LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِAugust 28/2010

Bible Of the Day
Luke16/9-13: " I tell you, make for yourselves friends by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when you fail, they may receive you into the eternal tents. 16:10 He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. He who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 16:11 If therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 16:12 If you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 16:13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You aren’t able to serve God and mammon.” /Naharnet

Free Opinions, Releases, letters, Interviews & Special Reports
Reassessing U.S. Military Assistance to Lebanon/By David Schenker/August 27/10
Lebanon’s Russian doll/By: Michael Young/August 27/10
The Nasrallah Protocol/Now Lebanon/August 27/10
The Perfect Iranian Storm on the Horizon/By: Michael J. Totten/August 27/10
Building Churches in Egypt and the Ground Zero Mosque/AINA/August 27/10
Resign/By: Hazem al-Amin/August 27/10

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for August 27/10
Chamoun Called on Nasrallah to Learn from Others' Errors and Avoid Dragging Country into Destructive Wars /Naharnet
Suleiman: Government Won't Accept Recurrence of Beirut Clashes /Naharnet
Geagea: Borj Abi Haidar Clashes Part of Campaign to Target Hariri, Tribunal /Naharnet
Qabbani Inspects Burnt Basta Mosque: Endangering Citizens' Security a Great Crime/Naharnet
Israel working to thwart Russia arms deal with Syria/Ha'aretz
Stuck in the middle/National
Third Suspect Arrested in Alleged Canadian Home-grown Terror Cell/CNN
France Blames Lebanon for 100 Hot Missiles Delivery Delay /Naharnet
Report: France willing to arm Lebanon with 100 missiles/Ynetnew
Baroud Betting on Positive Reaction of Political Forces to Ministerial Committee Functions /Naharnet
Harb: Any Solution to Issue of Widespread Arms Possession Needs Follow up by Political Powers /Naharnet
Al-Mashnouq: The Clashes Stripped the Arms of their Holy Label /Naharnet
Brummana Municipality Urges Punishment for those who Spread Spying Rumors about Achkar /Naharnet
Suleiman in Shouf on Friday, Jumblat Visits Beiteddine Saturday to Stress Coexistence /Naharnet
Mirza Hasn't Yet Received Hizbullah's Answer on Bellemare's Request /Naharnet
Sources: Hariri to Visit Damascus Soon But Not on Monday /Naharnet
Beirut Family Feud Leaves 2 Wounded /Naharnet
Car Crashes into Power Pole, Kills 3 /Naharnet
Jumblat: State is Final Shelter in Protecting National Unity, Resistance, Calls for Maintaining Balanced Rhetoric /Naharnet
Mustaqbal: What Are Weapons to Fight Israel doing in Beirut /Naharnet
Hizbullah's Moussawi Urges Swift Action to Curb Repercussions of Borj Abi Haidar Gunbattles /Naharnet
Rifi Takes Part in 39th Session of Naif Arab University for Security Sciences in Jeddah /Naharnet
 

Chamoun Called on Nasrallah to Learn from Others' Errors and Avoid Dragging Country into Destructive Wars
Naharnet/National Liberal Party leader MP Dori Chamoun addressed on Thursday an open letter to Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urging him to "return to reason, learn from others' errors, and avoid dragging the country into destructive wars."He said that the clashes were reminiscent of the Lebanese civil war when parties were armed and turned against each other to bolster their power on the streets or "were taken advantage of by their leaders for limited political aims as you unfortunately did in May 2008."Chamoun criticized Hizbullah for causing the July 2006 war and blaming others for problems that the party itself had created. Had it not been for the war, several developmental projects in the electrical and water sectors could have been accomplished "before even reaching discussion on nuclear energy," he continued.The MP asked Nasrallah: "Is it acceptable that the loyalty of a large number of the Shiite population and its leaders be to countries, policies, and goals that have nothing to do with Lebanon? Is it acceptable that Iranian flags and posters of its leaders be posted in Dahiyeh and other areas?" "Is it acceptable that Iran's interest be a priority for Hizbullah above those of its fellow citizens in Lebanon?" Chamoun asked. Beirut, 26 Aug 10, 16:56


Michel Sleiman
August 27, 2010
On August 26, the Lebanese National News Agency carried the following 
speech delivered by President Michel Sleiman during the annual Iftar 
organized at the presidential palace in Baabda:
Mr. Parliament Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, your Holinesses, Excellencies and 
honorable guests. It is my pleasure to welcome you, wishing you and 
all the Lebanese people calm days during the rest of the month of 
Ramadan, filled with piousness, meditation and good doings. While we 
draw inspiration from the meanings of mercifulness, tolerance and love 
during the holy days of fasting, we meet on this evening to 
corroborate our faith in our national coexistence and our commitment 
to the spiritual and human values which characterize Lebanon in its 
uniqueness and plurality. I launched a call to hold a national 
dialogue during the Iftar which brought us together in this very room 
on September 9, 2008 and this dialogue proved to be important and purposeful 
not only in terms of its ongoing efforts to draw up a national 
strategy to protect and defend Lebanon, but also in terms of the 
method it consecrated between its members and before the public 
opinion, based on the enhancement of the logic of dialogue and concord.


It thus accompanied major constitutional and national events and 
contributed to the consecration of a climate of calm and stability, 
without which the Lebanese people cannot live in peace and conduct 
reform and economic and social development. However, let us not forget 
that the state’s developmental and construction efforts are 
jeopardized by the continuous Israeli threats against Lebanon, its 
institution and infrastructure, which prompts us to move forward in 
building our defensive and deterrence force in parallel to our efforts 
to secure the implementation of Resolution 1701 in full, immunize our 
national unity, fight terrorism, dismantle the espionage cells and 
build a political and diplomatic safety net on the regional and 
international levels. Hence my call to arm the army after its heroic 
deterrence of the Israeli aggression in Adaisseh, while supported by 
the resistance’s readiness and the Lebanese people…


The main program to arm the army is up to the state and we will work 
on its ratification in the next few weeks. For that purpose, we will 
need the help of friendly and brotherly states to enable the army 
without imposing any conditions on it…As for the donations of the 
citizens, they aim among other things at showing the people’s rallying 
around their army, thus enhancing the national feeling and forming 
positive moral and political frameworks to impact the governments of 
the different states. Gentlemen, the last few weeks were filled with 
activities and incidents which corroborated the fact that dialogue and 
concord are the only way to end the tensions, enhance civil peace and 
deter the threats by finding calm and appropriate ways to handle the 
urgent problems…The state cannot allow the repetition of the events 
witnessed in the streets of the capital two days ago in any other area 
of the country, and alongside the responsibility of the political 
leaders in alleviating the tensions and promoting calm, the security 
forces will perform their tasks alongside the army to confront all 
acts of violence, impose security in a stringent way and transfer all 
the perpetrators to the relevant courts.


Fear does not a country or a state make. It is a provoked and 
fabricated fear that should call for more confidence in one another 
and in our ability to overcome the difficulties and the problems 
through dialogue and by resorting to the institutions…On the other 
hand, I would like to corroborate on this occasion that the time has 
come for the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to enjoy a sound and calm 
relationship with the Lebanese state and people. This requires 
conditions that have started to be handled in parliament, far away 
from any inclinations that might push toward naturalization. Among 
those conditions are the decisions of the national dialogue conference regarding the removal of the Palestinian arms outside the camps and 
the handling of security and the arms inside the camps, in order to 
impose the respect of Lebanese sovereignty and the Lebanese laws. In 
this context, we must always take into consideration the 
responsibility of the international community in regard to two issues.


The first is the provision of the basic human and living needs of the 
Palestinian refugees through the support of the UNRWA budget that was 
expressly established for that purpose in 1948. The second is to reach 
a just and comprehensive solution for the Middle East issue with the 
Palestinian issue at its core, while corroborating the right of return 
based on the decisions of international legitimacy, the Madrid 
conference and the Arab peace initiative, knowing that Lebanon will 
not approve any solution going against its higher national interests…From my position as the president of the country, I call on you on 
this blessed occasion to seriously work on rendering concord in 
Lebanon a permanent and not a temporary state, stemming from Lebanese 
convictions and not just from the support of the brothers to whom we 
are grateful.


Coexistence should be a renewed act of faith and a continuous way of 
life, so that we protect the country and make its sons more attached 
to it and to its land…This is what I call on you to do with all faith 
and determination. Long live Lebanon and may you have a good year.

