For Immediate Release Lebanon

LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
July 29/07

Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 13,24-30. He proposed another parable to them. "The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

Openions
Turkey's AK victory shows that Islamism and democracy can be reconciled. July 29/07
Bloodied but unbowed-Al-Ahram Weekly. 29/07
Leaving Iraq will require great care.By David Ignatius. July 29/07
'A circle of madness'.Guardian Unlimited. July 29/07

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for July 29/07
German Diplomats: Aoun Motivated by Personal Ambition-Naharnet
Israeli Soldier held by Hizbullah Dies-Naharnet
No Breakthrough in Kouchner's Beirut Mission-Naharnet
France pursues Lebanon diplomacy.BBC News
French foreign minister holds talks with Lebanon's rival leaders ...International Herald Tribune
US Acts Against Groups Aiding Hezbollah.Guardian Unlimited
Woman charged with working for Hezbollah.Ha'aretz
Lebanese Should Target Hezbollah.Wheeling Intelligencer
Hezbollah has completely rearmed.Cleveland Jewish News
Hot in Tehran.National Review Online
Kouchner arrives in Beirut to press on with dialogue.Daily Star
Aoun gives all clear for Metn battle-Daily Star
Army seizes command bunker-Daily Star
US delays plans to build new embassy in Baabda-Daily Star
Army troops remain resolute despite heavy death toll-Daily Star
Israel's navy chief resigns over war failures-Daily Star
Israeli warplanes violate airspace-Daily Star
Lebanese beaches 'still very toxic' after oil spill-Daily Star

Israeli Soldier held by Hizbullah Dies
Naharnet: One of the two Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah for more than a year has died and the other is still alive the daily newspaper an-Nahar reported Saturday.
An-Nahar quoted unnamed German diplomatic sources as saying officials in Berlin tried to obtain from Free Patriotic Movement leader Michael Aoun "some information" about the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah operatives in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006 which sparked a 34-day devastating war with Israel. "Aoun refused to get involved in this issue. However, security agencies there understood that one of the two prisoners is still alive and the second had passed away," the report said without further elaboration. Aoun is allied with Hizbullah, which leads a campaign backed by Syria and Iran against Premier Fouad Saniora's majority government. The two Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah are Ehud Goldwaser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26. Hizbullah had said it was prepared to swap them for Lebanese and Arab prisoners held by Israel. Beirut, 28 Jul 07, 08:44

No Breakthrough in Kouchner's Beirut Mission
Naharnet: No breakthrough was reported Saturday in French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's delicate mission aimed at initiating dialogue between leaders of the feuding Lebanese factions. Kouchner held separate talks with Premier Fouad Saniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri shortly after his arrival in Beirut Friday, but no announcement was made on any agreement to resume dialogue between Lebanese leaders. The daily an-Nahar said Kouchner sought to arrange a gathering of Lebanese leaders at a lunch or dinner hosted at the residence of France's ambassador to Beirut, but the effort "failed to crystallize."An-Nahar's vague phrasing appeared to mean that the French chief diplomat's effort to launch a second round of intra-Lebanese dialogue in Beirut did not strike any success, yet.
Kouchner was hoping to arrange a meeting of "first-row" Lebanese leaders in Beirut after the dialogue hosted by France in Paris earlier this month for "second-row" officials which did not produce concrete results. An-Nahar quoted unnamed government sources as saying Kouchner's mission is not "a French initiative, but rather a path that would take him to Cairo Sunday" for talks with his Egyptian and Saudi counterparts as well as Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa.
Sources close to Berri said his talks with Koucner were "positive" and stressed on the need to resume intra-Lebanese talks.
Upon arriving at Beirut airport, Kouchner said his two-day visit was aimed at encouraging dialogue to end the right-month power struggle between the Saniora majority government and the Hizbullah-led opposition. "There is little time left for this dialogue to take place," Kouchner said before meeting Saniora. "My trip here is but one stage (in the negotiations) and there will be others."
Sources were quoted by newspapers Saturday as predicting that Koucner might resume his mission in Lebanon after the by-elections set for Aug. Five.
Following the talks with Saniora, Koucheran said: "we underlined the need to create confidence among Lebanon's communities." "We affirmed that the solution was in the hands of the Lebanese, and that I have not got a magical plan to bring an end to the crisis." Kouchner said that while he is in Lebanon he hopes to meet with all those figures who traveled to France two weeks ago for an initial round of talks. Experts and political observers said there is little likelihood of a breakthrough, given that each side is refusing to budge. "I think he might be able to get them to sit down and talk to each other, but I don't see them agreeing on a national unity government before the presidential elections and I don't see them agreeing on a president," said Paul Salem, head of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, a Beirut-based think tank.
"So I don't think his mission at this time will succeed," he told Agence France Presse.
Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh said this week's unsuccessful visit to Beirut by French envoy Jean-Claude Cousseran to pave the way for Kouchner had tempered Paris' expectations. "I think France has reduced its ambition as far as resolving the crisis and Kouchner's visit marks but a step in the negotiations rather than a final one," Hamadeh told AFP.At the Carnegie centre, Salem said he believed the major stumbling block to France's diplomatic efforts was the United States on the one hand and Syria on the other. "The U.S. does not want to accommodate Hizbullah, Syria or Iran in Lebanon," he said. "And Syria does not want to accommodate the ruling majority or the United States in Lebanon."
Salem said he believed all players would wait until the last moment before reaching a compromise that would allow the presidential elections to take place.
That would avoid a dangerous power vacuum or even the creation of two rival governments that would plunge the country into further chaos, he said.
"If there is going to be a deal it's going to be at the last minute," Salem said. "Because like a poker game, you don't show your cards early. You show them at the very end -- and we're not there yet."(Naharnet-AFP) Beirut, 28 Jul 07, 08:09

