LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِApril 06/2011

Biblical Event Of The Day
The Good News According to Mark 6/45-52/“Cheer up! It is I! Don’t be afraid".
Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat, and to go ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he himself sent the multitude away. 6:46 After he had taken leave of them, he went up the mountain to pray.  6:47 When evening had come, the boat was in the midst of the sea, and he was alone on the land. 6:48 Seeing them distressed in rowing, for the wind was contrary to them, about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea,* and he would have passed by them, 6:49 but they, when they saw him walking on the sea, supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out; 6:50 for they all saw him, and were troubled. But he immediately spoke with them, and said to them, “Cheer up! It is I! Don’t be afraid.” 6:51 He got into the boat with them; and the wind ceased, and they were very amazed among themselves, and marveled; 6:52 for they hadn’t understood about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Why Najeeb Mikati cannot deliver/GulfNews/April 05/11
The Assad Doctrine vs. the Obama Doctrine/Huffington Post/April 05/11
Distracted Damascus stalls Lebanon’s new cabinet/By: Matt Nash/April 05/11
Welcome to Hezbollahland/By: Jonathan Spyer/ April 05/11
Assad Gives U.S. Names of Fake Terrorists to Kill/By: Farid Ghadry/April 05/11

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for April 05/11
Grenade Blast in Beirut's Southern Suburbs kills couple/Naharnet
Iran squares off against Saudi Arabia over Bahrain's annexation/DEBKAfile
US Renews Lebanon Travel Warning, Citing Political Tensions/Bloomberg
Lebanese caught in Ivory Coast crossfire/Daily Star/National Review Online
Ahmadinejad Shows Signs of Pressure on Syria/Arutz Sheva
West's Response to Syria Blasted/Wall Street Journal
Iran squares off against Saudi Arabia over Bahrain's annexation/DEBKAfile
Egyptian army rejects Khomeini rule/Now Lebanon
Hamas weapons capability increased four-fold over last five years/Haartz
Egypt ready to 'open new page' in relations with Iran/By Reuters/Haaretz
Ahmadinejad: Arab world conflicts will lead to collapse of Zionist regime/By DPA/Haaretz
Hezbollah torpedoes Lebanon Spiritual summit, report/Ya Libnan
Lebanon plans to evacuate citizens from Ivory Coast/iloubnan.info
Venezuela houses FARC and Hezbollah: Drug lord/Colombia Reports
US suspends arms aid to Lebanon/Ynetnews
Venezuela houses FARC and Hezbollah: Drug lord/Colombia Reports
Al-Qaida cells active in Brazil, magazine says/JTA
Hezbollah Official: We Can Choke Israel/Fares News Agency
The US/Israeli Endgame in The Middle East: Total War, Total Enslavement/OP EDnews
FBI Says Hezbollah Has $2.4 Million Bounty on Head of Koran Burning Pastor/Weasel Zipper
Hillary Clinton's uncredible statement on Syria/Washington Post
Syria promises to unveil road map to end emergency laws by Friday/Telegraph.co.uk
Syria emergency law alternative ready by Friday/Ahram Online
Baroud Rejects Using Inmates as Instruments to Send Political Messages/Naharnet
Roumieh Inmates Continue Mutiny, Angry Families Burn Tires/Naharnet
Pietton Meets Hariri: It's Not Possible to Protect All Expatriates in Ivory Coast/Naharnet
Report: Sin el-Fil Resident Arrested for Suspected Collaboration with Israel/Naharnet
WikiLeaks: Jumblat Says Hariri Training 15,000 Fighters in Beirut and Tripoli/Naharnet
WikiLeaks: Geagea Informs Sison that He Has 10,000 Fighters Ready to Combat Hizbullah/Naharnet
WikiLeaks: Jumblat Urged U.S. to Prevent Syria From Exploiting Developments/Naharnet
U.S. Confirms that it is Reviewing Assistance to Lebanese Armed Forces/Naharnet

Hand grenades explode in Chiyyah, Dekweneh
April 5, 2011 /NOW Lebanon’s correspondent reported on Tuesday that a hand grenade exploded inside a house in Mouawad street in Chiyyah and killed two of its residents. The Internal Security Forces (ISF) is investigating the accident, the correspondent added. Also on Tuesday, the National News Agency reported that an unidentified assailant threw a hand grenade at a mukhtar’s office in Dekwaneh. The report said no one was injured. -NOW Lebanon

Assad Gives U.S. Names of Fake Terrorists to Kill
By: Farid Ghadry/Pajamas Media /April 5, 2011
Assad's regime just blamed me, among others, for fomenting the revolution. Here's what else he's been up to, which might have something to do with Clinton's "reformer" comment (with video). https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=136975886374612&comments
“Hajji” is the nickname Syrians call those pious men who prayed in Makah; it is also the nickname Syrian lampoonists confer upon the most corrupt of men. So, it came as no surprise to many that Assad just asked “Hajji” Adel Safar, a hardcore Ba’athist and regime inner circle corruptible, to form the new Syrian government.
The chronology of how Syrians view the history of the last three weeks can be summarized in a few words: We revolted, Assad buckled. Clinton called Assad a reformer. Assad killed more Syrians, Clinton never recanted, and Assad never reformed. In other words: thank you Madame Secretary, for your vision and fortitude.
Many good articles and studies have been written on the root cause of Islamic terror. Some of the best I have read here on PJM itself. But if you wish to see how terrorism starts and why Assad gets unquestioned U.S. support, join me in watching this video of a young Syrian man being psychologically tortured. The video was made, we are told, to train other torturers on methodology.
The Reform Party of Syria (RPS) has learned that once the Assad factories of terror are done with this man and others, they are released into the hands of an imam wielding the Quran as a sword to gauge and invigorate his capacity to do harm. How? By telling these men Assad is supported by the U.S. and Israel, and they must attack the roots of the problem. Those with cojones are sent to places like Iraq to paint Assad’s canvas of terror with their blood, and those who fail to materialize as worthy bombers are shipped to places like Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Here comes the best part: after expediting these hapless chaps to different neighboring countries, Assad provides their names to the U.S. intelligence community as part of an intelligence sharing program, knowing well their secrets will be buried forever by an accurate drone strike.
Assad makes them, uses them, and fools us with them to keep his regime afloat. Could this be the reason why Assad was called a “reformer” by Hilary Clinton?
In Syria, we are told that in Dara’a the regime security apparatus has undertaken a house-to-house search for the non-Arabic fighters, captured and whisked away immediately to an unknown location by young men the regime is looking for. All of Dara’a’s land and cell communications have been severed to prevent any videos from reaching the outside world.
Today, Syrians are licking the wounds of the first battle in a long, drawn-out war for freedom. The hundreds of dead have been buried, but the resolve has not. Assad announced the cancellation of the Emergency Law in place since 1963 to be replaced by a new set of laws expected to be named the “War against Terror” laws — the same restrictions as the old ones, but with different vocabulary. To be on the safe side, the announcement will take place this coming Friday to keep people at home. Another sign we must not expect much from Clinton’s “reformer.”
With a small lull in the fight for freedom, Syrian TV has started pointing accusatory fingers at those behind the revolution. In addition to Rafik Hariri and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, yours truly was also mentioned. The intent, of course, is to use me as the conduit to blame Israel because of my speech at the Knesset in 2007. I really feel for the Israelis — they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. But then, what else can we expect from Assad?
**Farid Ghadry is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (www.fightingterror.org) and has written several articles and essays on Syria and the politics in the Levant.

Iran squares off against Saudi Arabia over Bahrain's annexation
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
April 4, 2011,
The accord reached between Saudi King Abdullah and the Bahraini monarch Hamas bin Isa Al Khalifa for the oil island's virtual annexation by Riyadh has so incensed Tehran that armed Iranian-Saudi clashes with the potential for all-out warfare may soon become unavoidable, debkafile's Iranian and Gulf sources estimate. Shiite-ruled Iraq would back Tehran in the first Shiite-Sunni collision to be sparked by the wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world - in contrast to the domestic discord raging in Libya and Yemen.
In the third week of March, debkafile reveals, King Hamad agreed to hand over to Riyadh control Bahrain's defense, external, financial and domestic security affairs. The Saudi king's son Prince Mutaib was confirmed by the two monarchs as commander of the Saudi and GCC forces invited to enter the tiny kingdom to put down the Shiite-led uprising, and it was agreed that Saudi Arabia would soon start building a big naval base on the island opposite the Iranian coastline.
The accord between the Saudi and Bahraini monarchs appeared for the first time in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 487 on March 25. It revealed then that King Hamad had allowed his realm to become the de facto 14th province of Saudi Arabia in order to block the Shiite uprising against him and its knock-on impact on Saudi Arabia's two million restive Shiites next door.
Neither Riyadh nor Manama has made the pact public. The Bahraini province of Saudi Arabia will differ from the other 13 in that it will not be governed by a Saudi prince like the others but by a member of the Al Khalifa royal family who will enjoy equal royal privileges with his Saudi peers.
Our sources report that in closed meetings with senior Saudi princes, King Abdullah explained the fundamental importance of this step for the kingdom's national security. He reported that Iran and its Hizballah surrogate were actively stirring up Shiite opposition in Manama as the first step toward fomenting a Shiite uprising against the Saudi throne.
On March 21, Riyadh resolved to expand the terms of reference of the Saudi-Gulf military intervention requested by King Hamad. Instead of just safeguarding the royal palace and strategic facilities against rampaging protesters, our sources report, it was decided to expand the mission to guarding Bahrain's borders against external attack – i.e. Iran or Iraq.
To this end, Saudi troop reinforcements have been pouring into Bahrain from the last week of March, including armored units and a variety of missiles. debkafile's military sources estimate that some 11,000 Saudi and United Arab Emirates boots have hit the ground in Bahrain since then.
Four days later, on March 25, Manama announced that planes taking off from Iraq or Lebanon would not be permitted to land in the kingdom, thereby cutting of the main route used by Iran and Hizballah to bring over intelligence agents and military instructors to aid the Shiite opposition.
The second important military step afoot at present is the transfer of Saudi fleet units from the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea to the military section of Bahrain's port, where the US Fifth Fleet has its headquarters and berths its ships. This is a provisional facility, to serve the Saudis until they finish building a port at Manama for parking their main Persian Gulf naval and marine command center, in response to the expanded facilities on the opposite shore of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' naval and marine raider units.
March 31, the Iranian parliament's security and foreign affairs committee strongly condemned Saudi military steps: "Saudi Arabia knows better than any other country that playing with fire in the sensitive Persian Gulf region is not in their interests," said the statement.
Since then, Iranian media have not stopped denouncing Saudi actions in Bahrain, likening them to Saddam Hussein's 1990 conquest of Kuwait which triggered the first Gulf War against Iraq. Riyadh was even accused of accepting clandestine US and Israeli support.
Then, Saturday, April 2, Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki chipped in by reviling US Middle East policy as discriminating among the popular movements in motion against the different Arab dictatorial regimes: "Whatever decision is made on Libya should be applied to any government that suppresses its people with iron and fire," he said.
Sunday, April 3, the threatening recriminations coming from Tehran and Baghdad prompted the Gulf Cooperation Council to hold a special foreign ministers' meeting. It passed a resolution which "severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain in violation of international pacts."
Language this blunt has never before been heard from GCC leaders. It is attributed by our Gulf sources to Saudi King Abdullah's adamant resolve to challenge Tehran headon on every issue affecting the Gulf region's security, to the point of Saudi military intervention when called for – even at the risk of precipitating an armed clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Islamic Republic finds itself confronted with its first forthright, no-nonsense challenge: If it backs down in the face of Saudi military activism, the Shiite communities across the region will conclude that Iran is both unable and unwilling to stand up for the Shiite-Arab revolt against Sunni regimes – whether in Bahrain, in other Gulf emirates or in Yemen and Lebanon.
Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki faces the same quandary with regard to Iraqi Shiites who consider Bahraini coreligionists to be an integral part of their tribes and clans.
It is taken for granted by Saudi Arabia, Gulf capitals and Western military and intelligence observers that Tehran has been pushed into a corner from which it cannot afford to pull back from its overarching commitment to sponsor Bahrain's Shiites. The Iranians are therefore expected to send their Bahraini Shiite networks into terrorist action against Saudi military targets very soon. Riyadh is already braced for these assaults - and not just in Bahrain but in other GCC states including Saudi Arabia proper.
They will not go unanswered; hence the dire predictions among seasoned observers that armed hostilities between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia may at some point become unavoidable.
 