Suleiman: Government Won't Accept Recurrence of Beirut Clashes
Naharnet/President Michel Suleiman on Thursday warned against the recurrence of armed clashes, saying "artificial fear does not build a State." "The government does not allow for such events that took place two days ago in the streets of the capital to be repeated in any part of Lebanon," Suleiman told an Iftar he threw for government, political and spiritual leaders.
He stressed that security forces, together with the support of the Lebanese army, will carry out it duty to curb violence and impose stringent and strict security measures and bring the perpetrators to courts. "It is no longer acceptable to drag citizens into civil strife," Suleiman warned. He called for arming the Lebanese Armed Forces. "Providing the Lebanese army with weapons falls under the jurisdiction of the Lebanese government," he said. "Lebanon as well as its institutions and infrastructure are threatened by Israel. Therefore, it is worth building up a deterrent force," Suleiman said. Suleiman called for "permanent consensus," adding that "artificial fear does not build a State." Addressing his guests, Suleiman said: "I invite you to work hard so that consensus in Lebanon will be permanent and stems from personal convictions." Turning to Palestinians living in Lebanon, Suleiman believed it was time the refugees' relationship with the State and the people "is safe and quiet." " This requires provisions away from aturalization," he said. Beirut, 26 Aug 10, 21:00

Geagea: Borj Abi Haidar Clashes Part of Campaign to Target Hariri, Tribunal
Naharnet/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said the latest clashes between Hizbullah and al-Ahbash gunmen in Borj Abi Haidar were part of the organized campaign to weaken Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The clashes were also aimed at targeting the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the logic of justice, Geagea told al-Liwaa daily in remarks published Friday.
The LF leader vowed, however, to remain committed to justice. He also urged Hariri and President Michel Suleiman to deal firmly with the gunmen involved in Tuesday's street battles.
Geagea defended the army against critics, saying "it is insulting to tell it that it is incapable of confronting some armed youth and rioters after it confronted (Israel) in Adeisseh
Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 08:15

Report: France Blames Lebanon for 100 Hot Missiles Delivery Delay
Naharnet/A well-informed French source has denied that Paris cancelled a deal to provide the Lebanese army with Hot missiles under pressure by Israel and Washington.
The source told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat in remarks published Friday that French Defense Minister Herve Morin sent a letter to his Lebanese counterpart Elias Murr last May informing him that Paris was ready to provide Lebanon with 100 Hot missiles.The French-designed Gazelle helicopters owned by the Lebanese army can be armed with Hot.
While the source acknowledged that Israel "protested" against the French decision and the U.S. had question marks over the issue, he denied that Paris scrapped the deal because it "came under pressure." The source blamed Lebanon, saying the Lebanese administration was suffering from a state of "confusion" over defense issues. Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 08:35

Mirza Hasn't Yet Received Hizbullah's Answer on Bellemare's Request
Naharnet/General Prosecutor Said Mirza hasn't yet received any answer from Hizbullah official Wafiq Safa on Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare's request to provide the remaining material to which the Hizbullah chief referred to in his press conference on August 9. An Nahar daily said Friday that Mirza would make the announcement in a statement upon receiving Hizbullah's answer. "Hizbullah officials hand-delivered to the Prosecutor General of Lebanon an envelope containing six DVDs," Bellemare's office said in a press release. "The preliminary assessment of the DVDs has determined that the response is incomplete since the material that was handed over is limited to the material shown during the 9 August 2010 press conference and does not contain "the rest of the evidence" that Mr. Hassan Nasrallah referred to in his press conference," it added. Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 09:39

Qabbani Inspects Burnt Basta Mosque: Endangering Citizens' Security a Great Crime
Naharnet/Lebanon's Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani on Friday inspected Basta Mosque that was set ablaze by militants in Tuesday's bloody gunbattles and called for holding negligent officials accountable.Qabbani said Dar el-Fatwa will take charge of renovating and rehabilitating the mosque with help from Makkased Association.
"Endangering the security of citizens is a great crime," Qabbani said during his Friday sermon from Basta. A dispute over a parking space in Borj Abi Haidar near Basta quickly turned into armed clashes between Hizbullah supporters and Al-Ahbash partisans Tuesday evening. Three people were killed including a Hizbullah official, his bodyguard and Al-Ahbash member.
"Political differences are legitimate in our democratic system, but they should remain within political boundaries and not spill out into the streets," Qabbani told worshipers.
"It is our duty to unite our word and join our ranks … among brethren in one homeland. Qabbani stressed that the "Lebanese State, its Cabinet ministers and lawmakers, police and military forces are required today to carry out their duty to maintain the security of the citizen, in our homeland Lebanon, and to take practical measures to ensure the security of the citizen."
"We must hold the negligent (side) accountable for its negligence and those who mess up with security, too. "Endangering the security of the citizen is a great crime that is likely to ignite civil strife and spread chaos," Qabbani warned. Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 16:05

Iran: Dimona is in Our Crosshairs
by Gil Ronen /Arutz Sheva
An unnamed senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned Thursday that Iran would strike Israel if it is targeted, no matter who the attacker is.
According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai, the officer said, "Iran has thousands of surface-to-surface missiles, including improved Zelzal-2 and Al-Fatah 110 missiles, with which it will set alight all of the oil towns, facilities and infrastructures of the neighboring countries, if these serve as platforms for attacking it.” Any attack upon Iran will lead to a massive missile attack on Israel, he said, including the nuclear power plant at Dimona, no matter where the attack on Iran originated from. This is taken as referring to a possible attack by the United States. The Iranian officer boasted that the Patriot missiles that Kuwait intends to buy from the US will not be able to protect it from the Al-Kaim 1 missile in Iran's arsenal. He added that the torpedo boats that the Gulf states received from the West will be useless against Iran's small submarines, which will deploy sea mines against enemy ships. Ali Fazli, Deputy Commander of the Iranian Basij militia, warned this week at a Basij conference in Tehran that his country would destabilize security in the Persian Gulf if it is attacked. Meanwhile, Iran's ambassador to Russia told Hizbullah's Al-Manar television that an attack on Iran would cause American interests in the region to be damaged and will endanger the existence of the “Zionist entity.” Arab countries are as worried as Israel is by the Iranian nuclear weapons program. London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday that Said Mashaal, Egypt's State Minister for the Security Industries, said that the nuclear weapons being developed by Iran pose a danger to the entire Middle East, and not just to Israel. "Iran's push to develop missiles with a range of 3,000 km is causing all of the European nations to develop hostility toward it and to take action to prevent it from developing militarily," he added.

Sources: Hariri to Visit Damascus Soon But Not on Monday
Naharnet/Sources close to Prime Minister Saad Hariri have denied media reports that the Mustaqbal movement leader would visit Damascus on Monday and meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad during an Iftar. The sources told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published Friday that Hariri's visit to Damascus would take place soon but no date has been set yet for the trip. Media reports had said that Hariri's visit would be an opportunity for the two leaders to discuss latest developments in Lebanon. Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 08:46

Harb: Any Solution to Issue of Widespread Arms Possession Needs Follow up by Political Powers
Naharnet/Minister of Labor Butros Harb stressed Friday that any solution to the widespread possession of arms in Lebanon requires follow up by the political powers. He told Future News that the political powers should support the ministerial committee that Cabinet formed in order to tackle the arms possession. He noted that Hizbullah will maintain its arsenal until a defense strategy is approved, adding that the weapons should be controlled because their presence on the street will lead to other parties' armament for various excuses.
Beirut, 27 Aug 10, 14:01

The Nasrallah Protocol
August 26, 2010
Now Lebanon/Hassan Nasrallah’s previous TV appearance had us in such stitches we didn’t think it could get any funnier, but it did. Addressing a group of women at a charity Iftar – Nasrallah had a certain Demis Roussos charm, and the adulation was palpable – he started his via-satellite fireside chat by listing the issues that currently beset the country, especially the Adaisseh incident and the performance of the army, the dozens of alleged spies (of whom we only know the identity of a handful) and the matter of the so-called false witnesses.
But it was his solution to Lebanon’s catastrophic electricity shortages that was the most bizarre of all his proposals. “I call on the cabinet to study and discuss a plan to build a peaceful nuclear plant to generate electricity in Lebanon,” Nasrallah said with a straight face.
One wonders if he was serious or simply throwing the Iranian cat among the Lebanese pigeons. Having already said that Iran would be willing to help Lebanon with militarily aid, it is safe to assume that the Islamic Republic would provide similar funding and technical know-how should his diabolical scheme ever see the light of day.
Nasrallah clearly thinks that it is not enough for Lebanon to be facing international approbation because it cannot control Hezbollah’s private army and its grotesque weapons hoard. No doubt Nasrallah also thinks that the international community will not notice, or will turn a blind eye to, the dozens of white-suited Iranian (who else?) engineers shipped in to oversee the construction of the Levant’s first “peaceful” nuclear power plant.
Finally, someone should tell the apparently omniscient secretary general that the region is simmering on the verge of war precisely because of Iran’s own nuclear program, and that Tel Aviv, 1,600 km and three international borders away from Tehran, is still debating whether or not those plants pose enough of a threat to warrant sending its jets into combat. What would the Zionist state have to say about a plant just over the border?
Then again, as Hezbollah is a clone of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (if you don’t believe it, just examine the logos of the respective organizations), in the maniacal vision of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his regional allies, exporting the Iranian model for conflict would represent a very pleasing symmetry of regional power play.
But Nasrallah is a master at shifting the debate. We saw how easy it was for him to do this the other week when, with no evidence at all, he dragged Israel into the public, if not the judicial, witness stand. On Tuesday he held forth on where Lebanon should go shopping for military aid. This was to avoid the real issue of Hezbollah’s inflexible insistence that it operate outside the state when it comes to matters of defense and as a dissembler when it comes to its “participation” in the government.
And let us not forget that when it comes to matters economic, not only has his party done nothing, it has, by accident or design (we must give it the benefit of the doubt after all), singlehandedly suffocated all efforts to take Lebanon from a crippled state that survives on the energy of its private sector to a well-oiled economic engine with a vibrant public sector and a working blue print for prosperity. It would, for example, be nice to see more Hezbollah-trained doctors, engineers and accountants contributing to the national good and less of an emphasis on how to prepare for Armageddon.
Then again maybe Nasrallah is just running out of things to say.