Aoun gives all clear for Metn battle
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Rejecting initiatives for consensus, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader Michel Aoun on Friday gave the green light for a pitched electoral battle in the Metn region. "We are determined to stand for the by-election in Metn, unless constitutional and behavioral reforms are undertaken by the ruling coalition," Aoun said to a delegation of Metn residents visiting him in Rabieh. Aoun accused the State Shura Council and Christians aligned with the March 14 Forces, including Metn candidate and former President Amin Gemayel, of being "employees of the Hariri family and tools for marginalizing Christians even more." Gemayel, FPM Metn candidate Camille Khoury and independent Joseph Mansour Asmar are contesting the empty seat of Gemayel's assassinated son, Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel.
Aoun said if the State Shura Council rejected the FPM motion contesting the call for by-elections by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government, "we will not surrender and will not comply with unfair decisions and will leave to the Metn people the final decision."
Media reports Thursday said efforts were under way to have the State Shura Council approve the FPM motion to avoid a heated campaign that some fear could lead to deeper divisions on the Christian political scene. The council last week rejected a motion contesting the call for by-elections advanced by FPM supporter Tony Orian. "The Metn will be the best place to vanquish political bribery, as well as corruption, and liberate the Lebanese from oppression," said Aoun.
The FPM leader arrived in Beirut late Thursday after a three-day visit to Germany.
Aoun reiterated that the Metn by-election was not a "competition over a parliamentary seat, but rather a battle against the violation of the Constitution."
Aoun said if Gemayel wanted to win the confidence of Metn voters, "he ought to reconsider his political stands refused by the majority of Metn people."
The FPM set terms for reaching a compromise on the Metn by-election, including preserving the powers of the president, preventing the marginalization of Christians and forming a national-unity government.
The retired general denounced attempts to portray the Metn by-election as a means to divide Christians and described such attempts as "foolish."
"Could there be any democracy without diversity of opinion? Has diversity of opinion become such a dangerous issue?" Aoun asked.
Speaking during an interview on Al-Arabiyya satellite news network Friday, Gemayel said he was still ready to reconcile with Aoun "to reach a consensus about the by-election."Gemayel said he was not afraid that the Metn people would deceive him, "knowing that the Gemayel family has long fought for the rights and independence of Lebanon and has offered a lot of martyrs to the Lebanese cause."
"I presented my candidacy for the Metn by-election so as to preserve and pursue all the beliefs my son Pierre fought for," Gemayel said. Commenting on by-elections planned for August 5, US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman said he hoped the poll would be a "democratic competition." "Elections are a sign of democracy, and we support all democratic manifestations," Feltman said after a meeting with Beirut Maronite Archbishop Boulos Matar on Friday.
Matar and other Maronite bishops have led initiatives to find a compromise concerning the Metn by-election. Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir has expressed concerns that the by-election would contribute to widening the gap among Christians. Media reports on Friday predicted that Sfeir's Sunday sermon would severely chastise the feuding parties.March 14 Forces figures reiterated their support for Gemayel's candidacy on Friday.
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea also repeated his call to find a consensus in the Metn by-election. "If compromise is not reached, we fully support Amin Gemayel," Geagea said during a news conference. MP Boutros Harb expressed his support for the former president and for "all the political positions and heritage that Gemayel represents." "It is crucial that Pierre Gemayel's assassins won't be given the chance to thrive," Harb said after a meeting with Gemayel.