U.S. Warns Citizens to Avoid Lebanon: Government Incapable of Providing Protection
Naharnet/U.S. citizens should avoid traveling to Lebanon, the State Department said Monday in a travel warning two days after a U.S. embassy group was attacked by Lebanese youth.
"The Department of State continues to urge U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to Lebanon due to current safety and security concerns," the warning said. "U.S. citizens living and working in Lebanon should understand that they accept risks in remaining and should carefully consider those risks," it said. On Saturday, some youths threw stones and bottles at a U.S. embassy group that was visiting Sidon. There were no injuries and the group returned to the embassy in Beirut. Internal security forces accompanying the U.S. group intervened, but stones continued to be thrown, breaking car windows. The army then arrived and arrested three of the attackers, officials said. "The potential in Lebanon for a spontaneous upsurge in violence is real," the travel warning said. "Lebanese government authorities are not able to guarantee protection for citizens or visitors to the country should violence erupt suddenly. Access to borders, airports, and seaports can be interrupted with little or no warning." The ability of U.S. government personnel to provide emergency services "may at times be severely limited." The State Department, which issued a similar warning, last October, also cautioned U.S. citizens about kidnappings. It noted that seven Estonian tourists were kidnapped in the Bekaa Valley on March 23. The event was "pre-planned and well coordinated," the warning said.(AFP) Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 08:19

Report: Sin el-Fil Resident Arrested for Suspected Collaboration with Israel
Naharnet/The Internal Security Forces' Intelligence Bureau has arrested a man in the town of Sin el-Fil suspected of collaborating with Israel, al-Akhbar daily reported Tuesday. The newspaper said that the man hails from a southern border town and resides in Sin el-Fil. The suspect has worked at a security company in Iraq's Kurdistan province, al-Akhbar quoted sources as saying. However, security sources refused to say whether the alleged spy had admitted to collaborating with the Israeli Mossad. "He is still being questioned," they said.
Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 09:06

Baroud Rejects Using Inmates as Instruments to Send Political Messages
Naharnet/Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud on Tuesday criticized some parties for allegedly using the demands of inmates at Roumieh prison as instruments to achieve political objectives.During a press conference he held after a meeting of the Central Security Council, Baroud said he was fully responsible for all issues linked to his post.
But he said the absence of a government and bureaucratic procedures were behind delays in the implementation of reforms on prisons. Baroud admitted that the recent riots at the Roumieh central prison were the result of "negligence" but said his ministry had undertaken several measures to improve the conditions of prisons. The caretaker minister told reporters that he called Speaker Nabih Berri during the meeting of the Central Security Council and urged him to meet one of the demands of the prisoners to grant them amnesty in some cases. Berri promised Baroud to follow up a draft law on granting amnesty with conditions to some prisoners, he said. Baroud reiterated that the ministry had plans to build more prisons in the north and south to let inmates become closer to their families and limit their numbers inside cells to ease overcrowding. He unveiled that there are 3,700 inmates in Roumieh alone and sometimes numbers reach more than 4,000. Only 721 of them are convicted, Baroud said highlighting slow legal proceedings. But the caretaker minister lauded Prosecutor Saeed Mirza for expressing readiness to speed up trials. "We are keen on the safety of the prisoners and security forces have a plan to immediately end the mutiny" in Roumieh without causing casualties, he told reporters. Baroud also promised to take disciplinary measures against officers who had collaborated with the inmates. He unveiled that several politicians were demanding the Internal Security Forces not to hold the violators accountable but "we will." Asked about the interior ministry portfolio in the new government, Baroud said he does not hold onto his post but he would continue to carry out his tasks as long as he is caretaker minister. Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 13:37

Roumieh Inmates Continue Mutiny, Angry Families Burn Tires
Naharnet/Three guards were being detained on Tuesday at Roumieh prison where inmates demanding amnesty and better conditions have been rioting since the weekend.
"The inmates at Roumieh prison resumed their protest Monday evening and it is continuing at this hour," Father Marwan Ghanem, who is involved in negotiations to free the guards, told Agence France Presse. Ghanem said the detained men were in good health and were being treated well. "Authorities have been able to contact them to make sure they are OK," he added. "The inmates consider them as brothers and are holding them just to pressure authorities to respond to their demands." A security official said the guards were not under threat and were simply being prevented from leaving an area of the prison. Meanwhile, some 70 family members of the prisoners demonstrated outside the prison on Tuesday and burned tires while demanding they be given access to the inmates. Ghanem said electricity had been cut off at the prison to prevent inmates from recharging cell phones introduced illegally into the facility.
The inmates began rioting on Saturday, burning mattresses and smashing windows and doors to press their demands for better conditions at the overcrowded prison located 12 kilometers northeast of Beirut. Authorities already began a reshuffle on the level of officers and wardens at the prison after reports that security officers at the prison had collaborated with the prisoners and smuggled mobile phones and drugs to them.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 14:04

WikiLeaks: Jumblat Says Hariri Training 15,000 Fighters in Beirut and Tripoli
Naharnet/Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat voiced his concern over reports that the Mustaqbal movement was training Sunni militias in Beirut and Tripoli of some 15,000 fighters, said a leaked U.S. Embassy cable published in exclusively in Al-Akhbar newspaper on Tuesday. The MP stated that MP Saad Hariri's establishment of private security companies in Beirut and Tripoli is a sign that some individuals are providing him with bad advice, such as ISF chief Ashraf Rifi. In addition, the Druze leader revealed that the head of the intelligence bureau, Wissam al-Hassan, had informed him that Mustaqbal movement members were being trained in fighting and that he opposed such activity. The WikiLeaks cable also addressed Jumblat's concern over the recent developments in the investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the most recent of which was the assassination of Major Wissam Eid, a top communications analyst with the police intelligence bureau. Hassan informed the MP that Eid had discovered a network of 17 telephone numbers connected to the Hariri assassination. Eid had told then head of the international investigation Serge Brammertz of this discovery, but he disregarded it, the cable continued. Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 12:07

WikiLeaks: Geagea Informs Sison that He Has 10,000 Fighters Ready to Combat Hizbullah
Naharnet/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea revealed to then U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michele Sison that some 10,000 LF fighters were ready to combat Hizbullah if the need arrives, said a leaked U.S. Embassy cable published exclusively in Al-Akhbar newspaper on Tuesday. Geagea told Sison during a surprise visit to the U.S. Embassy that the fighters "may need to be provided with weapons", said the WikiLeaks cable dated May 9, 2008. In addition, he stressed the need for the U.S. to pressure the Lebanese army to perform its duties because he wasn't sure that it was capable of doing so, noting that the army failed in protecting Christian areas in Lebanon. Geagea said that he wanted to be sure that Washington was aware of the 7,000 to 10,000 trained LF fighters who were ready to mobilize against Hizbullah. Furthermore, the Lebanese Forces leader emphasized the need for the U.S. to support then Army Commander General Michel Suleiman and the government of then Prime Minister Fouad Saniora. He also suggested that Arab peacekeeping forces be deployed in Lebanon, which according to Sison was first proposed by Saudi Arabia. Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 11:36

WikiLeaks: Jumblat Urged U.S. to Prevent Syria From Exploiting Developments
Naharnet/National Struggle Front leader Walid Jumblat has reportedly urged the U.S. to put more pressure on Syria, without allowing it to exploit the international changes for its own benefits. According to a WikiLeaks cable dated February 20, 2005, carried by OTV, a meeting was held between MP Jumblat and former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michele Sison, in the presence of MP Marwan Hamadeh. Jumblat was worried about the national security, wondering what role Hizbullah was playing in Lebanon. He said "do they want an open war with Israel? The Lebanese Shiites don't want it, and Speaker Nabih Berri isn't looking for a new adventure in the South." Jumblat criticized the rumors on Hizbullah commander Walid Mughniyeh's assassination, asking "if we had the ability to reach Mughniyeh, why couldn't we reach Syrian President Bashar Assad?" Jumblat said the March 14 forces must seek the support of the Kurds in Lebanon. "They represent a strong election force, and must support the March 14 forces." Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 10:45