Lebanon’s Russian doll
By: Michael Young
, August 27, 2010
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is a political survivor, which often entails making dramatic turnarounds. If Prime Minister Saad Hariri is someone who often seems to be enclosed in a political box – between his allegiance to Saudi Arabia, his newfound closeness to Syria, and the hostility of Hezbollah – Walid Jumblatt is the Russian doll of Lebanese politics, a captive of myriad concentric layers of alliances, dalliances, duties and threats. The Druze leader provokes much scorn these days from those appalled with the vigor of his about-faces. The man who heaped reptilian metaphors on Bashar al-Assad only a few years ago has become the Syrian president’s most stalwart champion in Beirut. The leader who took charge of the revolt against Syria has been abased to socializing with Syria’s most ignoble order-takers. Like the student in class caught cheating, and who informs on his comrades in order to make things good with the teacher, Jumblatt seems most acerbic, most destructive, when referring to his previous political partners.
This is what you hear, and some of the accusations are difficult to refute. Jumblatt’s twin preoccupations, the defense of his Druze community and the perpetuation of Jumblatt authority over the community, require a considerable amount of humility, and humiliation. But in a system where the rule is every man for himself, or every man for himself and his regional patron, it’s difficult to demand of Jumblatt that he sacrifice all for the greater good of Lebanon, when almost no one else is willing to do so.
And yet the anger with Jumblatt persists, and it persists largely because of his style. Hariri has visited Damascus on several occasions, making his peace with those whom he and his entourage had once accused of being behind the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri. But the prime minister somehow escapes opprobrium, largely because he never went too far, never overstated his case, as did Jumblatt – indeed as Jumblatt needed to do, since the only way the Druze leader could remain relevant was to remain in the political vanguard and drag the system in the directions he chose.
Jumblatt’s latest priority is to push for the scuttling of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. That is no easy task. The Druze leader’s testimony is still with the prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, and for Jumblatt to take it back (as may very well be the demand from his handlers in Damascus) would involve explaining why he lied in a signed deposition, which may eventually entail legal sanction.
Politically, the tribunal places Jumblatt in a tight spot. The Syrians want the institution to go away no less than Hezbollah does, but the two appear to differ over timing. To resurrect Syrian hegemony over Lebanon, Damascus needs to impose its will on Hezbollah and take for itself the leading administrative and security posts controlled by the party. Syria’s main tool is an indictment or a lesser tribunal decision that points the finger at Hezbollah. Such an accusation would hand Syria considerable leverage to bargain with the party, and once it gets what it wants by way of Hezbollah concessions, to then push Hariri into ending cooperation with the tribunal.
That is why Syria and Hezbollah, and behind the party Iran, are engaged in an increasingly visible struggle for power in Lebanon (witness the Bourj Abi Haidar incident), and it is why Jumblatt is so alarmed. He’s caught in the middle, and though the Druze leader has made clear that he’s on the side of Damascus (and Saudi Arabia, which pays the bills), he also happens to be most vulnerable when facing Hezbollah, which surrounds his mountains and showed in May 2008 that it could penetrate them militarily when necessary.
Recently, Jumblatt propped himself up by organizing a Druze conference in Lebanon, bringing together his Lebanese coreligionists with those from Israel, Syria and Jordan. The delegation from Israel was given permission to travel via Syria, and Assad allowed Syria’s Druze to attend, even though traditionally the Baath regime has hindered Jumblatti flirtations with its Druze community. Yet Jumblatt somehow managed to earn those two favors. It could be that Assad was partly seeking to bolster Jumblatt’s position with respect to Hezbollah, but you really have to wonder what will be, or already has been, demanded of the Druze leader by way of reimbursement.
Not surprisingly, the Druze conference made Hezbollah and its supporters apoplectic. Ibrahim Amin of the pro-Hezbollah daily Al-Akhbar, usually a reliable sounding board for party opinion, was highly critical, particularly of the presence of Israeli Druze. The newspaper has continued to target Jumblatt, and in an article this week it wondered about his true loyalties, asking in a headline: “Is Jumblatt with [the Syria-Saudi axis] or with the Syrian-Iranian alliance?” The article was more an effort to intimidate Jumblatt into selecting the latter, than an attempt to answer the question.
Much of what Jumblatt is doing can be explained by family. If the Druze leader is eating dust on a daily basis, that’s because he needs to set up his eldest son to inherit the Druze leadership, and he cannot do so if the Jumblatts are on bad terms with Syria, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia or whoever else calls the shots in Lebanon. It’s reasonable that many Lebanese don’t sympathize with this ambition, but that’s irrelevant; it is at the heart of Jumblatt’s calculations.
So will Walid Jumblatt ever break out of his multiple boxes? It’s unlikely for now. The arch-survivor is still surviving, but the price is getting steeper and the interest on Jumblatt’s debts dearer. **Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. His book, The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle (Simon & Schuster), was recently published.

Resign …
By: Hazem al-Amin/Lebanon Now
, August 27, 2010
It is all right then; it is an individual incident with no political or sectarian background to it… We have no choice but to believe them; what else can we do? Then again, newspapers published the following morning were full of small details, such as the following: “As soon as Hezbollah militants in Bourj Abi Haidar learned about the death of their leader, they severed all contacts with their leadership since they knew that it would pressure them into abstaining from having any reaction.” Such a report brought us back to the old days, when we used to hear similar reports following each clash.
When reading all those details, how can we not remember all the hardships we have experienced in the years of chaos? Indeed, when the expression “individual incident” comes along with “severed all contacts with their leadership,” this can only lead us back to the rhetoric that prevailed in those days!
Refresh your memories and put yourself back into that mindset, and all you will get is the scene depicting the Alamein Battle. Nevertheless, in those days we would not be accused of treason if we complained since the weapons in use then were defiled, whereas those in use today are legitimate. Indeed they are, or else the ministers of Defense and the Interior would have already submitted their resignations to the cabinet after the violation of their mission, which consists of preventing illegitimate weapons proliferation. Saying that all people in Beirut have weapons and using this claim as a pretext justifying the authorities’ failure is grossly untrue, for what we saw earlier this week was armed parties rather than individual weapons. Rocket-propelled grenades were fired, and those who fired them were seen in pictures that made it to the newspapers. A roadblock was established in the Basta neighborhood, and the author of these lines can give a firsthand account of it.
After all this, ministers in favor of national sovereignty did not feel any need to resign. The women and children who fled their houses that night did not move anything in them, nor did the losses incurred by citizens. Four people were killed, and the state did nothing about it … What could have been done anyway, knowing that weapons are considered sacred?
The armed man who stopped my car in front of the Donnawi station at the Karakol al-Druze neighborhood at 8 p.m. had sacred weapons, and I tried to defile them with my scared stares and my readiness to beg should he have decided to detain me. The same holds true for those ministers who support national sovereignty, since they are no less afraid than I am in a moment like this. Such were my thoughts that night: How could I blame them, while I was afraid of that gunman? After all, they are as human as I am.
Then after a while, I remembered that I am not a minister, and that they were chosen for that position based on many criteria, which are supposedly unavailable in a man (or woman) like me. One of those criteria would be the fact that they would not be afraid.
In that case, I call on the ministers in favor of national sovereignty to resign. What capital in the world would witness a war between two legitimate parties and still see its pro-sovereignty ministers retain their positions? Resignation, here, is part of the mission with which you were entrusted. Despite its negative substance, it would actually deliver a message in our names.
**This article is a translation of the original, which appeared on the NOW Arabic site on Friday August 27, 2010

