Siniora Should Be Ashamed

During the July War, Hezbollah fired thousands of unguided Katyusha rockets into civilian areas in northern Israel, killing dozens of Israeli citizens and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. This is a fact -- regardless of who instigated the war, and regardless of whether Israel targeted Lebanese civilians.

Human Rights Watch recently pointed out this fact, and Hezbollah responded like one would expect Hezbollah to respond. "We did not target civilians but Israel on the other hand did target the civilian population in Lebanon," said Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal. Human Rights Watch was also forced to cancel the press conference to announce its report when Hezbollah threatened to disrupt the event, which tells you all that you need to know about the Party of God's tolerance for open debate and free expression of opinion.

And where was the government during all this? Why weren't they protecting an international organization's right to hold a peaceful press conference at a Beirut Hotel? Well, they were right by Hassan Nasrallah's side. "Israel during the attacks of July 2006 violated all international conventions," said a Siniora press spokesman, in a statement only notable for being completely off-topic.

It is the other corrupt Middle Eastern regimes -- Syria, Egypt, the PLO -- that, when confronted with examples of their corruption and their despotism, always change the subject to Israel. Lebanon should expect more from its leaders.

Ambassador Khoja, We Hardly Knew Ye

I don't have any privileged information about why the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon has fled to Riyadh, other than what the papers are saying. Apparently the good ambassador feared for his life, which puts him in pretty much the same position as every other high-ranking political official in Lebanon.

This story cannot be separated from the ongoing feud between the Saudis and the Syrians over Lebanon. Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa set off a firestorm by calling Saudi diplomacy "almost completely paralyzed," but the explicit topic was never what the two regional powers were really arguing about. Syria and Saudi have very real differences over Lebanon. Syria wants Lebanon's president accountable to Damascus; Saudi wants the President to refer to Riyadh. Syria wants to sabotage the international tribunal; Saudi wants to bring Hariri's killers to justice.

If Ambassador Khoja feared for his life, it's not hard to pick out the party that his country has been feuding with lately. I can't believe that Syria would ever be stupid enough to kill a Saudi ambassador, but this is Lebanon -- you never know.

Mixed Reviews

The Army has handled some of the aspects of Nahr al-Bared admirably, and flubbed others famously. One of their greatest successes has been the effective blend of caution and aggression in pushing forward into Nahr al-Bared. Despite tensions obviously being high, General Sleiman knows when to hold back. Near the beginning of the conflict, the army established an uneasy peace around the camp, and used that time to rearm and position itself around the camp. Now they have negotiated the evacuation of the militants' families from the camp, paving the way for what will hopefully be a final assault. Despite these pauses, they have never given any indication that they would accept anything less than a full surrender from Fatah al-Islam. All to the good.

On other issues, the army has been less impressive. In terms of public relations, the army has done little else than shoot itself in the foot. On June 21, Elias Murr declared that "the military operation in Nahr al-Bared is finished."

Of course, fighting was still going on a month later. On July 27th, a military spokesman declared "We will very soon claim victory over the Islamists."

On July 30th, the army claimed that Fatah al-Islam controlled 15,000 square meters, compared with 22,500 square meters on July 27th, and 45,000 square meters a week before that. Despite the army's claims that it is "tightening the noose," Abu Hureira is found and killed in early August -- in Tripoli. This was a major hint that the cordon around the camp wasn't as tight as the public was led to believe.

This is a short list; I could go on. But the primary loser from these exaggerated statements is the Lebanese Army itself, whose statements are rapidly losing credibility. The other day, a Lebanese friend joked about the army's claims that it was "advancing slowly" into the camp. "They have been advancing for three months now," he said. "They must be in Syria by now!"

The army is operating under difficult circumstances and deserves our support, but that shouldn't stop anyone from pointing out its flaws. And there is a very short, simple word that describes their public statements: the Lebanese army is lying.

Everyone Goes Wobbly

David Foley, Deputy Directory of the United States' Near Office, is wheeled out to tell the world that the "US position is clear" regarding the possibility of a Constitutional Amendment to elect Lebanon's next president. "No change in the Constitution is necessary and there should be no change to the Constitution," he said.