Miqati Refuses to 'Shackle' Himself with Cabinet Formation Timeframe
Naharnet/Premier-designate Najib Miqati reiterated that he would form a government that satisfies the Lebanese and respects the Constitution and the Taef Accord. "I will not shackle myself with any grace period or dates," Miqati told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Tuesday. "The constitution allows me to take enough time in the (government) formation and I will not form a cabinet unless it satisfies all the Lebanese and respects the constitution and the Taef agreement," he said. In another remark to al-Akhbar daily, the prime minister-designate said he was "fed up" with the status quo but stressed he wouldn't commit himself to a timeframe to form his cabinet. Sources involved in the contacts aimed at forming the government, told An Nahar newspaper that the obstacles created mainly by the demands of Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun haven't dissipated yet. The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that March 14 officials have encouraged Miqati to form a technocrat government, which would get the vote of confidence of parliament. But the premier-designate's sources wondered "what kind of trap some people are trying to set for Miqati?" Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 10:16

U.S. Confirms that it is Reviewing Assistance to Lebanese Armed Forces
Naharnet/The State Department has denied a report that the U.S. has quietly frozen weapon shipments to Lebanon's armed forces but defense officials confirmed that Washington was continuing to provide only training and nonlethal assistance to the Lebanese military. "Our assistance programs to the Lebanese armed forces continue and that no decision regarding any kind of freeze has been made at this time," said Acting Deputy Department Spokesman Mark Toner on Monday. "I don't know about specific shipments, but we haven't made any decision to freeze our assistance," he said, when asked to confirm if there are arms shipments at this time. His remarks came after The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. has quietly frozen weapon shipments to the Lebanese army following the collapse of Saad Hariri's government in January. A high-ranking Pentagon official confirmed to An Nahar that assistance was only in non-lethal equipment, saying "any decision to provide the Lebanese army with weaponry would be based on the policies of the next Lebanese government and particularly its commitment to Lebanon's international agreements." "We are now reviewing the structure of our assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces after the collapse of the Lebanese government in January," the official said. Beirut, 05 Apr 11, 09:33

Lebanese caught in Ivory Coast crossfire
Two expatriates wounded as battles for control over capital rage on
By Van Meguerditchian/Daily Star staff
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
BEIRUT: Two Lebanese were severely wounded in Abidjan Monday as Lebanese exptatriates are still trapped in battles for the control of the former capital of Ivory Coast intensified amid reports of water and food shortages in the West African nation. Mohammad Basma and Mustafa Haidar of the Lebanese community in Abidjan were critically injured when unknown rebels opened fire on their car as they drove through the war-torn capital of Ivory Coast. In a telephone interview with The Daily Star Monday, Lebanon’s ambassador to Ivory Coast Ali Ajami said that the two injured men left the intensive care unit but were still being treated at the hospital. “Despite our warnings to Lebanese citizens not to leave their homes in times like these, Basma and Haidar were traveling across the city,” said Ajami, who called to the Lebanese to stay indoors.
“Even the French authorities cannot help their citizens who insist on roaming the streets … the situation here is very dangerous,” he added. Earlier Monday, sporadic reports said that a Lebanese national was shot dead and others were in critical situation, a day after hundreds of Lebanese protested next to the Foreign Ministry in Achrafieh demanding the evacuation of their relatives who have been left behind in the West African country. According to Ajami, the number of Lebanese who have requested to flee the Ivory Coast has exceeded 10,000. “We have been receiving dozens of emergency calls from Lebanese asking for help but unfortunately we are unable to reach them due to the ongoing instability,” said Ajami. Violence in Ivory Coast resumed following the presidential elections in November of last year. Although the results of the election showed a defeat of Laurent Gbagbo by his rival Alassane Ouattara, Gbagbo clung to power, causing a major unrest throughout the country.
Ajami also confirmed the reports of lootings of Lebanese-owned businesses. “Many Lebanese own large supermarkets and shops throughout Abidjan … and I can say that those shops were the targets of chaos in the country,” Ajami added. However, Ajami ruled out that Lebanese in Abidjan were being targeted for their political affiliations with Gbagbo. “These rumors are inaccurate because Lebanese have no political affiliations but only economic relationships with both Gbagbo and Ouattara.” Many among the 90,000 Lebanese of Ivory Coast have also gained the Ivorian nationality and most have emerged as the owners of large- and medium-sized industrial businesses in the West African nation. Amid political vacuum in Lebanon, authorities have struggled reach out for the Lebanese living in Abidjan.
Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri propped up his contact with Jordanian King Abdullah II to mobilize Jordanian troops operating as part of the United Nations force there to assist the Lebanese. Meanwhile, Hariri urged Middle East Airlines chairman Mohammad Hout to ensure the availability of flights to Abidjan as French authorities informed Hariri that their forces stationed at Abidjan’s airport would help in the evacuation of the Lebanese. Headed by President Michel Sleiman, the Higher Defense Council will also convene Tuesday at the Baabda Palace to discuss the possible measures to help the Lebanese expatriates in Ivory Coast. A Lebanese national who lives less than 100 meters away from the Presidential Palace in the Plateu district of Abidjan told The Daily Star Monday that water shortages have already become a reality, a week after Ouattara’s forces launched an offensive on Gbagbo forces.
“It’s a shame that we are Lebanese … if we were only French we would have been evacuated from these areas,” said the Lebanese national, who refused to give her name. “I see French helicopters are roaming in the area and helping their citizens, while our government in Lebanon has done nothing.”
However, an official at the Foreign Ministry told the Daily Star that Lebanon is now working closely with officials at the U.N. and French authorities to ensure an international mediation to help evacuate Lebanese. “There are now talks about ships [mostly French] to dock at the coastal ports of Ivory Coast to evacuate the Lebanese,” said assistant Foreign Minister Qabalan Franjieh. “There are no functioning tower or airport personnel in Abidjan to help clear the way for commercial flights,” said Franjieh. For his part, the MEA chairman reiterated that commercial jets would be ready to depart from Beirut to Abidjan once the security situation allowed them to do so. “We will send at least two planes a day to Abidjan, if the area surrounding the airport is secured,” Hout told The Daily Star. France also voiced its readiness to help other foreign nationals in Abidjan. A statement released by the French Embassy in Beirut said that French forces opened a new camp next to the French Embassy north of Abidjan and another camp next to Wafou Hotel south of city, after the Port Bouet camp failed to host more people in its facilities. A prominent businessman living in Abidjan, Raad Samir said the important thing was to ensure the security of the Lebanese and not their evacuation. “But many Lebanese are trapped in the areas of violence where intense battles are taking place between Gbagbo’s and Ouattara’s forces,” he added. “It’s has become very dangerous.”

Ahmadinejad: Arab world conflicts will lead to collapse of Zionist regime
By DPA/Haaretz /The latest conflicts in the Arab world would eventually lead to the collapse of Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday. "The latest conflicts will leave no chance for the Zionist regime [Israel] to survive as all the involved countries are against the occupation of Palestine," Ahmadinejad said. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad speaks during a news conference after he attended the meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization, a regional group of ten nations in Turkey, Dec. 23, 2010. He added that the Arab states should be careful not to rely on the United States and its allies, "as their ultimate aim is to save" Israel. Very soon a new Middle East without Israel and the U.S. would emerge and the Arab nations should be aware that "the U.S. is the most unfaithful friend they can have," Ahmadinejad said. In a statement on Sunday, the Gulf Cooperation Council accused Shiite Iran in meddling in the internal affairs in the Gulf sheikhdoms. Ahmadinejad dismissed the statement as having no legal value, claiming it was issued owing to US pressure. In several Gulf states, such as Bahrain, a Sunni minority rules over a Shiite majority. "The U.S. wants to tarnish our relations with the Gulf states, but we tell these states that accusing Iran will not solve their problems and that we are still open for friendship," he said. He rejected the violence used against protesters and condemned any military interference in these countries. He said that Iran would welcome a new era of diplomatic relations with Cairo after three decades of political disputes.

Egypt ready to 'open new page' in relations with Iran
By Reuters/Haaretz /Cairo is ready to re-establish diplomatic ties with Tehran after a break of more than 30 years, Egypt's foreign minister said on Monday, signaling a shift in Iran policy since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. "The Egyptian and Iranian people deserve to have mutual relations reflecting their history and civilization," said Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby after meeting Iranian official Mugtabi Amani. A demonstration in Tahrir Square on Friday − without the flags of different political streams.It was the first publicly announced meeting between officials from both countries since Mubarak was toppled on Feb. 11, handing power to the army. Shi'ite Muslim Iran and mainly Sunni Egypt severed ties in 1980 following Iran's Islamic revolution and Egypt's recognition of Israel. Both have competed for influence in the Middle East. Egypt has long been an ally of the United States and Israel but since Mubarak was toppled there have been signs of warming ties between Cairo and Tehran. "Egypt is open to all countries and the aim is to achieve common interests," Elaraby said, adding that Cairo welcomed "opening a new page with Iran".Amani carried a message from Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who welcomed Egypt's initiative. "Foreign Minister Salehi ... called for developing bilateral cooperation, beginning with hosting Egypt's foreign minister in Tehran or having Iran's foreign minister visit Cairo," Menha Bakhowm, spokeswoman for Egypt's foreign ministry, said in a statement. In February, two Iranian warships passed through Egypt's Suez Canal after approval from the military rulers in Cairo. Israel called Iran's move a provocation.
Egypt and Iran have been at odds on a number of issues including the Middle East peace process and ties with Israel and the United States.