German Diplomats: Aoun Motivated by Personal Ambition
Naharnet: German officials have tried in talks with Free Patriotic Movement leader Michael Aoun to promote calm and entente between the various Lebanese factions, the daily an-Nahar reported Saturday. Quoting unnamed German diplomatic sources, the report said Berlin officials "pointed to the dangers facing Lebanon" during their talks with Aoun earlier this week. But they concluded that FPM leader remains motivated by "personal ambition," the report added without further elaboration. Beirut, 28 Jul 07, 12:02

Hariri Country House Attacked
Naharnet: Unidentified assailants broke into a country house owned by ex-Premier Rafik Hariri in south Lebanon in the second such attack against property owned by anti-Syrian figures this year, police reported Saturday. A Police report said unidentified assailants broke into the Hariri country house in the Zahrani's province village of Qaaqaaiet Snawbar Friday and damaged furniture, lights and other house holds. Spots of blood were fond in the kitchen, the police report said.
An investigation was launched into the assault, the report added without further elaboration.A country house in the nearby village of Kharayeb owned by Beirut mayor Abdul Monem al-Arais, a pro-Hairi official, also was attacked by unidentified assailants nearly three months ago. The culprits remain unknown. Hariri's son and political heir, MP Saad Hariri, said the attack on the country house is "a message directed to us and we will respond by determination on pursuing with the martyr's march and through democratic practices." Beirut, 28 Jul 07, 10:03

Turkey's AK victory shows that Islamism and democracy can be reconciled
By The Daily Star
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Editorial
There are significant lessons to be gleaned from the overwhelming victory of the "mildly Islamist" AK party in Turkey's early parliamentary elections for Muslim political parties in the region, neighboring regimes, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's skittish Western allies alike. The election is evidence that democracy can be accommodated in an Islamic political platform just as easily as a secular one, and Muslim parties can operate effectively in the government when given the chance. Erdogan proved this week it is a leader's policies, not political rhetoric, that determine the government's popular legitimacy. After months of rumblings about possible military intervention, voters chose the Constitution, rather than the Turkish military, to keep whatever Islamist agenda Erdogan may or may not harbor in check.
Turnout reached 85 percent on Monday, with support for AK cutting across religious and ethnic lines, because Turkish voters wanted to reward Erdogan's policies, not because they were frustrated with the hollow promises of the secular status-quo - as has arguably been the case with the electoral victories of other Islamist parties in the Middle East, such as Hamas. Such a high voter turnout would spell election fraud in America's so-called "moderate" ally countries like Egypt, but Erdogan earned his constituents' loyalty through good governance, even-keeled development strategies, and consensus-based policy making rather than through coercion and political exclusion poorly disguised behind the rhetoric of democracy.
Totalitarian regimes should take note that integrating Muslim parties into the government can have a moderating influence on an Islamist agenda, whereas pushing them to the periphery of electoral politics has proven to be a catalyst for radicalization. Western allies, particularly those in the EU club, would also be well-served by acknowledging Erdogan's many concessions over the years by easing Turkey's path to membership. The prime minister will be under pressure from the conservative core of the AK to fast-track issues that have been sidelined during his first term since they challenge Turkey's secular foundations, such as lifting the ban on veils in public places. Alienating Erdogan at a time when popular opinion is turning against EU membership could be a catalyst for the AK's radicalization at the macro-level. As the link between the Caspian Sea and Europe, Turkey could be a valuable ally geographically, strategically, and ideologically, and, as the elections have shown, bridge the widening gap between the secular West and the Muslim Middle East. Turkey's political field offers much-needed proof in the West and the Muslim world that Islamism and democracy can be reconciled. If Erdogan's pragmatism is not recognized by the West it could push Turkey and Islamist groups elsewhere toward less conciliatory stances.