Of course, the very reason that he needed to insist that the US position is clear was because, of course, the US position is unclear. Just the other day, US diplomat Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley told Al-Hayat that the US "doesn't mind" changing Lebanon's constitution.

America isn't the only party whose ultimate intentions are unclear. The March 14 Christians, meeting in Maarab on Monday, issued a strong statement opposing a constitutional amendment. But the Arab press was full of stories of how Amine Gemayel dissented from the majority on this issue. Why show our cards now, he argued, when we don't know how strong Suleiman's candidacy will be in a month?

In essence, Gemayel's alleged position is America's as well. Right now, they seem skeptical of Suleiman. They don't know a lot about him, and they don't know how the Presidential elections are going to play out a month from now. But if he turns out to be a friend, and there are no other viable options, the US wants to keep its options open.

Hemingway's Life and Fiction

For those who come here looking for a discussion of Lebanese politics (approximately all of you), I am sorry to disappoint you today. This is going to be a post about Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway experiences often mirrored those of his characters. He was an avid fan of bullfighting, he loved fishing off Key West, he was an ambulance driver in World War I, and he reported on the Spanish Civil War -- all material that would later be used to animate his many characters. But there was one thing that Hemingway did, which one of his characters would never consider. On July 2, 1961 he placed a double-barreled shotgun just above his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

To understand the signifigance of this, you have to understand Hemingway's protagonists. They are uniformly tough, macho men. They think in short, declarative sentences. They act according to a personal code. They never admit to weakness. It is one of Hemingway's great methods for giving the reader a heightened sense of his characters' sensations. When Frederic Henry winces in A Farewell to Arms, it has a greater impact than a more emotive character screaming out in agony. We know that Henry doesn't show his feelings easily.

Just as certainly as his characters are stoic, Hemingway's plots are almost inevitably tragic. Again, it is the great emotional payoff from the strength and stoicism of his characters; their final destruction is given a sense of grandeur because we know their strength. Hemingway's tragic worldview was not just a literary tool, it was his fundamental view of the world. The most famous passage from A Farewell to Arms reflects it best:

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

Despite Hemingway's many strengths, he oftens stretches this worldview to a point of absurdity. Everything inevitably ends badly; the world inevitably breaks the good and strong and everyone else too. Ether you are killed by Franco's troops, your true love dies in childbirth, impotency prevents you from having a relationship with your beloved, you ruin your marriage by being unable to resist your children's nanny, or sharks eat your prize fish on the way back to shore (the respective endings of For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises,A Moveable Feast, and The Old Man In the Sea). If his characters are just a little too macho to be believable, the pervasive tragedy of his plots sometimes borders on comical.

So what message can we take away from Hemingway's suicide, in light of his life's work? One possible lesson is that even the great writer himself could not live up to the characters in his novel: in the end, the great patriarch of realism was portraying characters that had never existed.

As for my pet theory, I have no evidence for it apart from the widely available facts of Hemingway's life. But, if his fiction is any guide, Hemingway expected and needed his life to end in tragedy. He gave fortune plenty of chances to comply -- he observed the D-Day landing in Normandy during World War II, and took plenty of other risks that could have cost him his life. But he kept on surviving: he was even awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He seemed destined to die at a ripe old age as a literary giant with millions of fans worldwide, not broken by the world. So, when the world failed to provide him with his tragic ending, he provided it himself. Whatever else it was, it was certainly an ending that no work of fiction could ever do justice.

The Devil You Know, Or...

March 14th has a problem. Of course, March 8th has plenty of problems, but let's focus on one thing at a time. Right now, the least likely outcome of the Presidential election is one that brings a March 14th candidate to Baabda. Some of the majority have already indicated that they don't have the stomach to elect a President on a 50 + 1 basis, and momentum is moving towards a "compromise candidate," like Suleiman. Whether or not Suleiman is any sort of compromise is another matter entirely, but that's how he is being billed.