Reassessing U.S. Military Assistance to Lebanon
By David Schenker
August 26, 2010
PolicyWatch #1693
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3242
PolicyWatch 1693 is the second in a two-part series discussing U.S. military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). This piece addresses the program's future direction, while PolicyWatch 1692 examined the context of the U.S. aid program.
Since 2005, Washington has obligated more than $700 million in military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces. In the aftermath of the LAF's August 3 cross-border shooting of two Israeli officers, one fatal, this funding has come under increasing scrutiny. Not coincidentally, the shooting followed a series of setbacks for Washington's allies in Beirut, which in turn fundamentally altered the conditions that had spurred the 2005 spike in U.S. funding. It is unclear how this new dynamic is affecting the military, but many infer from the shooting that the LAF is shifting away from neutrality and toward Hizballah. More broadly, the incident has resurrected questions as to whether Washington's main policy objective for the LAF -- establishing state sovereignty throughout Lebanese territory -- is ultimately achievable.
Despite these profound changes on the ground, U.S. policy toward Lebanon -- with LAF funding as its cornerstone -- remains unchanged. On August 12, deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner went so far as to describe the funding as part of America's "vital...national interests." During the heyday of the Cedar Revolution, this level of prioritization may have been warranted, but does it remain so today?
Background
In 2005, the Bush administration boosted previously minute levels of U.S. assistance to the LAF in response to the Cedar Revolution, which ended Syria's thirty-year occupation of Lebanon. Although Hizballah still dominated the South and much of Beirut, Washington saw Syria's departure as an unprecedented opportunity to foster full Lebanese government control over the entire country.
Currently, however, Damascus has reestablished itself as a force in Beirut, and Hizballah is again ascendant. Recognizing these changes, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, placed a hold on the 2011 assistance package on August 2, requesting that the administration clarify the provision. The move turned out to be prescient, with LAF troops opening fire on Israeli troops the next day.
Mixed Record
Washington's revitalized Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program for Lebanon had two goals. In the long term, the objective was to build sufficient capacity in the LAF in order to counteract militias and enhance state sovereignty. (The Bush administration did not believe the LAF would be able to supplant Hizballah anytime soon). In the near term, U.S. funding would enhance the LAF's counterterrorism capabilities against al-Qaeda affiliates, a critical need given the lack of state control throughout much of the country.
The program hit a high note early on when, following the 2006 Hizballah-Israel war, the LAF made an unprecedented deployment to the South. Not only was it the first time in decades that the military had based troops near the border with Israel, it also constituted the first significant government presence in that Hizballah-controlled territory. Counterterror cooperation has been a positive as well -- according to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. assistance has led to "significant" improvements in LAF operations along those lines.
But there have also been disappointments. During the 2006 war, for example, LAF elements colluded with Hizballah, allowing the group to use Lebanese navy radar to track and nearly sink the Israeli warship Hanit. Likewise, in 2008, the LAF coordinated with Hizballah during the militia's foray into Beirut, offering no challenge to the offensive and later relieving the militiamen and taking up the group's positions following withdrawal.
The deployment to the South has been problematic as well. At the time, few expected the LAF to fully implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 by interdicting Hizballah weapons. Yet aside from LAF troops being present in the area, the operation has proven mostly cosmetic. Worse, if Israeli claims are true, the LAF has been tipping Hizballah off about UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) site visits, protecting the militia's assets and undermining UNIFIL's mission.
Purpose of FMF Programs
In general, FMF programs are designed to accomplish three goals: build the military capabilities of friendly states; help Washington understand and gain influence with these militaries; and deter meddling by unfriendly states. Notwithstanding Hizballah's growing political role, Washington continues to count Lebanon among the friendly states, and US military officers have gained important insight into the LAF's thinking via the assistance program. Yet progress on the other objectives has been less slow to come.
First, it is difficult to determine how much influence Washington has cultivated with the LAF since 2005. Beirut's response to the August 3 incident was not reassuring. For example, President Michel Suleiman, former LAF chief of staff, applauded the shooting as a "heroic" act and pledged that Lebanon would seek "more advanced equipment" from "friendly" countries. A statement by Defense Minister Elias Murr after the U.S. congressional freeze was equally hostile: "Let them keep their money or give it to Israel." LAF chief of staff Jean Kahwaji likewise dismissed reports of the freeze as "only ideas suggested by some U.S. Congress members who are [influenced by the] pro-Israeli lobby."
Moreover, the $100 million in U.S. FMF slated for 2010 may not prevent Lebanon from accepting Iranian or Russian military assistance. Iran has long offered to provide such support, and in 2008, Murr accepted a (yet-to-be-delivered) donation of ten MiG-29 fighter planes from Moscow. Although refusing such gifts would no doubt cause grave embarrassment for Beirut, the LAF is not particularly enthusiastic about them. Its personnel have long been working to standardize on American equipment, and materiel from elsewhere tends to interfere with those efforts. Moreover, the military is well aware that Iranian assistance typically comes with long strings attached.
Keeping Score
Five years after the Cedar Revolution, the last main vestige of Washington's commitment to its Lebanese allies is the FMF program. When Vice President Joe Biden visited Beirut in May 2009, on the eve of Lebanese general elections, he announced that Washington would "evaluate the shape of our assistance program based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates." Today, the March 14 movement sits in a coalition government with Hizballah, and its guiding "ministerial statement" now legitimizes the "resistance" and its weapons. In the past, these developments may have meant an end to U.S. assistance, but with few other avenues of meaningful engagement, the program has persisted.
To be sure, there is merit in Washington's desire to avoid abandoning its allies, which some might view as a repeat of the 1983 U.S. "redeployment" out of Lebanon. But it is also clear that the bar defined by Vice President Biden has been lowered considerably over the past fifteen months. Without some action by the United States that recognizes the profoundly changed circumstances since the vice president announced that aid would effectively by conditioned on the composition and the policies of the Lebanese government, any lingering benefits Washington reaps from maintaining the FMF program will disappear.
One way to remedy the current situation is for the State Department and congressional appropriators to work out clear, transparent, measurable, and verifiable benchmarks by which all sides -- including the Lebanese -- can evaluate the merit of maintaining assistance to the LAF. The key metric is the relationship between the LAF and Hizballah. While some connection between elements of the two institutions is to be expected, especially given the Shiite plurality within the LAF, several indicators would provide useful insight into the depth of the relationship. Specifically, going forward, the FMF program should be contingent on a close assessment that measures, among other things:
•LAF response to officers who share intelligence with Hizballah, "go rogue," or demonstrate other problematic conduct with regard to the group (e.g., are they disciplined or congratulated?)
•LAF's role in harboring or otherwise protecting Hizballah weaponry (e.g., does the LAF play a role in preventing the import of weapons from Syria or their flow south of the Litani or in facilitating it?)
•Flow of personnel between Hizballah and the LAF (e.g., do officials of Hizballah's militia transfer directly into the LAF?)
•Flow of weapons and other material between the LAF and Hizballah (e.g., does LAF weaponry end up under Hizballah control?)
•Quality of LAF cooperation with UNIFIL (e.g., do LAF units seem to follow Hizballah guidance in obstructing the operations of UNIFIL?)
•LAF response to the anticipated indictment of Hizballah members by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, currently prosecuting the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri (e.g., will the LAF arrest and transfer indicted Hizballah officials or refuse to implement the tribunal's request?)
Conclusion
Although $100 million per year is minimal by U.S. FMF standards, it constitutes a significant portion of the LAF budget and carries great symbolism. Given the competing interests, the most constructive way forward is to define clear benchmarks that track the Hizballah-LAF relationship and limit the potential for nostalgia and sentimentality to cloud the current assessment of the LAF.
In August 2007, Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Feltman -- then ambassador to Lebanon -- gave a speech at LAF headquarters, marking the delivery of 100 Humvees: "Through our military assistance, the people and government of the United States, including members of Congress, show our confidence in Lebanon's government, Lebanon's Ministry of Defense, and in the leadership and soldiers of the LAF," he stated. Absent that kind of confidence, which clear and transparent measurements can provide, Washington's military assistance program with Lebanon has a bleak future.
*David Schenker is the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute.