Bloodied but unbowed
A year after Israel's war to destroy Hizbullah, resistance to US policy in the region is even stronger, Lucy Fielder reports
Israel's failure to weaken Hizbullah was never clearer than this week. As the Shia guerrilla group geared up to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its "Divine Victory" against the Jewish state, Secretary-General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah announced that its capabilities were as strong as ever and met with the president of Iran, the main backer of the group. Hizbullah's other key ally, Syria, also showed further signs of coming in from the cold.
In a two-part interview with Al-Jazeera, Nasrallah gave the clearest affirmation since the war ended on 14 August last year that Hizbullah had fully rearmed. "In July and August 2006, there wasn't a place in occupied Palestine that the rockets of the resistance could not reach, be it Tel Aviv or other cities. We could do that now. No problem," he said.
Lebanese security sources have said Hizbullah's rocket arsenal was replenished after the group fired about 4,000 of them last summer and that Iran had bolstered its anti-aircraft and anti- tank defences with missile supplies.
In a lengthy description of military tactics last summer, Nasrallah said Syria had warned Israel through mediators during the war that if its forces entered the Lebanese Arqoub region, close to Damascus, it would engage in battle, even on Lebanese territory.
"The Israelis took this message seriously, no ground advance took place in that [area] and not a single Israeli soldier advanced there," he said. About 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed during the 34-day war.
Nasrallah met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Damascus on 19 July. Although the talks were behind closed doors, the overall message was that international efforts to isolate the Jebhat Al-Mumanaa "resistance front" against US plans in the region -- comprising Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas -- have so far failed. Ahmadinejad also met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal during his one-day visit, as well as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
"This meeting consecrated the relationship between all members of the Jebhat Al-Mumanaa -- Ahmadinejad meets Nasrallah and Hamas in Damascus -- how much clearer can you get?" said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the Carnegie Endowment's Beirut-based Middle East Centre. "And the meeting was timely because all these feelers have been sent out regarding peace between Israel and Syria."
Israel has responded to Syrian peace overtures with demands that Iranian-Syrian ties be cut first. Israel has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and the two countries came close to a peace agreement in 2000. Syria, for its part, has sought assurances that Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights before talks could start. Each side has rejected the other's conditions.
In a further hint that Iran's isolation is easing, a second round of ambassador-level Iranian-US talks concerning security in Iraq also started in Baghdad this week.
However, Saad-Ghorayeb said the failure of the US to undermine its foes in the region was not necessarily good news for its opponents in Lebanon. "When the US is weakened in the region it starts pushing for and investing in progress in Lebanon and Palestine -- they've become showcases," she said.
Hizbullah's vaunted capacity to defend against an Israeli attack is of questionable use on the internal battlefield, where the opposition it leads and the pro-Western government have locked horns for the past eight months. After "ice- breaking" talks at the senior representative rather than leadership level in Saint Cloud, outside Paris, two weeks ago, both sides await a renewed dialogue. But neither is backing down on its demands.
For the opposition, a national unity government giving popular Christian leader Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement a "blocking third" of cabinet seats is paramount. For the ruling parliamentary majority, a presidential election due in September must come first. The ruling "14th March" movement has threatened to elect a president by a simple majority instead of the two- thirds of MPs required to choose a head of state. But outcry even among its own ranks has made this option look increasingly unlikely.
Lahoud's term was extended by three years in September 2004 under Syrian pressure, which required a constitutional amendment and galvanised opposition to Damascus's post-war domination of its smaller neighbour.
Cautious hopes are pinned on the visit of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to Lebanon on 28 July. Kouchner's envoy, Jean- Claude Cousseran, visited Beirut for the second time this week to meet politicians from both sides and try to kick-start a dialogue. Kouchner's positive approach to Damascus over the past week appears to be a further sign of France's departure from the policy of the US, as well as that of President Nicolas Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, a close friend of assassinated the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Al-Hariri. Cousseran headed to Syria last week, the first visit by a senior French official since the 2005 killing plunged Lebanon into crisis and froze Syrian-French relations.
Kouchner told reporters Syria's help in setting up the Saint Cloud meeting had paved the way for Cousseran's trip. "A certain number of obstacles disappeared because Syrian wanted them to," he said. "We sent a first envoy to hold talks with the Syrian government because it seemed to us to be a good sign on the path towards improved relations."
Al-Hayat, the London-based Arab newspaper, has reported that Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa may accompany Kouchner to Lebanon. All stops, it seems, will be pulled out to get parliamentarians to agree on a presidential candidate and avert a power vacuum in September.
Another predicted flash-point before the election is the 5 August by-election for two seats in the Christian Metn region in the mountains north of Beirut and mainly Sunni Beirut. Both are to replace assassinated "14th March" MPs: Metn's Pierre Gemayel was assassinated last November; a car-bomb killed Beirut's Walid Eido last month.
A Saad Hariri loyalist is expected to prevail in Beirut, but Metn, a strong-hold of Aoun, is expected to remain heated because the Christians are the only major sect in Lebanon split between the "14th March" and the opposition. The former president, Amin Gemayel threw his hat in the ring this week. Although Aoun contests the legitimacy of the elections -- which are to proceed without the president's approval -- his Free Patriotic Movement has announced it will challenge Gemayel.