None of March 14th candidates have the ability to peel off additional support from the opposition necessary to be seen as a "consensus." As I mentioned in passing, one reason for this is that there are so many candidates that they have not been able to distinguish themselves as individuals. But whatever the reason, March 14th has the ability to veto an opposition candidate (ie: Aoun) but not to push one of their boys into the Presidency.

The risk is that a "compromise" like Suleiman will come along and, taking advantage of a thin veneer of March 14th support from people who should know better, will find himself Lebanon's President. As that becomes more likely, Mustapha notes correctly that the question will become what Aoun will do. And March 14th will have to choose between cutting a deal with Aoun and giving him the Presidency, or rolling the dice on Suleiman. Meanwhile, those of us without a vote in Parliament will spend our time grappling between two clearly imperfect options.

The Suleiman Presidency

Lebanon's politicians are about to do something insane, and unless its citizens rise up and do something about it, they'll probably get away with it. This is, of course, the election of President Suleiman.

If you think that the Syrian regime just forgot to examine the political views of the man who was the commander of the Lebanese army, I don't know what to tell you. If you think it's a coincidence that his brother-in-law was Bashar al-Assad's press flack, I'm not sure how I can spell it out for you more clearly.

The best case scenario is that Suleiman is a mediocrity, willing to go whichever way the political winds blow. It is true that he did not shut down the Cedar Revolution protests. But the Lebanese -- and especially Patriarch Sfeir, who claims to care so deeply about Christian strength -- should ask themselves whether they can afford to have a nonentity as President. Rarely has there been such a palpable feeling of unexcitement over electing someone to high government office.

It is simply unacceptable that a prospective Presidential candidate can skate by without answering questions about Lebanon's current political situation. This is where the media is essential for a functioning democracy: what does Suleiman think about the opposition protest currently crippling the Lebanese government? What would he do about the multiple locations in Lebanon where the government cannot exert its authority? We already know he thinks he is battling the Zionists in Nahr al-Bared; not a good start.

There are real intellectual differences between the Lebanon's two rival factions. Now is precisely the wrong time to sacrifice those principles for political expediency. Ideas matter.

Lazy Sunday Journalism?

Ms. Levantine, who has exponentially more knowledge than I do on these topics, posted in the comments section an interesting critique of the Telegraph article I linked to below. It deserves to be quoted in full:

"Not to bang on my own drum, but I posted on the topic back in January under 'Meanwhile back in Jarmak.'

The area has been in play bet. different sects for about 150 years. The Telegaph article is beyond simplistic.

The area which is described is a high plateau. HA will never ever be able to defend it against the Israeli army.

They can fight in the gorges and wadis, and they do not need to buy them.

The villagers are destitute mainly because the Lebanese gov. never cared about them. When is the last time you heard about agricultural policy in Lebanon?

Mr. Jumblatt by his own admission is 'a shark' who took advantage of the state. Most of the funds for helping the displaced of the Chouf are in his Swiss bank account. I am sure he can easily outbid Mr. Tajeddin if he chooses to.

I am not a fan of HA, and I have never been, but sometimes the primitive fear mongering gets tedious. "

Ms. Levantine runs one of the best independent-minded blogs on Lebanon, so if this is her line, I'm inclined to accept it. There's a great deal of legitimate criticism of Hezbollah. I would hate to resort to making stuff up.

Lazy Sunday Reading Material

The must-read article of the day is Charles Levinson's reporting on Hezbollah supporters buying up land north of the Litani. I do have one complaint: the title refers to Hezbollah buying "frontier land to attack Israel," which suggests that Hezbollah is buying land on the Lebanon-Israeli border. Military fortifications and mass land purchases north of the Litani are still important, but they can't quite be considered on "frontier land." Here's the money quote, referring to Hezbollah-connected Shia businessman Ali Tajeddine:

"But his distinctive arc of land-buys around Hizbollah's new stronghold has triggered alarm among the district's Christian and Druze leaders, who say he is using Iranian funds to buy land from destitute villagers at up to four times the going rate. Druze sheikhs have responded by forbidding the sale of land to Shias and wealthy Christians have been asked to buy property in the area to stem the Shia tide."

The journalist, Charles Levinson, is no great fan of Hezbollah. However, that's not something that I hold against him.