Iran squares off against Saudi Arabia over Bahrain's annexation
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report /April 4, 2011,
The accord reached between Saudi King Abdullah and the Bahraini monarch Hamas bin Isa Al Khalifa for the oil island's virtual annexation by Riyadh has so incensed Tehran that armed Iranian-Saudi clashes with the potential for all-out warfare may soon become unavoidable, debkafile's Iranian and Gulf sources estimate. Shiite-ruled Iraq would back Tehran in the first Shiite-Sunni collision to be sparked by the wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world - in contrast to the domestic discord raging in Libya and Yemen.
In the third week of March, debkafile reveals, King Hamad agreed to hand over to Riyadh control Bahrain's defense, external, financial and domestic security affairs. The Saudi king's son Prince Mutaib was confirmed by the two monarchs as commander of the Saudi and GCC forces invited to enter the tiny kingdom to put down the Shiite-led uprising, and it was agreed that Saudi Arabia would soon start building a big naval base on the island opposite the Iranian coastline.
The accord between the Saudi and Bahraini monarchs appeared for the first time in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 487 on March 25. It revealed then that King Hamad had allowed his realm to become the de facto 14th province of Saudi Arabia in order to block the Shiite uprising against him and its knock-on impact on Saudi Arabia's two million restive Shiites next door.
Neither Riyadh nor Manama has made the pact public. The Bahraini province of Saudi Arabia will differ from the other 13 in that it will not be governed by a Saudi prince like the others but by a member of the Al Khalifa royal family who will enjoy equal royal privileges with his Saudi peers.
Our sources report that in closed meetings with senior Saudi princes, King Abdullah explained the fundamental importance of this step for the kingdom's national security. He reported that Iran and its Hizballah surrogate were actively stirring up Shiite opposition in Manama as the first step toward fomenting a Shiite uprising against the Saudi throne.
On March 21, Riyadh resolved to expand the terms of reference of the Saudi-Gulf military intervention requested by King Hamad. Instead of just safeguarding the royal palace and strategic facilities against rampaging protesters, our sources report, it was decided to expand the mission to guarding Bahrain's borders against external attack – i.e. Iran or Iraq.
To this end, Saudi troop reinforcements have been pouring into Bahrain from the last week of March, including armored units and a variety of missiles. debkafile's military sources estimate that some 11,000 Saudi and United Arab Emirates boots have hit the ground in Bahrain since then.
Four days later, on March 25, Manama announced that planes taking off from Iraq or Lebanon would not be permitted to land in the kingdom, thereby cutting of the main route used by Iran and Hizballah to bring over intelligence agents and military instructors to aid the Shiite opposition.
The second important military step afoot at present is the transfer of Saudi fleet units from the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea to the military section of Bahrain's port, where the US Fifth Fleet has its headquarters and berths its ships. This is a provisional facility, to serve the Saudis until they finish building a port at Manama for parking their main Persian Gulf naval and marine command center, in response to the expanded facilities on the opposite shore of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' naval and marine raider units.
March 31, the Iranian parliament's security and foreign affairs committee strongly condemned Saudi military steps: "Saudi Arabia knows better than any other country that playing with fire in the sensitive Persian Gulf region is not in their interests," said the statement.
Since then, Iranian media have not stopped denouncing Saudi actions in Bahrain, likening them to Saddam Hussein's 1990 conquest of Kuwait which triggered the first Gulf War against Iraq. Riyadh was even accused of accepting clandestine US and Israeli support.
Then, Saturday, April 2, Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki chipped in by reviling US Middle East policy as discriminating among the popular movements in motion against the different Arab dictatorial regimes: "Whatever decision is made on Libya should be applied to any government that suppresses its people with iron and fire," he said.
Sunday, April 3, the threatening recriminations coming from Tehran and Baghdad prompted the Gulf Cooperation Council to hold a special foreign ministers' meeting. It passed a resolution which "severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain in violation of international pacts."
Language this blunt has never before been heard from GCC leaders. It is attributed by our Gulf sources to Saudi King Abdullah's adamant resolve to challenge Tehran headon on every issue affecting the Gulf region's security, to the point of Saudi military intervention when called for – even at the risk of precipitating an armed clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Islamic Republic finds itself confronted with its first forthright, no-nonsense challenge: If it backs down in the face of Saudi military activism, the Shiite communities across the region will conclude that Iran is both unable and unwilling to stand up for the Shiite-Arab revolt against Sunni regimes – whether in Bahrain, in other Gulf emirates or in Yemen and Lebanon.
Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki faces the same quandary with regard to Iraqi Shiites who consider Bahraini coreligionists to be an integral part of their tribes and clans.
It is taken for granted by Saudi Arabia, Gulf capitals and Western military and intelligence observers that Tehran has been pushed into a corner from which it cannot afford to pull back from its overarching commitment to sponsor Bahrain's Shiites. The Iranians are therefore expected to send their Bahraini Shiite networks into terrorist action against Saudi military targets very soon. Riyadh is already braced for these assaults - and not just in Bahrain but in other GCC states including Saudi Arabia proper.
They will not go unanswered; hence the dire predictions among seasoned observers that armed hostilities between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia may at some point become unavoidable.

'Hamas weapons capability increased four-fold over last five years'
Published 02:52 05.04.11/By Amos Harel/Haaretz
The details of the indictment filed Monday against Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi draw an alarming picture of Hamas' weapons development capability, which has multiplied exponentially in the past five years alone. After nearly 40 days in Israeli custody, Abu Sisi was indicted on several charges, including terror activity, conspiring to commit a crime and attempted murder. Dirar Abu Sisi in court Monday, where he was charged with being an important part of the Gaza Strip’s rocket-launching operations. He was charged with being a confidant of Hamas military leaders and instrumental in developing the organization's rocket cache, with helping Hamas to lengthen the range of their rockets since 2002 and to develop several kinds of armor penetrating missiles. The details released Monday indicate that Hamas has a well-developed missile industry.
In the past five years, the range of Qassam rockets apparently increased, with Abu Sisi's alleged help, from six to 22 kilometers, though reported attempts to increase the range to 40 kilometers failed. The anti-tank missiles armor penetration capability increased from six to 26 centimeters.
According to the court indictment, Abu Sisi was also developing a mortar shell that could penetrate meter-thick armor and damage even a Merkava tank. It also says Hamas inquired about buying Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and smuggling missiles that could strike at Israeli navy ships. Abu Sisi, a director of the Gaza Strip's sole power station, says he was abducted in February during a visit to Ukraine and transferred secretly to Israel. The indictment does not mention how Abu Sisi was brought to Israel, due to the gag order imposed on the case. The German weekly Der Spiegel suggested last week that Abu Sisi was abducted as part of an Israeli bid to find out where Hamas is holding captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. But the indictment makes no mention of Shalit either. The Shin Bet said in a statement following the indictment that Abu Sisi "divulged valuable information in his interrogation about Hamas' military wing, structure and decision-making processes."
The indictment and the Shin Bet statement portray Abu Sisi as a central Hamas leader, despite his relatives' denials, saying he was merely a senior engineer in Gaza's electric corporation.
While the Shin Bet nicknamed Abu Sisi Hamas' "father of rockets," this should be regarded with some skepticism, considering the public relations campaigns being conducted by both Israel and Hamas, as well as the recent escalation in hostilities between the two sides, which could slide into another military confrontation. Abu Sisi, 41, disappeared on February 19 from a night train in Ukraine, after six men kidnapped him, his family said, accusing the Mossad of the abduction. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees echoed the accusation.
A few weeks later Israel admitted that it was holding the Gazan engineer and said he was being interrogated by the Shin Bet security services.
Abu Sisi graduated with a Ph.D. in electric engineering from the Kharkov Military Engineering Academy in Kharkov, Ukraine, the indictment says. Prof.Konstantin Petrovich, his mentor at the university and an expert in Scud-missile control systems, gave Abu Sisi access to lessons in which he acquired knowledge in missile development and control systems.
In 2002, senior Hamas official Nizar Rian recruited Abu Sisi to Hamas' weapons developing committee, which the latter headed later on, the charges say.
Abu Sisi is charged with having contacts with Hamas activists Salah Shada, Adnan al-Rol and Rian, all of whom Israel has assassinated, and with Muhammad Def, Ahmed Jabari and Ahmed Randur. In 2009, after Operation Cast Lead, Abu Sisi was assigned with establishing and heading Hamas' military academy, as part of the lessons from the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the indictment says. Abu Sisi and Hamas leaders took strict precautions to keep their plans for the academy from Israel, communicating only by text messages from mobile phones they replaced every two or three months, according to the indictment. During Monday's court session, Abu Sisi denied all charges against him. "I am not guilty," he said. "I have no connection to security operations against Israel, and I have no connection to Gilad Shalit. When they saw I had no connection to Gilad Shalit, they decided to charge me with other security offenses, to which I also have no relation." Abu Sisi's lawyers said he had signed documents under pressure exerted by the security services, without being aware of their content.
In an earlier court hearing, he told journalists he did not know anything about Shalit's whereabouts and had nothing to do with the affair. Israel Police requested to extend Abu Sisi's remand until all judicial procedures related to his case are concluded.