Leaving Iraq will require great care
By David Ignatius
Daily Star staff
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Try to imagine what was running through the mind of Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, as he sat across the negotiating table from his American counterpart, Ryan Crocker, last week. While the US diplomat delivered his stern warning against Iranian meddling in Iraq, Qomi must have wondered: Why should I listen to this guy? Congress is going to start pulling US troops out soon, no matter what he says.
That's the difficulty for Crocker and General David Petraeus as they try to manage a stable transition in Iraq while Congress chants ever more loudly: "Troops Out! Troops Out!" It's hard for anyone to take American power seriously when prominent members of Congress are declaring the war already lost.
This is a moment when America would be better served by a parliamentary system. The Bush administration would have lost a vote of "no confidence" after last November's congressional elections, and the Democrats would now have responsibility for overseeing the tricky process of extracting American forces from Iraq without doing even more damage. Iraq would be the country's war again, rather than George W. Bush's.
But we go to war with the democracy we've got, with all its intrinsic impatience. That's a lesson retired Air Force General Chuck Boyd tried to impart to a group of newly minted brigadier generals last week. America has never won a war that lasted more than four years, he reminded them, with the exception of the Revolutionary War when we were the insurgents and it was Britain that tired of the faraway struggle.
Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes the US uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars. Petraeus likes to observe that it takes, on average, at least nine years to prevail in such a war. If that measure is correct, the general must know that there's little chance that a frustrated and angry American public will grant him enough time for success. So the question is: How to extricate ourselves in a way that minimizes the damage to the US, its allies and Iraq?
A good start would be for Washington partisans to take a deep breath and lower the volume, so that the process of talking and fighting that must accompany a gradual US withdrawal can work. Some members of Congress argue that pressure for an American troop withdrawal will convince the Iraqis to put aside their sectarian agendas, but the opposite is more likely to be true.
Try for a moment to put yourself in the place of Iraq's Shiite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr. The American representatives in Baghdad, Crocker and Petraeus, keep calling on him to disarm his Mehdi Army militia and defuse Iraq's sectarian war. But Sadr can read the stories coming out of Washington. He sees the daily clamor for American troops to come home, and he knows that in the brutal reality of Iraq, this is the time to be stockpiling weapons for his militia, not disbanding it.
Even the good news that people have been touting in Iraq - the new willingness of Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province to ally with the US against Al-Qaeda - is in part a warm-up for the civil war that's coming. The Sunni leaders are working with the Americans so that they, too, can stockpile arms for the coming civil war. We are, in effect, arming both sides for this sectarian battle. And not for the first time, either - recall US military support to both Iraq and Iran during their brutal war in the 1980s.
Extricating the US safely from Iraq will be difficult under the best of circumstances. But it will be impossible if the necessary bargaining takes place against a backdrop of continual congressional demands for a faster withdrawal. In that situation, the Qomis and Sadrs will take the admonitions from Crocker and Petraeus as just so much hot air - and a bad situation will get even worse. Why should they listen to us today if we will be gone tomorrow?
The most sensible comment I heard on Iraq in the past week came from one of the Democratic presidential candidates - indeed, from the one with the strongest anti-war credentials, Senator Barack Obama: "I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."
Obama is right and so, for that matter, is Bush when he says much the same thing. The United States is on its way out of Iraq, but it matters powerfully how we disengage - most of all to Democrats, who at this point seem likely to inherit the responsibility for America's security 18 months from now.
Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is Published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

