presidency in 1998 amid overall optimism. He managed to accomplish little during his regular six-year term, and though he took credit for the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Lahoud embroiled the country in a major crisis in 2004 when he consented, perhaps under Syrian duress, to a three-year constitutional extension of his mandate. Lebanon elects its president in Parliament, which, since the 1989 Taif Accord, is composed of 128 deputies divided equally between Muslims and Christians. The president normally serves a six-year term although three men served for longer. Between 1998 and 2000, when Israel was literally emasculated by Hezbollah in South Lebanon, Lahoud appeared as a competent leader. Still, it was Hezbollah that was responsible for the withdrawal, which ended an 18-year occupation and which significantly strengthened the Party of God on the domestic scene. Goaded by both Damascus and Tehran, Hezbollah enhanced its presence throughout the South while denying the regular armed forces the right to deploy on the international borders. Amid a raucous call for change, the Parliament extended Lahoud's term in 2004, after Rafik Hariri, then a member of parliament, sought and received international assistance to end Syrian interference in the country's internal affairs. Beirut was then put on a full-scale reconstruction programme that reopened the war-torn country to the rest of the world. Needless to say, Hariri and many other Lebanese concluded that Damascus, which had maintained a large military presence in Lebanon since 1975, hindered this progress. Hariri managed to internationalise the country's plight with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which was quickly opposed by Syria, perceiving it as a Western ploy to weaken and isolate it from the larger Arab-Israeli arena. The Franco-American Resolution 1559 was adopted on September 2, 2004 and called upon Beirut to establish its sovereignty over its territories. It also invited "foreign forces" (interpreted as referring to, but not limited to Syria) to withdraw troops, end sophisticated intelligence-gathering deployments and stop the economic strangulation that chiefly benefited corrupt high-ranking officials. The resolution admonished the Lebanese to disband all militias (targeting Hezbollah, which was the last such major actor that maintained weapons independent of the legal armed forces). It further declared its support for a "free and fair electoral process" that, presumably, referred to the presidency. This key resolution remains at the heart of all disputes between Hezbollah and everyone else. While the Lebanese agree on most issues, they strongly disagree on Resolution 1559, which takes a new direction. Few of Lahoud's accomplishments during his regular term stand out other than his rejection of Resolution 1559. When Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, Lebanon entered a new phase in its political life — a virtual roller coaster. Hundreds of thousands participated in his funeral precession, Muslims reading Al Fatihah and Christians making the cross over his burial tomb. The Hariri national memorial service turned into an anti-government rally that mobilised the reluctant and warned the blasé. Around one million Lebanese (mostly Shia supporters of Hezbollah) gathered at Martyrs Square on March 8, 2005 to support Damascus. Hariri supporters perceived this demonstration as being in poor taste — given its proximity to the slain leader's tomb — as well as a challenge. A counter-demonstration on March 14 drew more than 1.5 million at the same venue — renamed Freedom Square — to demand a Syrian withdrawal. Poll debut As the Cedar Revolution garnered support and the tide turned against occupation forces, Syria started a rapid pullback in April 2005 as Beirut scheduled parliamentary elections — executed in four rounds between May 29 and June 19 — to elect a new chamber. This was the first election in three decades that occurred without the presence of foreign military forces. The 2005 Parliament was divided into three main groups: a majority of 72 seats led by Sa'ad Hariri and his late father's Future Party, 35 seats within the Resistance Bloc, which grouped the two Shia parties Amal and Hezbollah, and the 21 Change and Reform Bloc members. Along with its 36 deputies, the Future Movement grouped 16 Progressive socialists (Jumblatt), 6 Lebanese Forces, 6 Kataeb, 5 independents and 3 Armenians. Amal alone won 14 seats as did Hezbollah (14). Two Syrian Social Nationalist Party deputies and 5 others, including a lone Armenian Tashnag deputy joined the Resistance Bloc. Change and Reform was composed of the 14 Free Patriotic Movement members, 5 deputies beholden to Elias Skaff and 2 to Michel Murr. After the August 2007 by-election, the majority was reduced to 71, and the Aounist forces increased their count to 22. In other words, on September 25, 2007, 71 deputies from the majority will face 57 opposition parliamentarians. It is they who will elect the next president and both sides face the challenge of maintaining discipline within their respective ranks. Assuming that all 71 deputies from the majority will be present, a quorum will require the physical presence of an additional 15 parliamentarians (for a minimum of 86). Will there be 15 or more opposition deputies in Parliament at 10.30am on September 25? Naturally, without an understanding, or even a compromise candidate, there are no guarantees that a quorum will be met. As an alternative, deputies could be bussed to the chamber but might refuse to vote, which will automatically postpone the session. The most likely scenario is for everyone to actually enter the Parliament building without entering the chamber proper, which will be interpreted as patriotic fervour. No one can realistically force a vote even if a quorum is established. Today, the main dispute is over the identity of the candidates. While the opposition nominally supports General Aoun (even though Hezbollah has yet to make a formal announcement), and while the majority may yet choose a single candidate from among a slew of contenders, there are excellent chances that two final candidates will simply cancel each other out. In fact, even if a quorum is established, it is impossible for Aoun to gather either two-thirds (86) of the votes or be elected by a simple majority (65) because the majority was not ready to give up seven votes. Likewise, even if the majority candidate won in the second round with at least 65 votes — more likely 71 — that would still be shy of a clear two-thirds required to govern the country effectively. Compromise candidate In short, neither the March 8 nor the March 14 coalition can win with a candidate with broad support even if a president can technically be elected by a simple majority in a second round or later ballots. Under such circumstances, the majority and opposition leaders — probably goaded by both international and regional actors — will settle on a compromise candidate, who might be either Riad Salamah (Central Bank) or, more likely, Army Commander General Michel Sulaiman. While Salameh is a competent administrator, he lacks the political backbone to muzzle Lebanon's warring factions. Moreover, his personality is subdued, something that was noticed by the Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir — the ultimate decision maker on such matters — in previous encounters. Michel Sulaiman, on the other hand, could well be the surprise choice. Born on January 21, 1948 in Amchit, Sulaiman became Commander of the Armed Forces on December 21, 1998. He recently announced that he would reluctantly accept a transitional role in the event of a deadlock. Still, he stood as the ideal compromise candidate among all political factions by virtue of his impeccable patriotic credentials, especially after the tragic events of Nahr Al Bared. It is important to note that unless both sides agree on a compromise candidate, there will probably be no elections on September 25 or at later sessions. Both sides will enter a period of testing, which will further widen the gulf separating them, because no single candidate will achieve the comfortable margin of 86 votes. Naturally, a candidate could garner from 65 to 71 votes, but such a president will probably be even more isolated than Emile Lahoud in his well-appointed but politically barren Baabda "Palace". Even if the majority will not be responsible for such an outcome, a president elected with a simple majority will quickly lose his cachet, well ahead of the problematic 2009 parliamentary plebiscite. He will be a lame duck even before wearing the official presidential seal. Should Lebanon's 128 deputies agree to amend the constitution and elect Michel Sulaiman — a career officer who joined the army as a cadet officer on October 4, 1967 and who was regularly promoted until his appointment by President Lahoud — many fear that the country would distance itself from democratisation. While Sulaiman is credited for remaking the military, strengthening its nationalism and deploying it against terrorist forces, the next president — Sulaiman or another candidate — faced critical security choices that went beyond democratisation. The choice was to be either like Fuad Chehab or pursue the Hrawi model. Both addressed democratisation but from different perspectives. Chehab and Hrawi Models Like Chehab, Sulaiman could play the nationalism card, focus on reconstruction and restore legal authority. In fact, Sulaiman's most important contribution before this past summer occurred on March 14, 2005, when he directed the army to desist from preventing a gathering of more than 1.5 million people in Freedom Square. Added to his 2007 record, a Chehab model will most likely mean law and order, with a significant boost in the country's defensive capabilities, as well as further strenghtened international support to fend off the country's foes. Sulaiman could opt for the Chehab model by focusing on domestic matters and encourage reconciliation and prosperity. Like Chehab, he will rely on the military to muzzle the opposition (with Syrian approval), to restore the country's privileged relations with Damascus in exchange for certain compromises on the United Nations Hariri Tribunal and aim at restoring what the people clamour for most — security. The other available model is that of former president Hrawi, who worked hard to end conflict, encourage tolerance and open a new page in intra-communal life. Should Sulaiman opt