Growing Legitimacy?

If I was one of resigned Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh's allies, I would ask him how he justifies going back to work for an "illegitimate" government. Because that is exactly what he did this week, returning briefly to his old Ministry in order to overturn some of acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri's policies.

Salloukh is an interesting figure. If memory serves, he's an opposition-aligned Shia, but is neither Hezbollah or Amal. Rather, he's nominally independent. In 2005, Hezbollah had wanted one of their people to control the Foreign Ministry, but this idea was nixed because the United States and other Western countries were leery of dealing directly with a Hezbollah member. Salloukh was the compromise.

There is always the chance that Salloukh's return is the first step in him returning to the government. However, I doubt it. More likely, his brief return is just an acknowledgment of reality: whatever March 8 may say about the government's legitimacy, it continues to function and has an impact on the lives of Lebanese. Salloukh is a career diplomat -- he wants to see the institution run the way he thinks is best. And, especially after the FPM's participation in the Metn by-election, there's no use pretending that the government no longer exists. That ship has sailed.

Hassan Fattah, continued

If you are interested in the ongoing Hassan Fattah saga, please take a look at the article I penned on the subject. You might expect his Lebanese sources, or even his own assistant, to back up his claims -- but I guess that would be expecting too much.

Hassan Fattah Does It Again

The interesting thing about Hassan Fattah is not really that he's a March 8th apologist. Journalists have used their work to shill for their pet causes for a long time. What is interesting about Mr. Fattah is that he is such a blatant and unapologetic shill. Fresh off a New York Times article where he predicted that Camille Khoury's 418-vote margin marked the end of the Gemayel family, he has already penned a follow up blaming United States' support for Kataeb as the reason for the loss.

"'It's the kiss of death,' said Turki al- Rasheed, a Saudi reformer who watched Sunday's elections closely. 'The minute you are counted on or backed by the Americans, kiss it goodbye, you will never win.'"

Let's start with the obvious. In his article on Mount Lebanon politics, Fattah quoted a Saudi reformer and a Jordanian academic. Why? Probably because he asked every Lebanese commentator whether US support doomed Gemayel, and they said no. The only Lebanese Fattah quotes is an al-Akhbar columnist and Aoun's nephew. Neither, as far as I can tell, said anything to suggest that American support hurt March 14th in this by-election specifically. Aoun's nephew even says that he objects to March 14th's policies, not their alliance with the United States.

Not to put too fine a gloss on things, but Fattah's conclusion is obviously insane. In many parts of the world, and in many parts of Lebanon, heavy-handed American support can hurt a political leader. But not in the Metn. Lebanon's Christian community consistently and overwhelmingly says that they have a favorable impression of the United States. In the latest Pew poll on the subject, 82% of Christians said that they had a favorable view of the United States.

I don't know how Fattah reconciles this fact with his argument. But I guess nobody has ever asked him to -- after all, he writes for the New York Times.

The Votes Are In...

A few days ago, I wrote that if this election was going to have an effect on Lebanon's political climate, Gemayel would either need to win beyond a shadow of a doubt, or Aoun would have to win with a comparable margin to that which he received in 2005. Instead, the results fell into that large, vague territory between those extremes. Both sides can credibly claim victory: Gemayel can tell his followers that they gained 10,000 votes and Aoun lost 20,000 votes from 2005. Aoun can take heart that he put up an unknown against a former President and the father of a slain MP, and still managed to win.

If this election was going to change Lebanon's political balance, the vote tally would have had to be so overwhelming that one leader wouldn't have been able to spin the results to his followers. That didn't happen. Both Aoun and Gemayel will still be considered within their camps as viable Presidential candidates. Neither will feel the need to compromise in order to save their political hides.

By the way, Gemayel's knee-jerk reaction to question the voter tally in Bourj Hammoud was immensely self-defeating. It focused attention on the fact that he lost the overall vote total, and made him seem like a sore loser. Love him or hate him, it's hard to deny that Walid Jumblatt has flawless political instincts -- his statement was pitch-perfect. Ignore the fact that Gemayel lost the overall vote, avoid the urge to nitpick over a few hundred votes, and hit home the fact that March 14th made huge strides to erase Aoun's margin in 2005.