Arab revolts hand it to Hezbollah
By Chris Zambelis
As the surge of revolutionary fervor that has taken the greater Middle East by storm continues to spread, many observers are grappling with the political uncertainties the tumult has produced from Morocco to the Persian Gulf and beyond.
The popular uprisings that prompted the ouster of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt and threaten the panoply of authoritarian despots clinging to power in other countries have already had a profound effect on regional politics. Despite their highly fluid nature, it is not too early to assess the impact of these events on the position of prominent actors such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. The movement's place amid the unfolding unrest bears special
relevance, considering the open hostility that has characterized its relations with the recently toppled Hosni Mubarak regime and other governments threatened by the wave of protest. The popularity Hezbollah enjoys among a large segment of the very same people who have taken to the streets to demand political freedoms, rule of law, representative government and economic opportunities adds another dynamic worth closer examination.
Solidarity in resistance
Having weathered the massive Israeli assault during the July 2006 war and deftly outmaneuvering attempts by political opponents to undermine its position and blame it for the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Hezbollah's stock as a political party, social movement and paramilitary force in Lebanese and regional affairs continues to rise.
In characteristic fashion, Hezbollah has not been coy about articulating its positions on the uprisings that have shaken the foundations of power in the Middle East in various media outlets, particularly its own Beirut-based al-Manar satellite television network. [1]
Initially, however, Hezbollah adopted a cautious approach to the opposition activism that engulfed Tunisia and Egypt. Hezbollah was concerned that a show of support for the protests early on would tarnish their legitimacy and lend credence to allegations repeated by the embattled regimes that the protesters were acting at the behest of hostile foreign elements aiming to destabilize the region. Hezbollah essentially opted to refrain from issuing an endorsement of the protests until the popular grassroots character of the rebellions entered into the discourse of global media coverage and analysis. Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah encapsulated this point in a statement broadcast during a February 7 event in Beirut organized to support the opposition in Egypt: "In case we announced solidarity earlier, they would have said that the revolution was motivated by Hezbollah or Hamas cells or even by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Then, this real, original and patriotic movement would be accused of serving a foreign agenda".
Hezbollah has since expressed solidarity with what it sees as the assertion of the true will of the Arab and Muslim masses who strive for social, political, and economic justice in the face of illegitimate and corrupt autocracies that it claims are beholden to the United States and Israel.
In this regard, Hezbollah has framed the political activism taking place in the region through a larger resistance narrative analogous to the one it applies to its own circumstances, a theme echoed by Nasrallah in remarks directed at the Egyptian opposition: "Our belief says that what you're doing is very great and one of the very important turning points in the history of this nation and region. Your move and victory will change the whole face of our region to the interest of its peoples in general and especially Palestine."
The fall of the Mubarak regime, a long-time enemy of the group, has had special resonance for Hezbollah. In spite of its Shi'ite character, Hezbollah is very popular in predominantly Sunni Egypt for its resistance against Israel and support for the Palestinian cause, as demonstrated by the protests in Egypt and the Sunni-led Arab world in support of Hezbollah during the July 2006 war and the heroic status Nasrallah has enjoyed since.
Amid the chaos that accompanied Mubarak's ouster, Hezbollah managed under murky circumstances to free Muhammad Yusuf Mansour (aka Sami Shehab), a member of the group serving time in an Egyptian prison. Egyptian authorities convicted Mansour along with a host of others on espionage, weapons, and terrorism-related charges in 2010.
Egyptian authorities claimed, among other things, that Mansour was planning attacks on Egyptian soil. While Nasrallah acknowledged Mansour's membership in Hezbollah, he denied that his activities threatened Egypt; instead, Mansour was leading an effort to support the Palestinians in Gaza.
In a masterstroke of political theater that has become a signature of Hezbollah, Mansour appeared in person during the group's annual February 16 commemoration of its deceased leaders in the Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah enjoys tremendous support.
Speaking to jubilant crowds though a video feed broadcast on a large screen television, Nasrallah thanked Egyptians for freeing Mansour and highlighted the fact that the Mubarak's decision to step down on February 11 coincided with the anniversary of the 1979 victory of the Iranian revolution.
Expanding on his observations of the events in Tunisia and Egypt, Nasrallah's televised March 19 speech addressed the wider unrest experienced in Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen: "Our gathering today is to voice our support for our Arab people and their revolutions and sacrifices, especially in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. The value of this solidarity is moral, political, and ethical ... A great victory was achieved in Egypt and Tunisia. Libya entered civil war, and in Bahrain and Yemen the regimes put their own peoples on the brink of civil war."
Nasrallah singled out Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi over the disappearance of Imam Musa Sadr, the Iranian-born founder of the Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniya (AMAL - Lebanese Resistance Detachments) movement and a major figure among Shi'ite in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
Sadr is credited with helping galvanize Lebanon's Shi'ite community to assert themselves in Lebanese politics and society. Sadr went missing under mysterious circumstances along with two others during a visit to Tripoli in 1978 and is widely believed to have been executed by Libya. However, some claim that he is still being held in captivity, a view repeated by Nasrallah amid the current conflict in Libya: "We are looking forward to the day when Sadr can be liberated from this dictatorial tyrant."
Events in Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, have also not been lost on Hezbollah, especially the sectarian dynamics underlying the unrest, where a US and Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy led by King Hamad Ibn Issa al-Khalifa rules over a majority Shi'ite population that is largely underserved and faces widespread discrimination in daily life.
Commenting on the regime's decision to crack down violently on the peaceful demonstrators and Saudi Arabia's decision to send troops to back its ally, Nasrallah declared:
The regime in Bahrain was not threatened and the resistance was peaceful, yet the army was used against it. This is a first. We heard that some arrested opposition leaders had their houses demolished. This is Israeli style ... I ask some in the Arab and Islamic world who are remaining silent about the injustice that our brothers in Bahrain are facing: Why stay silent about these peaceful protests or condemn their movements? Is it because they are Shi'ite? If someone in a country belonged to a certain sect, should he be relieved of his human rights? ... No one asked about the religion or sect of the Palestinian, Egyptian, Tunisian or Libyan people.The push to topple President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen also
drew a response from Nasrallah:
In Yemen there are many complications, but no doubt that we absolutely cannot be silent about the murder and crimes that are occurring. We salute the resistance of the Yemeni people and their commitment to the peacefulness of their movement.
Geopolitical considerations
Rhetoric aside, Hezbollah's support for the rush of opposition movements stems from calculated pragmatism; the course of events that is redefining the Middle East, upending the regional status quo, is shaping up in Hezbollah's favor. As a member of the so-called "Resistance Axis", a bloc composed of Iran, Syria and Hamas that stands in opposition to the US-led order made up of Israel and friendly Arab autocracies such as Saudi Arabia, it is easy to see why Hezbollah (and its allies) gained by the current unrest, a point not lost on Nasrallah: "Israel today is wailing over the loss of its last strategic ally in the region [ie Egypt] after it lost the shah in Iran in 1979 and after it lost to a great degree Turkey due to its aggression on Lebanon and Gaza, its murderous policies and its crimes against the Freedom Fleet [ie the Gaza Freedom Flotilla]."
Hezbollah is frequently cited as a threat by the sitting autocrats in the region, a threat that is often portrayed in sectarian terms: Hezbollah's Shi'ite character and alliance with Iran, in essence, represents a force for instability and radicalism. In reality, however, the threat posed by Hezbollah to the ruling regimes stems from its penchant for criticizing sitting governments and inspiring domestic opposition among those who tend to identify with Hezbollah over their own leaders, many of who are viewed as agents of the United States and Israel.
From its doctrinaire origins as an outpost of the Iranian revolution in the Levant, Hezbollah now boasts multiple, overlapping identities that speak to numerous audiences in Lebanon and beyond. As a political party, organic Lebanese organization and transnational Shi'ite Islamist movement, Hezbollah is at once a defender of all Lebanese - regardless of sect - and Lebanese sovereignty against Israel, an advocate for pan-Arab and Palestinian nationalist causes, and a force for social justice and resistance. This reality frightens the ruling regimes and is likely to be cause for continued concern.
Despite Israel's overwhelming military power, it is widely acknowledged that Hezbollah's impressive showing during the July 2006 war helped it achieve an effective deterrence capacity in relation to Israel. With a reputation for living up to its promises and exceeding expectations on the battlefield, it is also worth considering how the changing regional landscape will impact Hezbollah's strategies in a future war with Israel.
In this context, Nasrallah's suggestion that Hezbollah engage Israel on its own soil, specifically, in the northern Galilee region, warrants a closer look. During his February 16 speech, Nasrallah declared:
The major achievement of the resistance is that it complicated the possibility of Israel occupying Lebanon. Even more, today, Israel is concerned that Hezbollah might liberate Galilee ... I tell the resistance fighters to be prepared for the day when war is imposed on Lebanon. Then, the resistance leadership might ask you to lead the resistance to liberate Galilee.
Nasrallah's bold statement follows a series of threats that hint at the group's intention to dramatically escalate hostilities in any future conflict with Israel, such as its pledge to target Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport and major urban centers in central and southern Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on similar targets in Lebanon: "I say to the Israelis: if you attack Beirut's Rafik Hariri airport we will attack Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv."
Hezbollah has also demonstrated its ability over the years to infiltrate the Israeli security establishment through the successful recruitment of ranking Israeli military and intelligence officers). Given this track record, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Hezbollah will attempt to fight in some capacity in northern Israel in the next confrontation with its archenemy. The symbolism behind such a move would be profound.
While it is unlikely that Egypt will abrogate its commitment to the Camp David Accords in the near future, a major shift in Egyptian foreign policy down the line is not out of the question. Because popular opinion in Egypt and across the Middle East remains strongly opposed to Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian land and the complicity of Arab regimes in this policy, such as the role played by the Mubarak regime and Palestinian Authority during Israel's 2008 invasion of Gaza, the possibility that Egypt will adopt a foreign policy posture that is more reflective of public opinion should not be ruled out.
While it is too early to count Egypt as a member of the "Resistance Axis", even a modest shift in Egyptian foreign policy away from its traditional pro-US and pro-Israel position would bolster Hezbollah in relation to Israel and its other opponents in the region. The weakening of the US-led alliance due to the ongoing protests in friendly autocracies and the simultaneous rise of more representative governments that will cater to public opinion will also continue to play to Hezbollah's advantage.
Conclusion
As the groundswell of domestic pressure continues to spread across the Middle East, Hezbollah's position is poised to improve. At the same time, the latest rumblings of dissent in Syria - a crucial Hezbollah ally - against the ruling Ba'ath regime demonstrates how the contagion of revolution sweeping the Middle East can also come back to haunt the group.
Some reports out of Syria indicate that protesters in Dera'a, a conservative and largely Sunni town located along Syria's southern border with Jordan, chanted anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran slogans alongside calls for political reform. Following in the footsteps of other regimes in the region, Syria has implicated outside agitators in the unrest. Until this point, Hezbollah has - not surprisingly - avoided addressing the developments in its longtime ally. However events play out in Syria, the broad trajectory of political change witnessed in the region to date has so far strengthened Hezbollah's hand.
Note
1. Footage of Al-Manar satellite television programming, as well as transcripts and official statements issued by Hezbollah, is available at the station's official website www.almanar.com.lb.
Chris Zambelis is an author and researcher with Helios Global, Inc, a risk management group based in the Washington, DC area. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of Helios Global, Inc.
(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2011 The Jamestown Foundation.)