'A circle of madness'
Lebanese author Elias Khoury gives voice to refugees and dissolves boundaries through fiction. One year after the 33-day war, he feels his country is hurtling towards chaos again
Maya Jaggi
Saturday July 28, 2007
The Guardian
It was Elias Khoury's birthday when Israel's 33-day war with Lebanon began on July 12 last year. "I forgot my birthday at that moment," he says. His home in east Beirut soon shook with the bombardment of the city's southern suburbs less than a mile away, bringing echoes of the invasion by US marines during the 1958 Lebanese civil war, when Khoury was 10. "I've never felt I was living in something stable," he says. "You're not just a witness, but a possible victim."
He worked with volunteers to help refugees, and later travelled to the Israeli border, to witness villages and towns in southern Lebanon reduced to rubble. Recalling the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the 18-year occupation of south Lebanon, he says: "I felt I was living in the present and the past at the same time. It was as if we're in a circle of madness, and maybe history teaches nothing. Human beings are ready to repeat the same errors."
One year on, he fears Lebanon is hurtling towards renewed chaos. Clashes between the Lebanese army and jihadist militants in the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Barad in the north have brought the worst internal strife since the civil war of 1975-90. This has been accompanied by bomb blasts and the June 13 car bombing of MP Walid Eido, the seventh figure critical of Syrian interference to be killed since the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. "There's a feeling that everything can collapse at any moment," Khoury says. "We have no more control over the country. We're on the edge of a huge regional explosion."
Khoury may be well placed to assess the aspirations and tensions among Palestinians in Lebanon's 12 camps, who remain "in closed ghettos, separated from Lebanese society". As a young Lebanese at the Palestine Research Centre in Beirut in the 1970s, he spent years gathering from refugees their personal histories of the mass expulsions that attended the creation of Israel. He felt the stories should be given to an Arab Tolstoy, and imagined himself in the role ("everybody laughed"), but says, "I never dared write it then because I didn't know how."
Many years later, he wove the myriad tales into his epic novel Gate of the Sun, the most comprehensive fictional treatment of the Palestinian nakbah, or "catastrophe", of 1948. Published in Arabic as Bab El Shams in 1998, it won the Palestine prize and was made into a five-hour feature film in 2003 by director Yousry Nasrallah, as well as a play staged in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The English version by Humphrey Davies won the inaugural Banipal prize for Arabic literary translation last year.
Edward Said saw Khoury as a "brilliant figure", an "artist giving voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities". Aged 59, he has written a dozen novels, half of them translated into English, while working as a critic and journalist in Beirut, where he has been editor-in-chief of the cultural supplement of An-Nahar daily newspaper since 1992. Six years ago, he became global distinguished professor at New York University, shuttling from Beirut each spring to teach Arabic and comparative literature.
Khoury says his aim in Gate of the Sun was to write a great love story. As Dr Khaleel, a paramedic in the makeshift Galilee hospital in Beirut's Shatila refugee camp, keeps vigil by the bedside of Yunis, a comatose Palestinian resistance fighter of his father's generation, he tells stories from the fighter's life, and his own, like a Sheherazade trying to stave off death. Soon after 1948, when the Lebanon-Israel border was still porous, Yunis would meet his wife Naheeleh in the cave in Galilee that gives the novel its title. Along with everyday tales of flight and dispossession, the book traces the enmeshed histories of Lebanon and Palestine, from the 1930s to the 1990s, centring on the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila camps.
Khoury was astonished that no Palestinian novelist, such as Ghassan Kanafani or Emile Habiby, had written a novel about the nakbah. In the camps, it was also hard to get people to speak. "Most refused, because of the trauma and shame. But then an old woman adopted me and opened the doors," he says. "Being in a refugee camp means you're waiting: you live in the past, and to speak about the present is to accept it." Yet he feels the novel helped the generations communicate. One Palestinian student said his father revealed his past only after reading the book. "It broke the taboo."
For Khoury, Yunis is heroic in that "he crosses the border for love, not for a country. Creating and closing borders is one of the most stupid ideas of modern times." Yet, counter to what Khoury sees as a tendency in Palestinian literature - particularly poetry - to extol heroes in the service of the cause, the novel questions notions of heroism and martyrdom, allowing for a painful honesty about humiliation and defeat. "I'm writing about human beings, not heroes," says Khoury, who rather extols the women. "I don't feel literature can serve any cause. Art is to serve art. Writing is to travel towards discovering others; it's a way to listen to and love them."
In one scene, a refugee encounters the Jewish woman who now lives in her house and who has her own painful history. Khoury, who petitioned in 2001 with other Arab intellectuals against the holding of a Holocaust deniers' conference in Beirut, believes Palestinians need to understand the Holocaust. Yet his character Khaleel also fears "a history that has only one version". The Holocaust is "one of the disasters of the world that must not be repeated", says Khoury. "But at least half of Israelis come from the Arab world. It's ridiculous for a Jew from Iraq to forget his own history." There is, he believes, "always a dominant national ideology, but one role of literature is to contest that. Many stories can survive together." He adds, "the struggle with our Israeli cousins is between the story and history. The victor writes history, but stories are more important - they're about lives, not winners."
The novel's first translation, into Hebrew, brought shortlived attacks on Khoury in the Egyptian press. "To see this as dealing with the enemy is stupid," he says. "I won't work with institutions in Israel, but translating Arabic literature into Hebrew isn't 'normalisation'."
Born in 1948 into a well-off Orthodox Christian family (his father eventually worked for Mobil), Khoury grew up in Ashrafiyyeh, or "Little Mountain", in mainly Christian east Beirut. At school with Palestinian refugees, he also saw the new influx from the Israeli-occupied territories after the six-day war of 1967. As a history and sociology undergraduate at Beirut university, aged 19, he went to Jordan to enlist in Fatah, the military wing of the Palestinian liberation movement. But after finishing his studies at the Sorbonne, he returned to Beirut as an editor, working with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the Syrian poet Adonis.
He recalls Christian east Beirut as "open, leftist". But after a failed revolution for which Khoury fought, as civil war broke out in 1975, "the fascists began taking over the neighbourhood, so I left". His novel Little Mountain (1977), translated by Maia Tabet in 1989, reflects his disillusionment and describes militiamen with crosses raiding homes to root out communists, Palestinians and pan-Arab Nasserists. Said saw Khoury as "orphaned by history", in that he stood with a Lebanese national coalition of Palestinian and Muslim forces against Christian militias allied with Israel. Almost alone among Christian Lebanese writers, wrote Said, "he espoused the cause of resistance to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon from the heart of [mainly Muslim] west Beirut". During his exile across Beirut's ever more rigid front line, Khoury says, "my mother got sick and died without my being able to visit her or go to her funeral". Long after the war ended in 1990, he reclaimed the family home in east Beirut, where he now lives with his wife of 35 years, Najla. They have a daughter, Abla, an actor and theatre director, and a son, Talal, a film-maker.
He grew up with his grandmother's love of Arabic literature and his favourite poet is al-Mutannabi of Basra, from the 10th century. For someone writing in the thick of civil war, the stable European novel as emulated by the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz became elusive, and Khoury looked to earlier Arabic inspirations for his experimental, postmodern fiction. "I didn't know what postmodern was," he says. "I was trying to express the fragmentation of society. Beirut's past is not of stability, but of violent change. Everything is open, uncertain. In my fiction, you're not sure if things really happened, only that they're narrated. What's important is the story, not the history."
Since Gate of the Sun, Khoury has written two novels, Yalo (2002), to be published by Quercus in Britain next year, and As If She Is Sleeping (2006). Yalo's main character is a jailed man who is "Syriac and Kurd, Muslim and Christian". It was banned in Jordan and the Gulf, ostensibly for its treatment of sex and religion, though perhaps also for depicting torture techniques in Arab prisons, which Khoury researched. Books are rarely banned in Lebanon, he says. "If they don't like what you write, they don't ban, they kill."
His friend and fellow journalist Samir Kassir was killed by a car bomb in June 2005. Khoury's optimism has ebbed since the Cedar revolution of March 2005, when mass demonstrations brought the withdrawal of Syrian troops. He returned from New York to find that "we're back to square one, on the edge of civil war". He sees Fatah al-Islam, the jihadist group in Nahr al-Barad camp, as "Islamist militants manipulated by Syrian intelligence - a dangerous combination of a few Palestinians, some Lebanese, and Saudi youngsters, who are isolated from the population of the camp and have been parachuted in". While Khoury sees fundamentalism as a US-sponsored product of the cold war and Israeli policies as culpable, he says: "The secular, leftist movement in Lebanon was destroyed by the Syrian army, and resistance to Israeli occupation handed to Hizbullah."
Khoury has said that Arab regimes "love Palestine and hate Palestinians", and cynically use the issue as a rallying cause. After the Lebanese civil war, "Palestinians became a scapegoat for the political class". Those in the camps are still barred from more than 70 types of job and from buying property, officially "to preserve the sectarian balance of the country - which is total racism, since they and their children were born in Lebanon". Gate of the Sun is, for Khoury, a "love letter to the Palestinians". There is, he says, "no holy place; the only holy place is the human being".