for this model, he is likely to significantly reduce internal tensions, although this option required both Saudi and Iranian approval to coerce and buttress beholden local actors. Lebanon is at the dawn of a new age and only a strong leader can restore legal authority. Only the military can command unquestioned respect throughout the country and — this must be stated as clearly as possible — only the army can persuade Hezbollah to turn over its weapons to Lebanon's legal authorities. While reconciliation is a necessity, the next president of Lebanon must opt for a combination of the Chehab and Hrawi models. Such an outcome will allow the prime minister (who, under the unapplied Taif Accords enjoys far greater privileges than the president) the freedom to govern and meet internal demands, while the president helps restore glory to the country's blemished image.Presidential hopefuls According to the unwritten 1943 National Pact brokered between Lebanon's established Maronite, Sunni and Shia leaders, the office of president was "reserved" for a member of the Maronite community. Today, several Maronite contenders have either declared their candidacies or are considering it. Mostly, contenders are existing or former parliamentarians, with the exceptions of Army Commander General Michel Sulaiman and Governor of the Central Bank Riad Salamah. However, by virtue of their high-ranking posts, both are not eligible unless a constitutional amendment adjusts their ranks. Given alphabetically are brief introductions of these and other likely contenders: General Michel Aoun was born on February 19, 1935 in Beirut (Haret Hreik) and is the nominal head of the Free Patriotic Movement. Aoun was elected a deputy from Kesrouan in 2005 and served as commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces from 1984 to 1990. From September 1988 to 1990, he was empowered by outgoing President Amine Gemayel to lead one of Lebanon's two opposing governments but was defeated by Syrian forces in October 1990. He took refuge at the French embassy in Beirut and was forced into exile to France for 15 years. Aoun returned to Beirut in 2005, after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. While expected to side with the majority, which would press for a Syrian military withdrawal, Aoun signed a controversial memorandum of understanding with Hezbollah in February 2006. He has won several tactical victories both in the 2005 parliamentary elections as well as the August 2007 Metn by-election, which transformed him into a controversial and colourful contender. Still, Aoun frequently wonders why he is rejected by those affiliated with the majority, who do not trust him and refuse to acknowledge his record is less than stellar. His supporters say that no personal ambitions motivate their "General", whereas the majority perceives him as an opportunist who places his glory ahead of the state's interests. More importantly, many of his early supporters have deserted him and his two-year long record in Parliament is also considered weak. Should he be elected, some wonder whether he will continue to rely on colourful language, which is certainly entertaining but seldom presidential. Fares Boueiz was born on January 15, 1955 and served as a deputy from Kesrouan until 2005, when he withdrew from the race. A son-in-law of former president Elias Hrawi, Boueiz was minister of foreign affairs from 1990 to 1998 except for a few months in 1992 when he was temporarily replaced by Nasri Maalouf. Amin Gemayel was born on January 22, 1942 in Bikfaya (Metn) and is the head of the Kataeb (Phalange) party. Gemayel entered the political arena in 1972 by winning a by-election in the Metn. He was elected president of Lebanon (1982-1988) after his brother was assassinated. In August 2007, he narrowly lost to Camille Khoury in another by-election, called to fill the post left vacant by his slain son, Pierre, who was both a member of parliament as well as minister of industry. Robert Ghanem was born on June 18, 1942 in the Bekaa valley and is a member of parliament. Interestingly, Ghanem won his 2005 seat on the "National Resolve List", a rare phenomenon backed by Hariri's Mustaqbal (Future) Movement, Nabih Berri's Amal Movement and Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party. He is the son of former Army Commander Iskandar Ghanem and considered a constitutional authority. Boutros Harb was born on August 3, 1944 in Tannourine (Metn) and has served as a member of parliament. Best known for his repeated attempts to run for president, Harb issued a detailed programme during a well-attended news conference on August 31, 2007, in which he outlined a six-year plan to unite various factions under the authority of the head of state. His platform rests on the premise that the Lebanese president must uphold the 1989 Taif Accord without shunning national leaders who reject particular aspects of the agreement. This articulate contender insisted on national unity, declared his opposition to contemplated naturalisation for the estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees, as well as the transformation of Palestinian camps into security zones that have so far been outside the state's authority. Harb reiterated the importance of