Building Churches in Egypt and the Ground Zero Mosque
http://www.aina.org/news/20100825221652.htm
GMT 8-26-2010 3:17:8
Assyrian International News Agency
(AINA) -- Egyptians, Muslims and Christians alike, are closely watching the controversy associated with the Ground Zero Mosque project, though for different reasons. The Egyptian media is giving this issue full coverage with articles mostly accusing Americans of Islamophobia, and supporting Muslims to hold on to their rights to build a mosque anywhere as guaranteed by the US constitution, regardless of what Americans think.
On the other hand, some influential Muslims rejected the idea of a Mosque near Ground Zero only on grounds that it would backfire on Islam, by connecting it to the 9/11 events. Dr. AbdelMotey Bayoumi, a member of Al Azhar's Islamic Research Academy, believes it could be a "Zionist conspiracy" to harm Islam.
American-Egyptian Copts were also accused of organizing the rally which is to be staged on 9/11 with Geert Wilders, reported the Egyptian daily "youm7" on August 20, 2010.
"I cannot believe the double standards of the Egyptian Muslims," commented Coptic activist Magdy Guindi. "It is obvious that Americans don't approve of this Mosque being near Ground Zero. Is this not one of the conditions applied to church building in Egypt?"
Much of the on-going sectarian strife in Egypt is related to the ability to build churches. Unlike Muslim citizens, who only need a municipal license to build mosques, the Copts require presidential approval for a church, based on the 1856 Ottoman Hamayoni Decree, in addition to ten humiliating conditions laid down by the Ezaby Pasha Decree of 1934, before being considered for a presidential decree. These include the approval of the neighboring Muslim community.
"Muslim clerics and Islamists easily persuade Muslims that a church is equivalent to slandering Islam, so they take advantage of this "Muslim approval" condition," said Guindi.
Even after obtaining licenses for a church, Muslims still attack Christians and demolish or burn their churches (AINA 7-12-2009). A rumor that Christians are meeting to pray is enough reason for Muslim neighbors to carry out acts of violence against them (AINA 8-21-2009). On various occasions, it only takes Muslims to protest against the building of a church for State Security to stop the works, under the pretext that it is causing "sectarian strife."
In 2005 President Mubarak issued a decree, which delegated authority to the country's 26 governors to grant permits to Christians to expand or rebuild existing churches. Instead of making matters easier, many local officials intentionally delay or refuse to process applications without "supporting documents" that are virtually impossible to obtain. State Security often block them from using permits that have been issued on "security concerns."
Last month a problem arose between the Governor of Minya and Anba Agathon, the Bishop of the diocese of Maghagha and Edwah, which is still unresolved, despite mediation efforts by Coptic Pope Shenouda III.
The Governor suddenly suspended the license obtained for the renewal of the 1934 diocese in Maghagha, including the church, after it was demolished, as agreed with the governor. The pretext for the suspension was because the 45 square meters of rooms where the Bishop lives were not demolished as well. Although the Bishop confirmed that the governor agreed verbally to the Bishop staying in his dwelling until new rooms are built on the new site, the governor now insists that the Bishop "should find somewhere else to sleep."
Since March 16, 2010, after the demolition of the old church, the Bishop and the congregation have been celebrating mass in a linen tent erected on the courtyard where the new church is planned, under the summer heat exceeding 45C. The Diocese of Maghagha serves 250,000 Copts.
Realizing that the governor has tricked them into getting them to demolished the old church first, Bishop Agathon, 75 clergy and nearly 150,000 Copts from parishes all over the Diocese of Maghagha and Edwah have staged a three day sit-in in Maghagha tent church from July 25, 2010, protesting against the intransigence of the Governor of Minya. They wanted to travel to Cairo to continue their sit-in at the Coptic Patriarchate in Cairo, after presenting a petition signed by 160,000 Copts from the Diocese to President Mubarak. It was reported that the Pope, who was undergoing medical treatment in the U.S., asked the Bishop to wait until his return.
Most Copts interviewed on the issue of the Ground Zero Mosque thought that even if Moslems had the right to build a mosque, it should be somewhere else, to save the victims families any pain. Others thought the Muslim attitude was typical "They go to a country and want to take it over, making the best of democratic rights to their advantage, but when it comes to Islamic countries, matters are different, and they forget about the rights of others," commented one young Coptic girl.
"Let Muslims experience the rage and frustration we have been going through for centuries, every time we want to build or repair a dilapidating church in our own country," commented Coptic activist Mina Hanna, in what sounded like Schadenfreude. "It would be interesting to see what happens if the West decided to treat Muslims like Christians in Egypt."
By Mary Abdelmassih

Third Suspect Arrested in Alleged Canadian Home-grown Terror Cell--
Posted GMT 8-26-2010 20:55:35 -
(CNN) -- Three men suspected of being part of a homegrown Canadian terror group participating in terrorist activities are in custody, Canadian law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Chief Superintendent Serge Therriault of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the three are Canadian citizens Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, 30, of Ottawa; Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, of Ottawa; and Khurram Syed Sher, 28, of London, Ontario.
Alizadeh faces three charges: conspiracy, committing an act for a terrorist group and providing or making available property for terrorist purposes. Canadian federal prosecutor David McKercher told CNN the three charges carry maximum sentences ranging from 14 years to life in prison.
Ahmed has been charged with conspiracy, but he could face more charges, according to his defense attorney. Ian Carter told CNN he met with Ahmed for half an hour. Asked how the suspect was feeling, Carter said, "He is in shock." Ahmed is married and has a 7-month-old daughter.
Sher also is charged with conspiracy, officials said.
The RCMP said the suspects were arrested under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, passed in 2001.
Therriault said that a yearlong investigation found that in addition to forming part of a terror cell, the suspects possessed schematics, videos, drawings, instructions, books and electrical components designed specifically for the construction of improvised explosive devices. He said authorities seized more than 50 circuit boards designed to remotely detonate IEDs.
In addition, Therriault said, investigators have grounds to believe Alizadeh is a member of and remains in contact with a terror group with links to the conflict in Afghanistan. One reason the arrests happened when they did, the investigator said, was to prevent Alizadeh from providing financial support for weapons that would be used against coalition forces and Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
The three suspects represent the core of the domestic terror group, Therriault said, but the ongoing investigation could result in more arrests.
U.S. authorities are aware of the arrests, and there are no related arrests in the United States, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.
The official said there is no clear link between the Canadian suspects and the United States. Therriault said he could not confirm whether there was a direct link to the United States.
U.S. counterterrorism officials said they consider the arrests an internal Canadian matter.
CNN's Laura Dolan, Jim Barnett, Meg Miller and Pam Benson contributed to this story.
© 2010, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