France pursues Lebanon diplomacy
Christian Fraser
BBC News, Beirut
The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has arrived in Lebanon as he continues to try to break the political deadlock in the country.
Mr Kouchner's visit is an effort to resolve tensions between supporters of Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, and the pro-Syrian opposition.
It is a follow-up to a conference France hosted earlier this month. So far, every attempt to bring Lebanon's feuding political factions to the table has failed.
The two sides are still deeply divided, with tensions expected to escalate in the next few months over the appointment of a successor to the Christian and pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud.
Unity government
Lebanon has been deadlocked since November when the Shia Hezbollah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, withdrew from the cabinet demanding a unity government in which it would have the power of veto. Mr Kouchner will spend the weekend talking to the political leaders of 14 Muslim and Christian factions.
The French have also been consulting several Arab countries concerned with the Lebanese crisis, including Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to try to find backing for a solution. During the talks in Damascus the Syrians are said to have told the French a solution must begin with the formation of a unity government before any agreement on a new president can be found. But the anti-Syrian Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has already signalled that changing the make-up of the government before electing the new president would make it much harder to find a compromise candidate. This weekend, Mr Kouchner is going to need all his diplomatic skills.

Woman charged with working for Hezbollah
By Amos Harel -Haaretz
The Shin Bet security service lifted a gag order yesterday on the June arrest of a woman who allegedly admitted during questioning that she was recruited by Hezbollah.
The woman, an Israeli Arab residing in the north, was arrested on June 30 upon her return to Israel from Jordan. An indictment outlining the charges against her was submitted to the Haifa District Court yesterday. According to the indictment, the woman was approached in 2003, while studying dentistry in Amman, by a fellow female student. She was told that as a member of the Islamic organization, she would help to transfer cellular telephones and memory cards from Jordan into Israel.
Upon completing her studies, the indictment said, the woman was given a portable device and told to convey it to Hezbollah operatives working in Israel and the territories. The transfer was never completed because no one came to collect the device.
The suspect visited Jordan several times after that and maintained contact with the woman who allegedly recruited her. She was arrested upon returning from her last visit.

Hezbollah has completely rearmed
(JTA) - Hezbollah has restored its military capabilities to their prewar levels.
In an assessment to Israel Radio, a senior Israeli defense official said that Syria is transferring weapons to Hezbollah with the full awareness of Lebanon’s army but behind the back of UNIFIL, the UN force in Lebanon. The official said Hezbollah prefers things to remain calm for now, so it can continue to build its military capabilities and restore the sites from which rockets were fired at Israel during last summer’s war. A preliminary report issued in April by the Israeli commission investigating the government’s performance during the war pointed out that the government’s main wartime goals were not prosecuted successfully, including delivering a crippling blow to Hezbollah and recovering the two Israeli soldiers abducted by the Lebanese militia.