Why Najeeb Mikati cannot deliver
By: Sami Moubayed/Special to Gulf News
The Lebanese PM's enthusiasm to please Hezbollah has fizzled out with the upheaval in the Arab world
April 5, 2011
Najeeb Mikati’s candidacy has reportedly won the backing of France and Qatar in addition to Syria.
The honeymoon between incoming Lebanese Prime Minister Najeeb Mikati and the Hezbollah-led March 8 Alliance has either come to an end or has begun its long march into history. When he was appointed Prime Minister last January, Mikati was believed to have secured the strong backing of Hezbollah. In exchange for his nomination, the new premier was believed to have promised to give strategic cabinet posts to Hezbollah's allies in the March 8 Alliance and hammer out a cabinet policy statement that pledged to ‘protect and embrace' the arms of Hezbollah.
It was also believed that he would take immediate action on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), distancing his country politically, legally, and financially from the UN court before it blames members of Hezbollah in the 2005 murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. To date, nearly three months later, none of that has happened, explaining why Hezbollah is becoming impatient — to say the least — with the new prime minister.
Last Tuesday, Mikati met with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. The March 8 Alliance, Nasrallah reminded him, would not join a cabinet that does not include any of its Sunni members. Although Mikati had earmarked five seats for Sunni Muslims in the new government, he was clearly avoiding naming any members of March 8 in order to avoid stirring further tension with his predecessor, Sa'ad Hariri. Hezbollah had explicitly asked him to offer a ministry to Faisal Karami, the son of ex-Prime Minister Omar Karami, but Mikati had refused, claiming that if Karami became minister, three of the five seats would be taken by natives of Tripoli (the Prime Minister himself, incoming Finance Minister Mohammad Al Safadi, and Karami). The notables of Beirut, he noted, would never accept such an imbalance in political representation.
Nasrallah also said that he wanted Mikati to satisfy all the demands of Hezbollah's ally Michel Aoun, vis-à-vis cabinet seats that included the Ministry of Interior, which Aoun wants for his son-in-law, Jibran Bassil. Aoun's demand, no less than 12 out of 15 Christian ministers in a 30-man cabinet, was a red-line that Mikati will not accept. Aoun has been arguing that since he controls the largest Christian bloc in Parliament he is entitled to a larger share of seats than Hariri's Christian allies in March 14. Rather than try and moderate Aoun's demands, Hezbollah has rallied rank-and-file behind him, refusing to endorse anything that is not 100 per cent accepted by Aoun. Mikati insists that Aoun should get no more than 9 ministers in the new government whereas President Michel Sulaiman should get to name the ministers of defence and interior. Under no circumstances would Aoun or his allies accept naming current Interior Minister Ziad Baroud for a new tenure — despite the fact that he has the full backing of the Lebanese president.
Representation
Additionally, Mikati wants a cabinet of 24 ministers, rather than 30. A small cabinet would enable him to deliver as prime minister, where he would chose ministers according to merit, rather than political or sectarian affiliations. Nasrallah, however, is pushing for a government of 30 ministers in order to accommodate Aoun's demands. Mikati also told Nasrallah bluntly that he was ‘not convinced' of the need to give Aoun more representation than he deserves in the new government. Shortly after the Mikati-Nasrallah meeting, the prime minister was visited by a Hezbollah envoy who asked him to form a cabinet within seven to 10 days or make way for somebody who could deliver.
For its part, Hezbollah has asked nothing for itself in the new government, urging Mikati to accommodate instead the demands of its allies, Aoun and Nabih Berri. Mikati, however, an internationally acclaimed businessman, is reluctant to form a cabinet that colours him pro-Hezbollah. According to sources close to Hezbollah, when meeting with US Ambassador to Beirut Maura Connelly, Mikati told her: "Look at me! Do I look like a stooge for Aoun or Hezbollah?" Nasrallah believes that time is running out on the STL, lamenting the fact that they had not relied on Omar Karami to form a cabinet, given that he would have immediately made the desired U-turn on the STL. Mikati, they now believe, was more anti-Hariri than he was pro-Hezbollah whereas Karami was firmly supporting of Hezbollah and would do what it takes to make them happy — regardless of how this was viewed by the international community. The enthusiasm that Mikati had to please Hezbollah back in January seems to have fizzled out. One reason might be the regional upheaval that swept the Arab world since January, which explains why Mikati has been delaying formation — possibly to see how things develop in Syria, which was rocked by internal disturbances. For its part, Hariri's team doesn't think that Mikati will ever form a cabinet. They think that Mikati will either decline formation, or make a unilateral announcement that would surely be drowned in Parliament, by both March 8 and March 14. That way he would keep his position independent yet relieve himself of the burden of cabinet formation, taking into account the fact that the situation has changed tremendously in the region since Hariri's cabinet was brought down in January 2011.
**Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward magazine in Syria.

Egyptian army rejects “Khomeini rule”
April 4, 2011 /Egypt will not be ruled by "another [Ayatollah] Khomeini," the country's military said on Monday, in reference to the cleric who led Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the official MENA news agency reported. "Egypt will not be governed by another Khomeini," the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said after a three-hour meeting with newspaper editors-in-chief and MENA. The military rulers made the comment amid concerns over the increased visibility of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned under the regime of president Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down on February 11 after a popular uprising. Mubarak's departure raised fears in the West of the creation of an Islamist regime in Egypt, where the Brotherhood is the strongest opposition force. The Brotherhood says it is not in favor of a religious state. Mubarak in February transferred his powers to the military, which has committed itself to handing the reins to civilian rule after a parliamentary election due in September.-AFP/NOW Lebanon

Distracted Damascus stalls Lebanon’s new cabinet
Matt Nash, April 4, 2011
With protestors continuing to demand reforms across their country, Syrian authorities are likely too busy to be dedicating much time negotiating on the formation of Lebanon’s next cabinet, analysts told NOW Lebanon. For Rosanna Bou Mounsef, a columnist for the March 14-leaning daily An-Nahar, recent statements by Druze politician Talal Arslan are a clear indication that Damascus is spending most of its time looking inward these days. Arslan is a staunch ally of Syria whose statements are often interpreted as messages from President Bashar al-Assad and those close to him. Last week Arslan’s Lebanese Democratic Party threatened to withhold a confidence vote from any government if there is “any attempt to marginalize [the party’s] position in cabinet representation.” Two days later Arslan slammed Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati and called on him to be “clearer, franker and more transparent.”
Arslan also reiterated a veiled threat against Mikati made by caretaker Energy Minister Gebran Bassil, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, which is reportedly at loggerheads with both Mikati and President Michel Sleiman over the distribution of cabinet portfolios. Like Bassil, Arslan said he does not “yet” regret voting for Mikati to replace Saad Hariri as PM.
“We would not hear Arslan or any of those close to Syria talking about the cabinet, about the forming of the cabinet, like they are now” if Syria were playing a more active role in the process, Bou Mounsef said.
Mikati is widely viewed as having the blessing of both Syria and Saudi Arabia as the next PM, and such threats do not seem to have originated – or been condoned by – Damascus. In fact, Bou Mounsef thinks the Syrians would prefer Lebanon had a government to minimize the number of unstable situations they’re dealing with.
On Monday, Al-Akhbar, quoting unnamed Syrian officials, reported that “Mikati was asked by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a recent phone call [to hurry up in forming the cabinet].”
“If the Syrians were having a say in forming the government, it would already be done,” she added. As it now looks like it will be at least another week before the cabinet is born, Syria is apparently not hard at work acting as a midwife.
Hazem Saghiyeh, a journalist with Al-Hayat, agreed that internal problems are keeping Damascus distracted.
“They are preoccupied with their own affairs,” he said. “I don’t think they have the luxury to give much attention to the Lebanese situation.”
He added that, contrary to Bou Mounsef’s point about Syria wanting a cabinet soon, Damascus may be waiting until unrest calms down at home before re-investing time and effort into negotiations abroad. Under this view, Syria would essentially be turning a blind eye to its allies’ demands for portfolios and vague threats against Mikati, happy to see deadlock persist.
According to press reports, Hezbollah is apparently trying to bridge the gap between Mikati and Aoun, keen to get a cabinet up and working. If Saghiyeh is correct about Syria condoning a continuation of the crisis in Beirut, a strained relationship between the party and Damascus could be in the offing.
Beirut, meanwhile, has been more or less mum on the demonstrations taking place in Syria. Some March 14 officials expressed disappointment with Assad’s March 30 speech responding to the protests, but otherwise members of the alliance, often very vocal critics of Damascus who one might have expected to rally behind the protestors, have not said much.
Rached al-Fayyed, a member of the Future Movement’s politburo, told NOW Lebanon that relative silence reflected caution.
“The situation in Lebanon will be directly affected by the situation in Syria, and the results will affect Lebanon whatever they may be,” he said. “Therefore, no one wants to risk either their political position or [political] vision betting on what the outcome will be, whether positive or negative.”
Saghiyeh said he thought Saudi pressure is also keeping March 14 officials from spouting off on unrest in Syria. Saudi Arabia, a repressive and ultra-conservative monarchy that has witnessed small-scale protests in recent weeks, is terrified of the revolutions and demonstrations for freedom spreading throughout the region. Certainly not best friends of Assad, who is an ally of Saudi nemesis Iran, the kingdom does not want to see another authoritarian domino fall.
Everyone NOW Lebanon interviewed for this article agreed that with Syria distracted, the cabinet formation process in Lebanon is likely to drag on for a while.

Obama’s “non-doctrine” explained
Hussein Ibish, April 5, 2011
US President Barack Obama, explaining his Libya policy last week, resisted the temptation to define a fatuous “doctrine” for international intervention. Instead Obama laid out a set of coherent criteria to justify military action. By avoiding any “Obama doctrine” he also emphasized the flexibility required for deploying what is still unique, but decreasing, American power in a world in dramatic flux.
Obama began by asserting that the president will act without hesitation when the security of the United States is directly threatened, an uncontested axiom of American policy. Obama’s gloss on the deployment of American military power internationally was his focus on the convergence of values and interests. The operative sentence of his speech was: “There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are.” And, he added, “In such cases, we should not be afraid to act.”
Obama’s criteria for considering military action when the security of the United States is not directly threatened involve a fairly subtle interplay between what he presented as “values” and what are agreed to be “interests.” Because he was trying to justify a risky and expensive military operation to an American public generally opposed to intervention in Libya, Obama wisely emphasized the “values” element of the equation. He suggested that as Libyan forces advanced toward the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, he “refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
The White House reportedly anticipated “another Srebrenica,” recalling the massacre in 1995 of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in eastern Bosnia – as United Nations forces stood by powerlessly. No one could have seriously dismissed that prospect given Moammar al-Qaddafi’s own words and deeds as his forces threatened to recapture Benghazi.
However, the “interests” argument was there too, although downplayed. What Obama was trying to communicate was that for the United States, its Arab allies and the international community, the prospect of Benghazi falling and Qaddafi’s reemergence as a vengeful, bloodied, oil-rich and re-empowered menace stalking the region and the globe was simply an unacceptable outcome. The West and the Arabs might be able to live with a prolonged civil war in Libya, and maybe even a stalemate, but not a decisive Qaddafi victory and its consequences, especially given the Libyan leader’s track record.
So, Obama’s speech didn’t simply answer the question: “Why Libya?” It also answered the equally pointed “Why not Ivory Coast or Congo; why not Bahrain, Yemen or Syria?” Why act here, and not elsewhere?
This notion of the confluence of values and interests explains exactly why. American, and indeed universal, values may be affronted in the Ivory Coast and Congo, but fundamental Americans interests are not at stake. American interests in Bahrain – such as its hosting of the Fifth Fleet and apparent Iranian designs on the island kingdom – won’t allow for the overthrow of the royal family, although transition to a constitutional monarchy is undoubtedly desirable.
The situation in Yemen is so volatile and complex it’s almost impossible to imagine how military intervention would advance American interests there. And as for Syria, although regime change might be welcomed in Washington and many other capitals, highly influential Israeli and Saudi voices have warned strongly against the likely alternatives. There are many other examples in which American interests and values simply aren’t converging as in the Libyan case.
In Libya Obama identified this convergence and decided to act. I’ve argued that the hesitation in what was an inevitable intervention has been politically and strategically costly, but Obama powerfully argued that the United States had to act in concert with other states and with international legitimacy. What I still see as hesitation, he suggested was in fact the development of a broad coalition including NATO and Arab forces, and the passage of UN Security Council and Arab League resolutions authorizing the no-fly zone.
Obama’s conditions suggest that under his leadership the United States is not looking for opportunities to act but will be attuned to situations in which action is unavoidable, and inaction more costly or simply unacceptable. He explained these conditions masterfully and persuasively, but explicitly avoided any kind of formulaic “doctrine” that locks the United States into any future interventions.
Most importantly, Obama explicitly recognized that the Libyan action decisively shows the United States standing with Arabs seeking freedom from dictatorship. After all, if it really were about stability and oil, the most logical thing would’ve been to intervene on the side of Qaddafi, who has imposed ruthless stability and provided cheap petroleum. However, this robust intervention in one corner of the developing “Arab Spring” shows Washington clearly making a choice on behalf of dramatic and revolutionary change.
**Hussein Ibish is a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogs at www.Ibishblog.com.