liberating the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, underscored his commitment to all UN resolutions (from 1559 to 1701), the deployment of UNIFIL+ in Southern Lebanon and the empowerment of the military to defend the country from all foes. He called for dialogue with Syria based on established traditions, but wished to strengthen them further by insisting on mutual respect for sovereignty and independence. Ghattas Khoury was born on December 27, 1952 in Ksar Nis and earned a medical degree from the University of Madrid. A practicing physician in Beirut, he entered politics on an affiliation with Rafik Hariri's parliamentary bloc. Khoury voluntarily stood down from his seat in 2005 to ensure that Solange Gemayel (the widow of slain president-elect Bashir Gemayel) was secure on her seat. Nassib Lahoud, born on November 23, 1944 in Baabdat (Metn), is a trained engineer with a degree from the United Kingdom. He founded Lahoud Engineering and served as ambassador to the US (1990-1991) before running for Parliament. He won three consecutive four-year terms before he was narrowly defeated in 2005 by an Aounist candidate. He is the president of the Democratic Renewal Movement, which was founded in 2001, and is a reform-mandated opposition group that is widely supported among the country's intelligentsia. A distant cousin of President Emile Lahoud, Nassib situated himself early on in the anti-Syrian camp and while he opposed former premier Hariri's economic policies, he agreed with the latter about the need to end Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs. Significantly, he was one of the few parliamentarians who voted against constitutional amendments to extend the mandates of both presidents — Hrawi in 1995 and Emile Lahoud in 2004. Chibli Mallat was born in 1960 in Baabda and is a licensed attorney as well as a well-known scholar of contemporary Lebanese political affairs. His claim to fame was established in the prosecution of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in a Belgian court, most notably for the latter's role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. Although a brainy contender, Mallat lacked the imprimatur, as well as Cardinal Sfeir's blessing to enter the vicious intra-Maronite arena. Nayla Mouawad was born on July 3, 1940 in Bcharré (Metn) and is both a member of parliament from Zghorta-Tripoli and minister of social affairs in the Siniora government. She is affiliated with the Democratic Forum, established after her husband Rene Mouawad was assassinated in 1989. Although she announced her candidacy for president in 2004, Mouawad withdrew when President Emile Lahoud's term was extended. More importantly, and while a pillar of the Maronite community, she is widely believed to be setting the stage for her son, Michel (born in Jbeil in 1980), a civil engineer with an MBA from the ESSEC Business School in France, to eventually run for high office. Jean Obeid was born on May 8, 1939 and served as minister of foreign affairs in the government of former prime minister Salim Al Hoss in the 1980s. Obeid also served as a deputy from Tripoli and is considered a dark horse. Charles Rizk was born on July 20, 1935 in Maad (Jbeil-Metn), and served as minister of justice in the Siniora government. The former head of Tele Liban, the state's official broadcasting vehicle, Rizk gained admiration for his painstaking negotiations with United Nations envoys to help establish the international tribunal that will identify and try individuals implicated in the murder of Rafik Hariri. The gregarious Rizk is well liked on both sides of the aisle, though his uncompromising stand on the Hariri tribunal may work against him. Articles 34, 49 and 79 Constitutional experts offer various interpretations for the required quorum to elect a president according to three articles in the constitution.Article 34 clarifies: The chamber is not validly constituted unless the majority of the total membership is present. Decisions are to be taken by a majority vote. Should the votes be equal, the question under consideration is deemed rejected. Article 49 identifies presidential powers and in Section 2, states that: The president of the republic shall be elected by secret ballot and by a two-thirds majority of the Chamber of Deputies. After the first ballot, an absolute majority shall be sufficient. The president's term is for six years. He may not be re-elected until six years after the expiration of his last mandate. No one may be elected to the presidency of the republic unless he fulfils the conditions of eligibility for the Chamber of Deputies.Article 79 declares (Part 1): When a draft law dealing with a constitutional amendment is submitted to the chamber, it cannot discuss it or vote upon it except when a majority of two thirds of the members lawfully composing the chamber are present. Voting is by the same majority. How does one interpret these clauses? Is a quorum required to elect a president? Yes, say opposition leaders. No, respond members of the majority since a simple majority will do after the first ballot. Still, while the necessity for a quorum may be subject for interpretation, established traditions compel politicians to opt for a consensus driven preference.