A "Perfect Storm' in the Middle East
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/2010/08/25/the-perfect-iranian-storm-on-the-horizon/
Clarice Feldman
Michael Totten interviews an Israeli journalist who made his way into south Lebanon:
You don't see the Lebanese flag in the south. Only the Hezbollah flag, the Amal flag, and the Iranian flag. It was a real eye-opener. I knew this already, but it's something else to see it in person. And it's also interesting how that part of the country interacts with the rest of Lebanon.
South Lebanon was my first experience visiting a society that functions like the old Soviet bloc in at least one way. People have an acute sense of this unseen power which is both nowhere and everywhere. People in that part of Lebanon always have to be careful, even if they don't always exactly know why. They understand why in the larger picture, of course, but even with everyday things they have to be careful.
A perfect storm is brewing in the Middle East. We're experiencing the convergence of two historical phenomena. The first is the rise of Iran, which we've already talked about. We have an ambitious ideological elite committed to radical Islam and the expansion of power. Second, in country after country in the Middle East, various forms of radical Islam are becoming the most popular and vivid forms of political expression. We have Hamas among the Palestinians, Hezbollah among the Shia of Lebanon, the Islamic Action Front in Jordan, and the Muslim Brothers in Egypt.
We have an ideological wave from below with a powerful and potentially nuclear-armed sponsor on top. That's the picture I'd want to place in the minds of the people in Washington. It's the key regional dynamic through which most smaller processes have to be understood.
The Perfect Iranian Storm on the Horizon
August 25, 2010 -
by Michael J. Totten
 Jonathan Spyer is not your typical Israeli journalist and political analyst. He has a PhD in International Relations, he fought in Lebanon during the summer war of 2006, then went back to Lebanon as a civilian on a second passport.
I can’t say I felt particularly brave venturing into Hezbollah’s territory along the Lebanese-Israeli border, but it takes guts for Israelis to go there. If Hezbollah caught him and figured out who he was, he would have been in serious trouble.
No one he met in Lebanon knew where he was from. Everyone thought he was British. And no one in Israel but his friends and colleagues knew he went back to Lebanon on his own. He decided, though, that he may as well “out” himself on my blog. His secret journey will soon be revealed anyway when his book comes out in November called The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.
We met in Jerusalem this month and discussed his two trips to Lebanon—with and without a passport—and the perfect Iranian storm brewing on the horizon.
MJT: So why did you go back to Lebanon?
Jonathan Spyer: Lebanon is a fascinating place, and I wanted to visit for all sorts of reasons. I especially wanted to get back to where we were during the war. There is a green valley, which I imagine you know very well, between the towns of Khiam and Marjayoun.
Jonathan Spyer
MJT: Yes, I know where you’re talking about.
Jonathan Spyer: We were down there in that valley during the war, and our tanks got shot up. I wanted to get back there and look at it from Khiam. I hired some guides in Beirut and asked them to take me. We took the coast road down, then drove all the way across southern Lebanon to the eastern sector. And I stood in Khiam and looked down into that valley.
We got stuck there because of a cock-up. The infantry in our division were supposed to capture Khiam. There were 300 Hezbollah men there. We were operating at night. After a series of screw-ups, our column of tanks ended up heading through that valley toward Israel with 300 Hezbollah men looking down on us in the morning. So you can imagine what happened.
And to make it even more ludicrous, we weren’t even moving at the right speed. The steering mechanism on one of our tanks was broken, so we had to drag it with reinforced cables. We were going about five kilometers an hour. We were hardly moving at all. And we got blown to bits by Hezbollah’s missiles. Our armor is pretty good, though, so only one of our guys was killed.
An Associated Press photographer was also in Khiam at the same time, so the AP has a photograph of our tanks in flames. [Laughs.] I’m laughing because I found that photograph on a pro-Hezbollah Web site, and this tough revolutionary guy was on there boasting and saying “the people in those tanks died horrible deaths!”
Jonathan Spyer: I wrote back and said, “Listen. With the exception of one person who was killed, the people in those tanks all got out, hid in the fields for over an hour, and got back across the Israeli border. All of them were operational again within 48 hours.”
Anyway, we were stuck in this field beneath Khiam for about an hour. We hid in an irrigation ditch. They were growing tomatoes and, I think, corn down there. We had the body of our friend with us on a stretcher.
Hezbollah was firing mortars at us. And a ten-man Hezbollah squad came down out of Khiam to take a look. Every tank in the area laid down a carpet of fire, and they turned around and went back. It wasn’t worth it for them to try to go down there, and it saved us from getting into a fire fight.
After an hour or so, we got picked up by an armored vehicle which just happened to be passing by. At first I thought, “Great, they’ve finally sent someone to come get us,” but no. They hadn’t. A group of armored engineers just happened to be in the vicinity. We stood up like guys on a desert island and yelled help help! [Laughs.]
Our friend’s funeral was the next day. We had the night off. I came down to Jerusalem and got drunk. And the next day I was back in the war.
So I was very interested when the chance came along to go back to Lebanon. My professional interest in Lebanon— which has become one of the most important professional aspects of my life —dates from then.
Jonathan Spyer and his IDF comrades near the border during the Second Lebanon War
MJT: Whose idea was it for you to visit?
Jonathan Spyer: A journalist friend of mine up there invited me. He said, “Do you want to come to Lebanon?” And I couldn’t say no. Of course I wanted to go to Lebanon!
We spent most of our time in Beirut, and we also took a trip up to the Cedars. And I said I wanted to go to the south. He didn’t want to go, but he knew some guys who could take me. They showed up at 6:30 in the morning in a beat up car, and off we went.
I partly wanted to go because of my military experience, but mainly because I’m a Middle East researcher who takes a particular interest in Lebanon. I wanted to see what is—as both of us know—a different country. You head down the coastal road, you get past Tyre and Sidon, and you enter a different country.
Hezbollah propaganda in South Lebanon
MJT: It’s true.
Jonathan Spyer: The topography is different, including the human topography. The posters you see are totally different. The atmosphere is totally different.
MJT: It’s like a fanatical Iranian province.
A poster of Ayatollah Khomeini in South Lebanon
Jonathan Spyer: That’s right. And you have to experience it to understand just how strange and extreme the situation actually is. Between Beirut and Tel Aviv there is this enclave of Iran, this strange dark kingdom. And I found it fascinating.
At the entrance to one of these towns, there’s an old piece of the South Lebanon Army’s armor, a T-55 tank I think. And Hezbollah put up this huge cardboard statue of Ayatollah Khomeini.
MJT: I know exactly where you’re talking about. I have a picture of kids playing on that very tank.
Children play on a former South Lebanon Army tank near the border with Israel
Jonathan Spyer: I also saw Iranian flags down there. That’s how blatant and obvious it all is.
MJT: You don’t see the Lebanese flag in the south.
Jonathan Spyer: Right. Only the Hezbollah flag, the Amal flag, and the Iranian flag. It was a real eye-opener. I knew this already, but it’s something else to see it in person. And it’s also interesting how that part of the country interacts with the rest of Lebanon.
It was my first experience visiting a society that functions like the old Soviet bloc in at least one way. People have an acute sense of this unseen power which is both nowhere and everywhere. People in that part of Lebanon always have to be careful, even if they don’t always exactly know why. They understand why in the larger picture, of course, but even with everyday things they have to be careful.
MJT: You don’t feel that in the rest of the country.
East Beirut
Jonathan Spyer: Right.
MJT: I don’t. Not in Beirut or anywhere else Hezbollah doesn’t control.
Jonathan Spyer: Only in the south. In Beirut, it only surfaced when I spoke to people about going down to the south. I’d be hanging out in these lovely bars and restaurants with lively people enjoying these nice airy evenings, and as soon as I’d mention that I was going down there, they’d suddenly become serious and say, “Don’t do it.”
Beirut restaurant scene
MJT: I’ve had that experience lots of times.
Jonathan Spyer: And I’d say, “Why not? Tell me why I shouldn’t go down there.” They’d say I should check in with Hezbollah or the Ministry of the Interior.
And I’d say, “Well, what if I don’t? What if I just head out of the city? What’s supposed to happen to me if I just go?”
No one actually knew.
MJT: Right, they don’t. No one will tell you you’re going to get kidnapped or killed or beaten up or anything else. They just think it’s a bad idea to go down there.
Jonathan Spyer: They just say, “You shouldn’t do that.” To me, that’s power. It’s real unseen power. Any force that can put that kind of fear into people is something we need to look at.
It’s not exactly like the Soviet bloc, but it’s similar. In communist countries they had the ostensible government, but the parliaments didn’t have any power. The Communist Party and the security services had all the power. Lebanon reminds me of that in some ways. There’s the ostensible government which takes out the garbage and educates most of the citizens, but there’s another force that wields the hard power.
MJT: It’s totalitarian down there in South Lebanon.
Jonathan Spyer: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MJT: There’s no other word for it. It’s not just authoritarian.
Iran itself isn’t even totalitarian anymore. It used to be, and the government wants it to be, but it has to contend with massive unrest and civil disobedience now.
Jonathan Spyer: The Iranian regime has the same ideology as Hezbollah, but it’s acting against the wishes of the population it’s controlling. It’s like Poland in 1988. But I don’t think that means the Iranian government is going to fall any time soon. I don’t think it’s Poland in 1988 in that sense.
MJT: You think it’s more like Czechoslovakia in 1968?
Jonathan Spyer: I think the difference between Iran today and Poland in 1988 or Iran in 1978 is that in those cases they had a decadent and exhausted ruling class. What they’ve got now is a hungry and fanatically devoted ruling class. Its project is implausible in the long term, but for the foreseeable future they are willing to kill. They’ve killed before, and they got into power by killing. They’re quite prepared to kill lots of people to stay in power. To get through this, the Iranian opposition will need something very strong indeed. And I’m not convinced that the Green Movement is anywhere near that strong yet.