Welcome to Hezbollahland
An excerpt from The Road to Fatima Gate
Between Beirut and Tel Aviv there is . . . this strange dark kingdom.
— Jonathan Spyer

Leena and I pulled up to the last Lebanese army checkpoint before Hezbollah’s territory began.

“Who’s he?” said the soldier in charge. Leena didn’t need a permit to enter the zone, but I, as a foreigner, did. And I didn’t have one.

“He’s a friend,” she said.

“Where’s he from?” the soldier said.

“I’m American,” I said. There was no point in pretending I was anything else. I looked like an American, talked like an American, and carried an American passport. There wasn’t a chance I could convince him I was from South Lebanon.

“Like I said, he is a friend,” Leena said in Arabic with a southern accent that can’t be easily faked. “I’m taking him to my family’s house so I can show him where I come from.”

The soldier nodded and let us pass. So much for needing a permit.

As soon as Leena and I drove away from the checkpoint, we had effectively left Lebanon and arrived somewhere else. Neither government soldiers nor police officers were allowed down there. The Shia-majority cities of Nabatieh and Tyre behind us were within the government’s jurisdiction, but the only authority near the border with Israel was Hezbollah. Tehran had more sovereignty there than Beirut did.

Rapid urban migrations in developing countries are often not pretty, but the rural south appeared settled, moderately prosperous, even tranquil despite all the violence over the years. It was a relief after the impoverished and ramshackle dahiyeh. So many people in the suburbs south of Beirut came to the capital under extraordinary circumstances and left everything behind. Those who remained in the south had their reasons. Maybe they prospered there or couldn’t bear the thought of uprooting themselves. Either way, the south was their home and had been the home of their community for hundreds of years. Though the land was rocky in places and was less suitable for agriculture than the fecund Bekaa Valley, the southerners could still work it, and they could keep the fruits of the labor.

Many single-family homes were large enough to house three generations, and every village and town had sprawling villas. The apartment buildings were simple but looked nothing like the spirit-crushing slum towers in the southern suburbs. Some of South Lebanon’s money had been earned abroad in the Diaspora, and some of it came as aid from Iran’s Islamic Republic, but there was real wealth all the same. None of the south’s Shia villages or towns looked to my eyes like slums.

It was still Hezbollahland, though. The whole place was a gigantic outdoor museum for the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.

Portraits of “martyrs” hung from the sides of electrical poles just as they did in the dahiyeh. Here, though, the portraits were cleaner and appeared to have been installed a little more recently. Posters portraying Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and its current Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were outnumbered only by those featuring Hezbollah’s grinning beturbaned Hassan Nasrallah.

Billboards showed bloody and fiery depictions of mayhem and war accompanied by text in both English and Arabic. On the road beneath the crumbling Beaufort Castle, the story of suicide bomber Haitham Dbouq was told next to his portrait. “Haitham stormed into the convoy — that had 30 occupation troops in its ranks — blowing up his car amidst the vehicles that turned into fireballs and scattered bodies on the ground. Thirty Zionist casualties was the size of the material shock that hit the occupation army; the morale shock was much larger and more dangerous.”

The entire area was strewn with scorched tanks, blasted trucks, and military ordnance carefully placed by Hezbollah in order to best show it off. I saw young children playing on one of the tanks, their tiny legs dangling from the turret. A gigantic cardboard figure of Khomeini smiled down on them.

Funny place, Hezbollahland. It was basically a separatist region that hadn’t declared itself a separatist region. Nasrallah knew well the benefits of existing both alongside and inside the state. Beirut may as well have been the capital of a foreign country, yet he and his deputies held a few seats in its parliament.

They needed that state. Lebanon was Hezbollah’s vast human shield. Israel would have to think long and hard before striking Hezbollah and damaging the country that produced the Beirut Spring and was a respectable ally of the U.S. and Europe. If Hezbollah was recognized internationally as the ruler of its own sovereign state, it would be left naked and exposed to devastating military reprisals while Beirut and Mount Lebanon went their own way and prospered.
Leena wanted to show me the village of Ghajar, a pinpoint on the map where three nations converged and formed the strangest of knots. The northern half of the village was in Lebanon. The southern half was controlled by Israel. All of it once belonged to Syria.

After Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, Ghajar was stranded in a no-man’s-land between Lebanon and Israeli-occupied Syria. The residents couldn’t live suspended in limbo between the two countries forever, so they petitioned the State of Israel and asked to be annexed. They were Syrians — Arabs — not Jews or Israelis, but they would rather live in Syria under Israeli occupation than in Lebanon.
The Lebanese-Syrian border, though, wasn’t marked. Over time, Ghajar expanded northward, without anyone even knowing it, into Lebanon. And in the year 2000, when Israel withdrew from its security zone, the village was thrown into turmoil.

The United Nations wouldn’t certify the Israeli withdrawal unless the northern half of the village was ceded to Lebanon — which, in the real world, meant to Hezbollah.

Ghajar’s residents had been living under Israeli jurisdiction since 1967, and most took Israeli citizenship in 1981. So in 2005 the northern half of Ghajar was populated with Syrians in Lebanon with Israeli ID cards.

That’s where Leena intended to take me, but in hindsight I believe she mistakenly took me to a different village right next to Ghajar called Arab al-Luweiza.

Ghajar had been under Israeli control for decades, but the place Leena showed me was utterly destitute and in worse shape by far than anything else in the area, whether Christian or Shia. Some houses were crumbling boxes made out of cinder blocks. Others were shanties with tin roofs and walls. Barren ground was strewn with rubble and rocks.

A handful of barefoot children dressed in dirty clothes and playing in filthy streets ran up to us when we stepped out of the car. Somehow, they managed to smile.

“What is wrong with this place?” I said to Leena. The conditions were worse than in the dahiyeh. “Who lives here? Are these people Shias?”

Leena wasn’t sure, so she asked one of the boys.

“Alawi!” he said.

The Alawi, or Alawite, sect is a peculiar religious community that makes up around 10 percent of Syria’s population and a tiny percentage of Lebanon’s. Most Alawites live along the Mediterranean coast in Syria and Northern Lebanon, but a few live all the way down in Ghajar. They are descendants of the followers of Muhammad ibn Nusayr, who took them out of mainstream Twelver Shia Islam in the tenth century. Their religion has as much in common with Christianity and Gnosticism as it does with Islam, and both Sunnis and Shias have long considered them “infidels.”

Perhaps the strangest thing about the Alawites was that they were the rulers of Syria. The al-Assad clan was Alawite, as were most of the elites in the Baath Party, the bureaucracy, and the military. Imam Musa Sadr, founder of Amal in Lebanon, struck a deal with Hafez al-Assad in 1974 and issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, somewhat implausibly declaring Alawites part of the Shia community.

Yet the Alawites are not Shias. They’re Alawites. The two communities needed religious cover for their budding political alliance, however, and Sadr’s fatwa gave it to them. The relationship between Hezbollah and Damascus’s Alawite regime, though, was strictly one of convenience. The two felt little or no warmth for each other.

While Hezbollah and Amal were politically aligned with the Alawite government, the Sunnis were not, and Sunnis made up around 70 percent of Syria’s population. The fundamentalists among them had long detested al-Assad’s Baath Party regime, not only because it was secular and oppressive but because its leaders were “heretics.”

Al-Assad supported terrorist groups in his war against Israel for some of the same reasons the Khomeinists did in Iran. As minorities in the region, both were in danger without street cred from the Sunnis.

In 1982, the same year Israel invaded Lebanon and Iran founded the prototype of Hezbollah, Syria’s Sunni Muslim Brotherhood took up arms against Hafez al-Assad’s government in the city of Hama. Al-Assad dispatched the Alawite-dominated military and destroyed most of the old city with air strikes, tanks, and artillery. Rifaat al-Assad, the former president’s younger brother, boasted that the regime killed 38,000 people in a single day. Not once since then have the Muslim Brothers tried to rise up again.
In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman dubbed the senior al-Assad’s rules of engagement “Hama Rules.” They were the Syrian stick. The carrot was al-Assad’s steadfast “resistance” against Israel. No Arab government in the world was as stridently anti-Israel, in both action and rhetoric, as his. There was no better way for a detested minority regime to curry favor with Sunnis in Syria and the larger Arab world than by adopting the anti-Zionist cause as its own.

As “infidels,” Syria’s Alawites didn’t feel they had the legitimacy to force Sunnis to make peace with Israel. That was a risky business even for Sunni leaders, as the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat showed after he signed a treaty
Because most of Syria’s Alawites live along the Mediterranean coast and away from the Sunni heartland, they could, at least theoretically, be separated from Syria into their own Alawite nation. The Middle East would probably be a safer place if they had their own state. They did have their own semiautonomous government under the French Mandate between 1923 and 1937.

“The Alawites refuse to be annexed to Muslim Syria,” Suleiman al-Assad, grandfather of President Bashar al-Assad, wrote in a petition to France. “In Syria, the official religion of the state is Islam, and according to Islam, the Alawites are considered infidels. . . . The spirit of hatred and fanaticism imbedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion. There is no hope that the situation will ever change. Therefore, the abolition of the mandate will expose the minorities in Syria to the dangers of death and annihilation.”