Palestinian Plight in Lebanon Worsens (AP)
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI – Sept. 22, 2007
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Mahmoud Khalifa has tried five times to sneak into Europe. Each time, he was caught and sent back to Lebanon, the country where he was born but is denied some of the most basic rights because he is a Palestinian refugee.
"The most important thing for me is to leave this country. Ask any Palestinian youth in Lebanon and that's what they will say," the 24-year-old Khalifa said.
Khalifa works as a barber, but only occasionally. He quit school in the eighth grade, deciding education would have no benefit when there's little chance of a promising career.
Extreme poverty and despair grip Lebanon's 12 crowded Palestinian camps, home to 400,000 refugees. Crammed into a country half the size of New Jersey or Belgium, they live under severe restrictions on work, travel and education — a marked difference from their fellow refugees in Syria and Jordan, who have been largely integrated into society.
Next year Palestinians mark the 60th anniversary of the war that drove hundreds of thousands of them into exile when Israel became a state. And this month Palestinians in Lebanon observed the 25th anniversary of one of their darkest episodes — the massacre in the Beirut camps of Sabra and Shatila by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in which between 1,200 and 1,400 people died, by Lebanese Red Cross count.
And the tragedy goes on. Four months ago, thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as the army fought al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants of various nationalities. Officials say at least 20 civilians died in the three months of fighting.
Previous generations of Palestinians in Lebanon had it a little better. In the 1970s, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization was here, providing refugees with protection, employment and elaborate social and health institutions. But the PLO's virtual state-within-a-state did not sit well with their Lebanese hosts.
In 1982, Israel invaded to drive out the PLO, and since then it has been a long, slow decline for the refugees.
For them, nothing marks the start of that decline as starkly as Sabra and Shatila — a horror that still echoes to Khalifa's generation.
It came two weeks after Arafat and his guerrillas left. For three days — from Sept. 16 to 18, 1982, the Christian militiamen, sworn enemies of the PLO, rampaged through the two camps, slaughtering men, women and children. An Israeli commission of inquiry later found Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible. Sharon had to resign as defense minister.
At his home in Shatila last week, Khalifa stared at the floor, head bowed as he listened once again to his grandmother, Eftekar Shallah, and mother, Jamila Shallah, tell the story of how his grandfather was killed in the massacre, a year before he was born.
On the evening of Sept. 16, the family emerged from an underground shelter. The grandfather, Mohammed, gave his radio to his 10-year-old daughter Ikhlas to hold, then headed back to their house to lock it up.
There were gunmen on the roofs. The militiamen had ordered people to surrender, promising they would be spared — a promise often broken. Jamila grabbed her father's hand as he headed back to the house and begged him to surrender. He left her and kept going.
As his wife, Eftekar, waited across the road, Mohammed headed back to her, only to fall to the ground, shot in the head by a single bullet.
"He died in front of our house, in front of me," Eftekar, 71, said quietly.
Their story, told and retold over the years to keep the memory alive — has knitted together the lives of the grandmother, mother and son through the 25 years of despair that followed.
"I've heard the story many times," Mahmoud Khalifa said gravely. "We've suffered too many tragedies and have gotten used to suffering. Every day is a tragedy for us. It's become as normal as drinking a glass of water."
Khalifa's is a story of struggle, anger and longing for a normal life.
"We Palestinians in Lebanon are buried alive. We have no rights. In Europe, animals have more rights than we have here," he said bitterly.
While Palestinians in Jordan have become naturalized citizens, those here have faced strong resistance from Lebanese politicians and the population at large to any debate on the issue for fear of tilting the demographic balance of the country of multiple Christian and Muslim denominations. Palestinian refugees are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.