Back From Metn

I've seen a lot of the Metn in the past two weeks, and I apologize for not writing about it more fully here. Today took me to Jdeideh, Baabdat, Bikfaya, Khenchara, Rabieh, and Bourj Hammoud. This afternoon took me to a local Starbucks, where I just finished writing 1,300+ words on what I saw and who I spoke to. This is a roundabout way of saying that I have plenty to write about, but am rather frazzled at the moment, so I'm just going to make a few superficial comments now and then later riff on my article, once it's published.

On to the superficial comments: there were flags. Lots of flags; more flags than I've ever seen. Flags flags flags. FPM flags, Marada flags, Kataeb flags, Lebanese forces flags, SSNP flags, Lebanese flags. I have now written flags so many times that it has ceased to look like a real word to me.

Rumors of fighting were greatly exaggerated. The situation was not calm, but it also was not violent. People were tense about the result, not about any possible outbreaks of violence. The army did a great job keeping the peace and watching the polling stations. Our car was pulled over in Bikfaya by soldiers who checked our papers and looked for bombs. I think it was because we were one of the few cars without any flags.

Nobody knows how this is going to turn out. On this subject, Kataeb people and FPM people are equally unconvincing. This is what makes the Metn by-election such an interesting event. Aoun and Gemayel seem to be just closing their eyes and walking into unknown territory. For all its myriad dangers, the saving grace of these by-elections is that they represent a better chance to end Lebanon's political deadlock than any international conference or Arab League delegation ever has.

The Quotable Aoun

From the Daily Star's article on General Aoun's rally in Dbayyeh on Friday:

"They [Kataeb forces] frighten you and tell you there will be trouble [Sunday], we tell you have no fear, the army and security forces are there to protect you and so are our [fists]."

Gee, I wonder why Kataeb might be worried that violence will break out. Maybe it has something to do with a central leader of the opposition saying that his supporters' "fists" are there to protect the FPM. Aoun then went on to warn against any outbreaks of violence, an admonition that would have no doubt been taken more seriously if he hadn't been speaking about the possible use of force in his previous breath.

Ghandi, he ain't.

Anatomy of A By-Election

It didn't quite seem like anyone could make up their mind whether they wanted the by-election in Metn to take place. Well, except for the Patriarch, of course -- he was against it from the beginning. But the prospect of a compromise candidate was the rumor that just would not die. If Aoun or Gemayel had been firm that the election was taking place, the rumor would have dissolved. But they weren't, and that hints that neither side is quite sure how election day is going to play out. Personally, I'm with Mustapha -- let them vote. The candidates don' get to decide whether the citizens of Metn will have the privilege of voting in their representatives.

Now that, mercifully, the last attempts at compromise appear to have failed, we can talk about the effects of the by-election. And, after all this commotion, there still remains the possibility that the effects of the Metn by-election on Lebanon's larger political divisions will be precisely zero. One Parliamentary seat changing hands is not going to destroy March 14th's majority. Aoun's list swept the Metn by a sizable margin, beating Pierre Gemayel by tens of thousands of votes. If Metnis go to the polls on August 5th and elect the FPM's Camille Khoury by a substantial but still smaller margin than Aoun won in 2005, everyone may declare victory and go home. March 14th will take heart that they cut into Aoun's Christian support; March 8th will be happy to defeat a former President running for his murdered son's seat.

If the Metn by-elections are going to have any effect, one party is going to have to win by a large enough margin so that the defeated candidate cannot spin the loss as a victory. That probably means a solid victory by Gemayel -- by around 5 to 10%, say -- or a large victory by Aoun, showing he has maintained most of his Christian support from 2005. At those levels, the Metn by-elections could scuttle Gemayel or Aoun's presidential campaigns, or cause one of the Christian leaders to reconsider how their alliances in the broader Lebanese political scene are effecting their level of support.

One thing is for sure: the battle over the election's "goalposts" will be as hard fought as the election itself. Like everything in politics, the next fight is always just around the corner.