The Alawite state was dissolved back into French Mandate Syria, however, and has been an integral part of the country ever since. Had the Alawites declared and received independence, they might even have been natural allies of Israel for the same reasons the Middle East’s Christians and Kurds are. After all, when the Alawites of Ghajar were given a choice to live under a Lebanese or an Israeli government, they chose Israel’s. And they made that choice when Lebanon was considered the Switzerland of the Middle East, years before it descended into chaos and horror and war. Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights freed them from tyrannical Syrian rule, and it freed them from the Sunni demand to resist the Zionists.

The Alawites on the north side of Ghajar, however, were severed from their adopted country and abandoned to Hezbollahland, even though they were Israeli citizens and had no connection to Lebanon.

They were cut off from Jerusalem, and they were cut off from Damascus. They were even cut off from Beirut. In 1967 they found themselves in a no-man’s-land between Israel and Syria, and in 2000 they found themselves mired in Hezbollahland between Israel and Lebanon proper. Meanwhile, the village was Nasrallah’s flash point of choice. Hezbollah fighters liked to pick fights with the Israelis by firing from the northern side of the village into the southern half and bringing reprisals down on everyone’s head.

The people of Ghajar weren’t the only ones who lived right on the border. The Lebanese village of Kfar Kila and the small Israeli town of Metula were nearly built on top of each other. The first time I saw Metula from the Lebanese side, I couldn’t even grasp what I was looking at.

“That village is in Israel,” Leena said and stopped the car next to a field.

I scanned the tops of the hills for a settlement somewhere off in the distance, but I couldn’t see what she was talking about. “What village?” I said.

“That village right there,” she said, and pointed at a row of houses in front of us.

“Those houses right there?” I said. They were only a few hundred feet from where we were parked. “Aren’t they in Lebanon?”

“Look closer,” she said. “See the fence?”

There it was. The fence along the border ran just a few dozen feet behind the houses as though it demarcated a property line, not an international boundary. I could have stepped out of the car, walked right up to it, and had a conversation in a normal tone of voice with an Israeli family hanging out in the yard.

Hezbollah guerrillas were dug into the hills and holed up behind us in Kfar Kila’s houses.

I tried to imagine how I would feel as an American if the Taliban controlled territory thirty or forty feet from my house.
This is nuts,” I said, and stepped out of the car to snap pictures.

“The border is not even guarded.”

“The fence is electric,” Leena said. “It won’t shock you, but it will alert the Israelis, and they’ll come out to investigate. So don’t touch it.”

“Why on earth would any Israelis want to live so close to Hezbollah?” I wondered out loud.
Unlike in Ghajar, the residents of Metula and Kfar Kila weren’t divided artificially or by accident. They were divided by ethnicity, by religion, by nationality, and by war. They lived just a few minutes’ walking distance apart, but most of the time they managed to do so without killing each other.

Americans at the time were fighting counterinsurgencies on the other side of the world in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Israelis fought counterinsurgencies against the PLO and Hezbollah in Lebanon, they did so literally in their backyard. I could have walked up to the fence and thrown a hand grenade into an Israeli’s kitchen window. No one would have been able to stop me. If Hezbollah fighters decided to shoot Jews in Metula, they wouldn’t miss.

Yet the border was quiet.

“This is not what I expected,” I said.

“Everyone who sees this is surprised,” Leena said. “That’s why I like bringing foreign journalists down here.”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to make of it, though.

Hezbollah had launched attacks against Israel several times since the IDF left, often in and around Ghajar. Yet most of the time, the border was strangely and eerily quiet. Otherwise, Metula would have been destroyed or abandoned.

It was impossible to mistake calm for peace, though, which is what made the border unsettling.

“I want to wave hello to someone in Israel,” I said, though I knew it was illegal.

“Don’t,” Leena said. “I’m responsible for you, and I could get in serious trouble.”

Israel still had friends in South Lebanon who passed on information, including actionable intelligence, about Hezbollah. Hezbollah knew it, too, which is why it would not even tolerate hand signals to Israelis. I knew better than to wave and bring down the wrath of a militia on my head and Leena’s, but I wished I could defuse the tension on the border by an iota, and I wanted Leena to know it.

She and I arrived during a lull in a storm that had been raging for decades. The border may have been calm at that moment, but the calm was so tense I could feel it. The Lebanese side was saturated with so much violent Hezbollah propaganda that I doubted very seriously that the calm was sustainable.

The rest of what Leena showed me that day seemed to confirm that.

She drove us into Kfar Kila and parked next to the fence, where we could see some of Hezbollah’s outdoor museum pieces — an Israeli truck up on blocks that Hezbollah destroyed with an antitank mine, a rocket launcher pointing at Israel beneath camouflage netting, and two stone monuments representing the American “Great Satan” and the Israeli “Little Satan.” I also saw two kinds of donation boxes where people could give money to Hezbollah for either charity or “resistance” operations.

Just beyond the edge of the village was one of the world’s strangest tourist attractions.

Fatima Gate had been the crossing point between Israel and Lebanon before 2000, when the border was open. The gate itself was mere feet on the Israeli side. It was wrapped in cyclone fencing two stories high, the kind you see behind home plate on a baseball diamond.

Visitors from all over the Arab world drove down there from Beirut to throw rocks at Israel. Dozens of fist-sized stones were stuck in the fencing.

Thousands of Lebanese people had passed through that gate when the border was open. Those with security clearance were allowed into Israel to work and play. At that time, the border might have appeared almost normal, but only because Israel controlled both sides. If I had felt like being provocative, I might have asked residents of Kfar Kila what they thought the border region would have been like had Hezbollah, rather than Israel, controlled both sides. South Lebanon might have been sort of okay, but Metula, I thought, would not have fared very well.
At least the Israeli homes on the other side of Fatima Gate were out of rock-throwing range. They were not, however, outside rifle, mortar, and rocket range. Living in a house so close to South Lebanon in 2005 was like living on a seasonal floodplain or atop a tectonic fault. The false peace couldn’t hold. How could it hold?

Hezbollah’s hatred of Jews and Israelis was white-hot and total. It was difficult, if not impossible, for Westerners like me to wrap our minds around it.
It must have felt the same way to some of the South Lebanese.

Once in a while, those who lived at the edge of Kfar Kila could look out their front windows and see the same soldiers who had patrolled their own streets driving around in armored trucks. Israeli soldiers didn’t pick fights by randomly firing across the border, as Hezbollah sometimes did, but they could shoot back when provoked, and they could shoot back with much greater firepower. The place was a powder keg no matter which side you lived on.

“A guy from Hezbollah TV came down here to Fatima Gate once,” Leena said, “and some Israelis having a picnic on the other side recognized him. ‘Hey!’ they said. ‘You’re that guy from Hezbollah! What’s up?’ He was furious. He wanted to say something, but no one here is allowed to talk to Israelis. So he growled at them.”

She smiled. “He just clenched his teeth and went, ‘Grr.’”

I laughed.

“It’s absurd, isn’t it?” she said.

Even more absurd was the tomb of the disputed dead man on top of a nearby hill.

The Lebanese said Sheik Abbad was buried there. The Israelis said, No, the tomb belongs to Rabbi Ashi. I didn’t know who was right, nor did I care. Neither did anyone else who wasn’t Lebanese or Israeli. The dead man, whoever he was, was buried exactly — precisely — on the border between the two countries. The United Nations arm-twisted Israel and Lebanon into painting a blue line lengthwise down the tomb’s center. One side of the man’s body lay in Israel, and the other side lay in Lebanon.

Hezbollah erected a billboard next to him that faced south and taunted Israelis with horrific images of violence and war — dead bodies gunned down in a street, a soldier with skin missing on one side of his face holding a rocket launcher, and a Hezbollah militiaman holding up the severed head of an Israeli man by his hair. Underneath these gruesome photographs was text written in Hebrew referring to Israelis who had been captured and never returned: “Sharon don’t forget, your soldiers are still in Lebanon.”

I felt embarrassed for Lebanon that this was what Israelis saw when they looked north. What on earth must they have thought when their eyes lit upon that barbarous billboard?

Of all the cities in the world I could have relocated to, I chose Beirut, partly because I liked it, but mostly because it was the capital of the only country in the whole Middle East that had freed itself from the great Arab prison. Damascus was a dungeon, Baghdad was on fire, Cairo was choking with slums, and Dubai was a mall. Beirut was the light. From Israeli soil, however, Lebanon must have looked like Somalia.

From Lebanese soil, Israel looked like a superpower. A gigantic listening post festooned with radars, cameras, and other sophisticated surveillance equipment towered over the Israeli side of the disputed tomb. Hezbollah guerrillas hunkered down in a bunker just a few yards away, their yellow and green flag snapping defiantly from the roof. The ruins of a Hezbollah listening post lay in the shadow of Israel’s, but it was comically small and had been blown up years before.

Leena stood a few dozen feet from me, lost in her own thoughts and memories. She looked through the fence into Israel with what I can only describe as a thousand-yard stare.

I slowly approached.

“How does looking across the border make you feel?” I said.

She thought about my question for a long time before answering.

“Sad,” she finally said. “It makes me feel sad.”

“What should be done?” I asked.

We need a peace treaty,” she said. “And an open border. Think about what that would do for the economies of both countries.”

“Is there any chance,” I said, “that that’s even possible?”

She thought long and hard about that question, too.

“No,” she finally said. Her eyes looked fixed on something I couldn’t see. “There has been too much blood.”
I stepped away from her and stood directly in front of Israel’s listening post. The structure itself was no more than twelve feet in front of me. There were a few rooms at the base of the tower, and I heard, but did not see, Israelis walking around and talking inside.

They would have heard me, too, had I said anything. Of course they were watching me. They probably talked about me since I was standing right there. They almost certainly photographed me and added my face to their files.

I saw more rocks stuck in the fencing and wire and had to wonder: What kind of moron stands within feet of an Israeli military post and throws rocks at it? A suicide bomber standing where I stood could easily kill everyone in there. It would only take a second or two to pull out a handgun and start shooting or to toss a grenade. I didn’t feel comfortable even putting my hands where the watchful Israelis couldn’t see them, let alone hurling something at them all of a sudden. Apparently, though, I could have thrown rocks without starting a cross-border incident, because plenty of people had already done it.

I didn’t go to the border to throw rocks at a country. I went there to see and to learn. I wanted to wave hello and send a few good vibes across the violent frontier. If love makes the world go ’round, hate makes it burn. I would have waved to the Lebanese if I had been on the Israeli side, but I didn’t dare wave from Hezbollah’s side. My wonderful guide, who was responsible for my behavior, could have been punished for treason.

— Michael Totten is author of the new book The Road to Fatima Gate, from which this is excerpt