Lebanese law bars Palestinians from employment in the public sector and limits their entry into some 70 different professions. In the camps — crowded, densely built neighborhoods — jobs are scarce. Palestinians are denied the right to own homes or enlarge those they have.
Even a simple outing with friends or a drive around Beirut is a hassle. Khalifa's blue ID card identifies him as a Palestinian, so he is stopped at every security checkpoint and subjected to prolonged checks — more rigorous since the fighting at Nahr el-Bared.
He tried five times to get to Sweden — the last time three years ago when he paid $5,000 to an Iraqi smuggler who dumped him in Spain where he was caught.
"They don't like us," Khalifa said of the Lebanese. "They see us as a virus. They blame us for everything that's gone wrong in the country."
Lebanese commonly blame Palestinians in Lebanon for the outbreak of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. In addition to the Christian militias and the Israelis, their enemies included the Syrians who controlled the country until two years ago, and Amal, a Syrian-backed Shiite militia that waged a war in the camps in the mid-1980s which killed more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians.
"We were always being chased by one group or another," said Eftekar Shallah, "we were always taking to the streets barefoot... We lost our home. .. They killed us as we slept."
The elder Shallah's odyssey began when she was 12 and living in a nice home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. During the 1948 war, a Jewish neighbor and friend of her father's came to their home with a warning. "He said, 'Abu Salameh, leave tonight. There's going to be a massacre,'" recalled Shallah.
No massacre was reported, but war was raging and Israeli forces shelled the city. Thousands of Palestinians fled, while thousands remained and became Israeli citizens.
At first, life in Lebanon wasn't so bad for Shallah. She made good money working in an ice cream factory in a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, then studied nursing and worked as a nurse there for five years until she married a refugee from Jaffa.
Her daughter, Jamila, still remembers vividly the moment her father let go of her hand to go back to lock the house.
"I wish I had died with my father. I'm not happy in my life, even though I love my children," she said. "All I want is to have a stable life, for my husband to have a job, my children to go to school. I don't ask for more," she said. "I don't ask for a limousine or a villa. All I need is a sense of security."
Jamila went to anniversary ceremonies at the mass graves where most of the Sabra and Shatila victims are buried under a row of lemon and olive trees. But she dismissed the speeches of Palestinian officials.
"They come here once a year, talk and open our wounds. Then they go back to their posh homes, drink coffee, eat their nice meal and forget about us until next year," she said.
As for Sharon, who is still in a coma, she says: "God willing, he won't die soon and continues to suffer. He killed my father."
"The most important thing for me is to leave this country. Ask any Palestinian youth in Lebanon and that's what they will say," the 24-year-old Khalifa said.
Khalifa works as a barber, but only occasionally. He quit school in the eighth grade, deciding education would have no benefit when there's little chance of a promising career.
Extreme poverty and despair grip Lebanon's 12 crowded Palestinian camps, home to 400,000 refugees. Crammed into a country half the size of New Jersey or Belgium, they live under severe restrictions on work, travel and education — a marked difference from their fellow refugees in Syria and Jordan, who have been largely integrated into society.
Next year Palestinians mark the 60th anniversary of the war that drove hundreds of thousands of them into exile when Israel became a state. And this month Palestinians in Lebanon observed the 25th anniversary of one of their darkest episodes — the massacre in the Beirut camps of Sabra and Shatila by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in which between 1,200 and 1,400 people died, by Lebanese Red Cross count.
And the tragedy goes on. Four months ago, thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as the army fought al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants of various nationalities. Officials say at least 20 civilians died in the three months of fighting.
Previous generations of Palestinians in Lebanon had it a little better. In the 1970s, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization was here, providing refugees with protection, employment and elaborate social and health institutions. But the PLO's virtual state-within-a-state did not sit well with their Lebanese hosts.
In 1982, Israel invaded to drive out the PLO, and since then it has been a long, slow decline for the refugees.
For them, nothing marks the start of that decline as starkly as Sabra and Shatila — a horror that still echoes to Khalifa's generation.
It came two weeks after Arafat and his guerrillas left. For three days — from Sept. 16 to 18, 1982, the Christian militiamen, sworn enemies of the PLO, rampaged through the two camps, slaughtering men, women and children. An Israeli commission of inquiry later found Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible. Sharon had to resign as defense minister.