MJT: If the government fell tomorrow, though, would you be surprised?
Jonathan Spyer: Actually, I would be. I’d be pleasantly surprised, but I’d be surprised.
MJT: I won’t be surprised if it falls or if it doesn’t. If the North Korean government fell all of a sudden, that would surprise me. There’s no indication whatsoever that that might happen. If the Iranian government falls, though, no one can say it came out of nowhere or that there was no evidence that it might happen.
Jonathan Spyer: Sure, I know what you mean.
MJT: You’re right, though, that the government and armed forces are willing to fight. The revolution in Romania that overthrew Ceausescu started out like the one last year in Iran, but it was over in a couple of days because the army turned on the government. The whole thing barely lasted 72 hours, and the army itself put Ceausescu on trial and executed him.
Jonathan Spyer: The people most prepared to wade up to their knees in blood end up holding on in revolutionary contexts. When governments fall it’s often because a bunch of other guys are more determined and ruthless. Maybe the revolutionaries have better ideas for how to govern, but in order to get there they have to be prepared to go further than the state. And right now in Iran I don’t see that.
The government’s ideology and modus operandi is much more typical of the Arab world than it is of Iran’s. It’s almost like they’re occupying the country, even though they are Persians. Their style isn’t Iranian at all.
With Hezbollah, it’s different. They’ve managed to hook into the pathologies of much of the Arab world. And I’m sorry to say it’s not just a product of the regimes on top with sophisticated and cynical people below like in Poland and perhaps in Iran. The Arab world, I’m sorry to say, is not really like that. The people believe in this stuff just as much as the big men on top do.
MJT: They do. There’s lots of support in Syria for the government’s campaign of resistance.
Jonathan Spyer: Yes. Neither of us have been to Syria, but you and I both know someone who has.
There really is a visceral hatred of Israel there. There is also a less visceral but nevertheless real hatred of America and the West. And also among the Palestinians here.
MJT: In Lebanon, of course, it’s much more complex.
Democracy rally in downtown Beirut, February 2009
Jonathan Spyer: Except in the south. In the south, Hezbollah holds power not only by force, but by consent. It doesn’t ask permission from people, but it has their consent.
MJT: It’s limited, though. I’ve talked to Lebanese Shias who support Hezbollah only so far as Hassan Nasrallah doesn’t impose an Iranian-style regime on the country.
A bar in East Beirut
Jonathan Spyer: Sure.
MJT: So Hezbollah’s support is limited and conditional. But it’s there.
Jonathan Spyer: And Hezbollah is smart enough to understand that.
MJT: Surely you saw uncovered women in the Hezbollah areas.
Jonathan Spyer: Of course.
MJT: But you don’t see that in Iran.
Jonathan Spyer: Right.
MJT: Hezbollah could force women to cover themselves, but it would lose some support if it did.
Jonathan Spyer: You see more Palestinians here wearing the headscarf than you do amongst the Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon. Go to any street in east Jerusalem, and most of the women will be wearing the headscarf. I was only in Beirut for a few days, but I saw far fewer headscarves there than I do here.
In the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem
MJT: It’s strange, isn’t it?
Jonathan Spyer: In the early 1980s, before the first Intifada, it just wasn’t like
that in the Palestinian areas. You didn’t see many headscarves then.
MJT: They’re much more Islamicized now, aren’t they?
Jonathan Spyer: There’s a popular return to religion in many Middle Eastern societies. During the last couple of decades, after the failure of so many secular nationalist projects, people have turned back to what’s familiar to them. And in this part of the world, that’s religion.
MJT: The secular regimes have indeed failed spectacularly. There are a few exceptions—like Tunisia, for instance—but there aren’t very many.
Jonathan Spyer: In the Arab world, the failure of these regimes really does deserve to be described as spectacular.
MJT: Tunisia is a lovely Mediterranean country, but next door Libya is almost as hellish as North Korea.
Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia
Jonathan Spyer: Tunisia was the first Arab country to call for recognition of Israel. What’s really striking is that the Arab regimes with the biggest and most ambitious visions are the ones that failed most spectacularly.
MJT: The stronger the ideology, the more catastrophic the failure.
Jonathan Spyer: I think it’s hard for Arab intellectuals to come to terms with this. The big projects they most wanted to see are complete failures. I mean, none of them get excited about the Gulf emirates.
MJT: They’re not revolutionary.
Jonathan Spyer: And what they have to face up to now—and you know this very well—is that the three most powerful countries in the Middle East are not Arab.
MJT: Yes.
Jonathan Spyer: Israel, Turkey, and Iran. This is difficult for Arabs to deal with.
MJT: Many have a hard time even admitting it. I pointed this out years ago and got all kinds of grief in my inbox from Arabs who said I had no idea what I was talking about.
Jonathan Spyer: I’m sure.
MJT: They said I’m a stupid American who knows nothing of the Middle East, but they’re in denial. The only Arab country calling shots right now is Syria, and that’s only because Bashar Assad is a sidekick of the Persians.
Jonathan Spyer: A Palestinian friend of mine just the other day was telling me how Turkey and Iran are competing with each other to be the standard bearer of the Palestinian cause. Iran, with its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Turkey, with its flotillas, are the two countries with all the creative ideas. What do the Arab states have next to that? Nothing. Arabism’s flagship cause is championed by two non-Arab states.
How Syria fits into all this is one of the biggest divides here in Israel. There are those in the defense establishment who believe Assad’s championship of the resistance is entirely cynical and instrumental, and they want to pry him away from Iran.
MJT: His foreign policy is just instrumental and cynical, but I don’t believe for a minute he can be pried away from Iran.
Jonathan Spyer: I don’t either. And I’m glad that the people around the prime minister don’t buy it.
MJT: How do you know they don’t buy it?
Jonathan Spyer: Because I know some of them. The people around Netanyahu don’t believe this is possible.
MJT: I’m glad to hear that, because I’ve met lots of Israelis who do. And I think they’re crazy to think that. A lot of Israelis simply do not understand Syria.
Jonathan Spyer: Absolutely. They aren’t naïve people by any means. On the contrary. But they find it very hard to accept the irrational and ideological elements in Middle East politics. They themselves are not irrational or ideological. They’re extremely rational, and they assume everyone else is, as well. And so they make massive errors.
MJT: It’s a common problem all over the world. Lots of people assume everyone else is just like themselves. Americans often assume most people in the Arab world want what we have. I’ve met plenty of Arabs who believe the United States is involved in these dark conspiracies like their own governments are.
Jonathan Spyer: Yes. Arabs often think they’re being mature and sophisticated by talking this way, but in order to have a proper, grown-up, three-dimensional understanding of American foreign policy you need to understand that the idea of America is one of the things that informs American foreign policy. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to understand what the U.S. is doing and why.
And some of the planners and thinkers here in Israel still believe that everyone at the end of the day wants the same things they want. That isn’t the case, and you will make grave errors if you assume that it is. I’m not a fan of Netanyahu’s prime ministership down the line, but he does have people around him who understand the role ideas play in this region. It stops us from making the kinds of errors that, for example, Ehud Barak made in 2000.
MJT: I thought Barak’s withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon was the right thing to do, and so was offering Arafat a Palestinian state. I supported both, and I still do even in hindsight, but we have to be honest about the results of those policies. War followed both, and Israelis will have to be extremely careful about withdrawing from the West Bank and the eastern half of Jerusalem.
A view of central Jerusalem from the West Bank
Jonathan Spyer: Absolutely. Many people still say we all know what the final settlement is going to look like, so we just need to get the two sides together and work it out. To that I say, “No. You don’t know what the final status is going to look like. The final status you have in mind is what you came up with by negotiating with yourself.”
I was an early skeptic of the Oslo peace process.
MJT: Why? I wasn’t, but you were right and I was wrong. What did you see then that I didn’t?
Jonathan Spyer: We all get things wrong in the Middle East, but that time I was right. I’m not saying I was some kind of genius—I was just a kid—but I did manage to call that one for whatever it’s worth.
All you had to do at the time was be interested enough in Arab political culture to listen carefully to what the other side said. That’s all it took. Once you did that, you’d have to be a moron not to see what was coming. Most people weren’t doing that.
Hezbollah erected a billboard on the border facing south into Israel showing a severed head being held by its hair. Text in Hebrew says, Sharon, don't forget. Your soldiers are still in Lebanon.
MJT: It’s the same in the U.S. today. Too many people don’t want to listen to what’s being said in the Arab world. A lot of it is deeply disturbing. I could be wrong, and I don’t like to psychoanalyze people, but I think that’s the problem. They’re afraid of the implications of all this crazy talk in the Middle East. So they pretend they don’t hear it, they explain it away, or they say it’s not serious.
Jonathan Spyer: I think that’s right.
MJT: I don’t like what I often hear either, and I don’t know what we should do about it, but I’m aware of it, and it’s there whether I like it or not.
Jonathan Spyer: That’s the bottom line. And from there you have to build a rational policy. You may not like it, but what else can you do?
Israelis were exhausted by a half-century of war before the peace process started. Every family in the country was shaped by it. There was an immense longing in the 1990s for peace, normalcy, and the good life. We had an intense will and longing for that. So when the Oslo crowd came to town and said, “You can be born again, you can have peace with the Arabs,” people bought into it.