At his home in Shatila last week, Khalifa stared at the floor, head bowed as he listened once again to his grandmother, Eftekar Shallah, and mother, Jamila Shallah, tell the story of how his grandfather was killed in the massacre, a year before he was born.
On the evening of Sept. 16, the family emerged from an underground shelter. The grandfather, Mohammed, gave his radio to his 10-year-old daughter Ikhlas to hold, then headed back to their house to lock it up.
There were gunmen on the roofs. The militiamen had ordered people to surrender, promising they would be spared — a promise often broken. Jamila grabbed her father's hand as he headed back to the house and begged him to surrender. He left her and kept going.
As his wife, Eftekar, waited across the road, Mohammed headed back to her, only to fall to the ground, shot in the head by a single bullet.
"He died in front of our house, in front of me," Eftekar, 71, said quietly.
Their story, told and retold over the years to keep the memory alive — has knitted together the lives of the grandmother, mother and son through the 25 years of despair that followed.
"I've heard the story many times," Mahmoud Khalifa said gravely. "We've suffered too many tragedies and have gotten used to suffering. Every day is a tragedy for us. It's become as normal as drinking a glass of water."
Khalifa's is a story of struggle, anger and longing for a normal life.
"We Palestinians in Lebanon are buried alive. We have no rights. In Europe, animals have more rights than we have here," he said bitterly.
While Palestinians in Jordan have become naturalized citizens, those here have faced strong resistance from Lebanese politicians and the population at large to any debate on the issue for fear of tilting the demographic balance of the country of multiple Christian and Muslim denominations. Palestinian refugees are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.
Lebanese law bars Palestinians from employment in the public sector and limits their entry into some 70 different professions. In the camps — crowded, densely built neighborhoods — jobs are scarce. Palestinians are denied the right to own homes or enlarge those they have.
Even a simple outing with friends or a drive around Beirut is a hassle. Khalifa's blue ID card identifies him as a Palestinian, so he is stopped at every security checkpoint and subjected to prolonged checks — more rigorous since the fighting at Nahr el-Bared.
He tried five times to get to Sweden — the last time three years ago when he paid $5,000 to an Iraqi smuggler who dumped him in Spain where he was caught.
"They don't like us," Khalifa said of the Lebanese. "They see us as a virus. They blame us for everything that's gone wrong in the country."
Lebanese commonly blame Palestinians in Lebanon for the outbreak of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. In addition to the Christian militias and the Israelis, their enemies included the Syrians who controlled the country until two years ago, and Amal, a Syrian-backed Shiite militia that waged a war in the camps in the mid-1980s which killed more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians.
"We were always being chased by one group or another," said Eftekar Shallah, "we were always taking to the streets barefoot... We lost our home. .. They killed us as we slept."
The elder Shallah's odyssey began when she was 12 and living in a nice home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. During the 1948 war, a Jewish neighbor and friend of her father's came to their home with a warning. "He said, 'Abu Salameh, leave tonight. There's going to be a massacre,'" recalled Shallah.
No massacre was reported, but war was raging and Israeli forces shelled the city. Thousands of Palestinians fled, while thousands remained and became Israeli citizens.
At first, life in Lebanon wasn't so bad for Shallah. She made good money working in an ice cream factory in a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, then studied nursing and worked as a nurse there for five years until she married a refugee from Jaffa.
Her daughter, Jamila, still remembers vividly the moment her father let go of her hand to go back to lock the house.
"I wish I had died with my father. I'm not happy in my life, even though I love my children," she said. "All I want is to have a stable life, for my husband to have a job, my children to go to school. I don't ask for more," she said. "I don't ask for a limousine or a villa. All I need is a sense of security."
Jamila went to anniversary ceremonies at the mass graves where most of the Sabra and Shatila victims are buried under a row of lemon and olive trees. But she dismissed the speeches of Palestinian officials.
"They come here once a year, talk and open our wounds. Then they go back to their posh homes, drink coffee, eat their nice meal and forget about us until next year," she said.
As for Sharon, who is still in a coma, she says: "God willing, he won't die soon and continues to suffer. He killed my father."
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