They were idealists, and they were rationalists. If a note of triumphalism creeps into my voice, it’s only because I remember how arrogant they were during the 1990s when they thought they were right. They were extremely contemptuous toward everyone at the time who was trying to warn them. We were described as anachronisms from a different century.
MJT: That’s what I thought at the time.
Jonathan Spyer: Okay. Fine. It’s okay.
MJT: I was young. I wasn’t writing about the Middle East then.
Jonathan Spyer: Sure. It’s fine. Everyone gets this place wrong.
MJT: No one has ever been right consistently. I don’t think it’s possible.
Jonathan Spyer: It’s not.
MJT: This place is too weird.
Jonathan Spyer: [Laughs.] Yeah. It is.
MJT: It took me years to understand how this place works just on the most basic level because it’s so different from the part of the world I grew up in. I first had to stop assuming Arabs think like Americans. Then I had to learn how they think differently from Americans. I still don’t fully understand them, and I probably never will.
Jonathan Spyer: It’s hard. I used to try to figure it out by extrapolating from the Jewish experience, but it doesn’t work. Their response to events is totally different. It’s useless. You have to throw this sort of thinking into the trash or you can’t understand anything.
MJT: When the U.S. went into Iraq, I thought Iraqis would react the way I would have if I were Iraqi.
Jonathan Spyer: Sure.
MJT: But they didn’t. But I wasn’t only projecting. I knew they weren’t exactly like me. They’re Iraqis. I guess I expected the Arabs of Iraq to react the way the Kurds of Iraq did, and the Kurds reacted the way I would have reacted. But the Arab world isn’t America, and it is not Kurdistan.
A mural in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, painted shortly after the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein
MJT: The Arab world has its own political culture, and it’s not like the political culture I know, or even like other Middle Eastern political cultures.
If the Palestinians had a Western political culture, the problem here could be resolved in ten minutes. If you Israelis were dealing with Canadians instead of Palestinians, you would have had peace a long time ago. And if the Palestinians were dealing with Canadians instead of Israelis, there would still be a conflict.
Jonathan Spyer: That’s exactly right. And that’s why it’s so frustrating sometimes when people say, “If only the two sides could sit down and talk.”
Israel has had its own moments of nationalist madness and score-settling and that sort of thing, but there’s less and less of it over time. Even within my living memory Israel has matured astonishingly. People here are a lot more disenchanted, a lot less likely to get carried away and follow political leaders.
MJT: I’ve gotten that way, too, recently, but it doesn’t come naturally. I am an optimist by nature, but the Middle East has taught me the pessimistic and tragic view of the world. I hate it, but it is what it is. A person can’t be an optimist for very long here without being unhinged from reality.
Jonathan Spyer: Cynicism isn’t a good thing, but neither is silly idealism. We have to walk a tightrope in order to keep this country viable. We have to be sufficiently skeptical and realistic, yet we also have to be open-minded and keyed into the 21st century high-tech society.
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jonathan Spyer: We have to maintain a balance in order to continue this project in the midst of people who hate us. And I think we’re doing quite well. We’re managing it. The North Korean government just has to sit on people. England has America looking after it if things go badly, so in the meantime the English can go on being post-modern. Here it’s tricky. We can’t just be Sparta. We have to be free-thinking people.
People here love life. You can feel this intense vitality in the air. It’s one of the reasons why people love it. I know people who don’t like this place politically, but they like being here. Nobody ever felt that way about East Germany.
MJT: It’s like that in Lebanon, too. It’s a crazy place with incredible problems, but it has this wonderful energy. Beirut does anyway.
Jonathan Spyer: Life crackles in the air there like it does here. I think that’s proof of health. And I don’t feel that in Western Europe.
MJT: I want to know what you think about an Iranian nuclear weapon. It’s everyone’s favorite topic to speculate on, though nobody really knows anything.
Jonathan Spyer: Nobody really knows, but I’m of the school which says if they get a nuke they will use it to become the dominant power in the region.
MJT: I think so, too.
Jonathan Spyer: I’m not of the school that says they’ll use it the next day against Israel.
MJT: I’m not of that school either, but I can’t dismiss it entirely.
Jonathan Spyer: I’m afraid none of us can dismiss it entirely. We would be rash indeed to dismiss it entirely. But if I’m reading the Iranian leadership right, they want to stick around on earth for a while and wield massive amounts of power. They want to build an oppressive system stretching all the way to the Mediterranean.
MJT: The guy who’s in charge of the Iranian branch of Hezbollah said that’s exactly what they want to do. They’re trying to build a new Persian Empire.
Jonathan Spyer: We hear this constant refrain from Iranians that they have a real civilization, that they aren’t like Jordan and Qatar. They’re more like China and India.
MJT: They’re right about that.
Jonathan Spyer: They are. And it’s a dangerous thing when people have a feeling of historical justification and want to bring the world to order again. We’ve had experiences with that. It’s a worrisome combination. I think those ideas wedded to nuclear weapons is unacceptable. And I’m of the opinion that either the West or Israel will come to the conclusion that a nuclear Iran is worse than the military action needed to stop it, and will therefore take action.
MJT: Even with Barack Obama as president? He’s not doing at all well in the United States at the moment, but he’s going to be around for a while.
Jonathan Spyer: I don’t want to speculate about Obama, but if there is a rational national-security set-up in the United States which can influence the president on matters of crucial national interest—and I assume there is something like that—my sense is that system will, at a certain point, kick in and say we can’t afford to have an Iran with nuclear weapons. At a certain point, I think we’ll get to that stage. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t, but we’ll be facing a massively changed Middle East, and a massively dangerous Middle East.
MJT: How do you think that would change the Middle East?
Jonathan Spyer: The Iranians will have a free hand for the kind of subversion they’re already engaged in. We could well see countries falling to Iranian subversion. More likely, at least in the short term, we’ll see countries accommodating themselves to the new big man on the block, and that will of course include the Gulf states.
Kuwait City
Jonathan Spyer: There are a certain number of countries in this region—and we could both name them—that will always accommodate themselves to the strong horse. They just have to figure out who the strong horse is. That’s why they get really nervous when they’re not sure who it is, and that’s why they’re terrified now. They don’t know who’s on the way up. Is America really a sunset power in this region, or is that a bunch of propaganda coming out of Tehran? America really does seem to be disengaging.
MJT: But to what extent, and for how long? We could turn that around in an instant tomorrow, and nobody would be able to stop us.
Jonathan Spyer: Yes.
MJT: Obama could say we tried to be nice, and it didn’t work.
Jonathan Spyer: The United States, at the end of the day, has core national interests in this region. And once the Americans understand that they really are threatened, they will have no choice but to be more assertive, regardless of the ideology of a particular president at a particular time.
MJT: The entire world has an interest in stability in this region.
Jonathan Spyer: Yes.
MJT: We’re just the only ones who can do much about it. So we’re stuck with the job whether we like it or not. And most of us don’t.
Jonathan Spyer: If the U.S. leaves a void here, the secondary powers in the region—Israel, Turkey, and Iran—will begin tussling with one another for dominance.
MJT: That could be extraordinarily dangerous.
Istanbul, Turkey
Jonathan Spyer: All three are young, hungry, countries. Jostling between these three won’t be pretty. So I think the U.S.—acting for the sake its own interests as well as those of the rest of the world—will have to reassert itself. Maybe I’m too optimistic. If that doesn’t happen, I think Israel will step up.
MJT: What is it that U.S. policy-makers don’t currently understand about this part of the world? If you could have their ears for five or ten minutes, what would you tell them?
Jonathan Spyer: I’d tell the current bunch in power that they need to ditch this sophomoric idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to the region’s malaise.
They need to get that out of their heads. That’s not what I’d want to talk about. That’s not even an adult conversation. Once we can clear that up, we can talk about something serious.
A perfect storm is brewing in the Middle East. We’re experiencing the convergence of two historical phenomena. The first is the rise of Iran, which we’ve already talked about. We have an ambitious ideological elite committed to radical Islam and the expansion of power. Second, in country after country in the Middle East, various forms of radical Islam are becoming the most popular and vivid forms of political expression. We have Hamas among the Palestinians, Hezbollah among the Shia of Lebanon, the Islamic Action Front in Jordan, and the Muslim Brothers in Egypt.
A portrait of a Hezbollah martyr killed in battle with Israel
We have an ideological wave from below with a powerful and potentially nuclear-armed sponsor on top. That’s the picture I’d want to place in the minds of the people in Washington. It’s the key regional dynamic through which most smaller processes have to be understood.
So if you like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and want to talk about that, now we can tackle it in a rational grown-up way. The Palestinian national movement has split—most likely permanently—into two camps. And the most powerful of the two is that which results from this convergence of a popular Islamist wave on the one hand and a hegemonic state sponsor on the other. These two phenomena have completely transformed Palestinian politics. They have completely transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And they have completely transformed our options.
We could also talk about Lebanon. Or just about anything else. And again, we have to look at it through the prism I just described. That’s what I’d say to them if I had five minutes.
**Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, Inter-Disciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel. He writes regularly for the Jerusalem Post. His first book, The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict, will be published this fall by Continuum.