Lebanese Should Target Hezbollah
by The Intelligencer POSTED: July 27, 2007
Lebanese officials say their troops have begun the last phase of a two-month assault on an Islamic militant group that used a refugee camp as a safe haven. At first glance that may seem like cause for rejoicing in the West — but it is far from major progress against Islamic terrorists.
It has been estimated that nearly 250 people, most of them members of the Fatah al-Islam militant group, have died during the Lebanese army’s assault on a refugee camp. On Wednesday, Lebanese officials said that only about 60 hard-core Fatah al-Islam fighters remained in the camp.
Clearly, Fatah al-Islam is a terrorist organization — and the fact that it has managed to hold out against the Lebanese army for two months provides an idea of its power.Unfortunately, however, it may be that the Lebanese army is merely doing the dirty work of a much larger, much more dangerous terrorist organization — Hezbollah. Attacks on Israel by Hezbollah terrorists were the reason why Israeli troops invaded Lebanon last year, scoring only limited success against their adversaries. One reason why Hezbollah holds such power in Lebanon is that the group wields substantial influence in the Lebanese government.
Analysts have pointed out that far from being comrades in terrorism, Hezbollah and Fatah al-Islam often have been at odds. If Fatah al-Islam is destroyed, then Hezbollah may become more powerful.
That, of course, would help to explain why U.S. officials have not been particularly enthusiastic about the offensive against Fatah al-Islam.
Still, the offensive may be of some value — in that it is a demonstration that the Lebanese army has at least some capacity for cracking down on terrorist organizations. U.S. diplomatic efforts should be directed toward encouraging Lebanese officials to take another step in that regard — this time, against Hezbollah.

Hot in Tehran
By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
On the same day that Tony Blair debuted in Portugal as Middle East envoy for the Quartet, a group attempting to advance peace efforts in the Middle East, another kind of meeting convened in Syria. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Damascus on July 19 with leaders from Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas to chart a different course for the Middle East. Asked in a joint press conference with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad if he expected another “hot summer,” Ahmadinejad said, “We hope that the hot weather of this summer would coincide with similar victories for the region’s peoples and with consequent defeat for the region’s enemies.”
Indeed, although a number of conflicts could erupt in a variety of Middle Eastern countries this summer, Iran is the common denominator among them. Iran’s leaders understand that they have a real chance to drive the United States out of Iraq and substantially weaken the U.S.’s position in the region.
Iran’s most obvious maneuverings have been in Iraq, where it has long aided insurgent factions. During a recent trip to Baghdad, where I was embedded as a reporter, I found that virtually every American soldier feared the explosively formed projectile (EFP). This kind of bomb has been described as uniquely dangerous because “when it detonates, the concave end blows outward and melts into a bullet-shaped fragment that slices through armor and flesh.” Captain Greg Hirschey of the Army’s 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company told Wired of an incident where an EFP went through a Humvee, taking off both of the driver’s legs and also an arm. Lieutenant Patrick Henson of the 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery told me that he saw video in which an EFP went straight through a heavily armored Humvee and left an impact on the curb on the other side of the road. (Several Army sources corroborated his account.) Iran has been providing Shia insurgents with these deadly weapons. In 2005, Time reported that Iranian operative Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, who headed an insurgent network created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, introduced EFPs to Iraq. In February of this year, the American military stated that EFPs had killed “170 American and coalition troops in Iraq,” and the numbers have continued to rise since then.
Iran has also trained Shia insurgent factions. Recently, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner said that Shia insurgents have been “taken to Iran in groups of 20 to 60 for training in three camps ‘not too far from Tehran.’” According to Brig. Gen. Bergner, when they returned to Iraq, the trainees “formed units called ‘special groups’ to carry out attacks, bombings and kidnappings.”
It seems that Iran has even provided active direction to Shia militias. Brig. Gen. Bergner stated in a press conference that U.S. forces recovered a 22-page planning and lessons learned document relating to the January 20 attack in Karbala, in which 12 men disguised as U.S. soldiers mounted an attack that killed five. He noted that the document shows that Iran’s elite Qods force “had developed detailed information regarding our soldiers’ activities, shift changes and fences, and this information was shared with the attackers.” Iran also likely provided the attackers with “American-looking uniforms, vehicles and identification cards” that helped them penetrate their target and “achieve surprise.”
Although it is a Shia theocracy, Iran has not limited itself to support of Shia insurgents. In January, the New York Sun reported that Iranian documents captured by American forces showed that Iran also supported Sunni insurgents. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the military’s chief spokesman in Iraq, has also stated this publicly in press conferences. In addition to trying to drive the U.S. out of Iraq, Iran’s support for Sunni insurgents seems to be a form of hedging its bets by providing something of value to all insurgent factions.
Analysts believe that the fact that the administration has staked so much politically on how much progress is made by September provides Iran with an incentive to ramp up violence in Iraq during August.
Nor is the chaos in which Iran has involved itself limited to Iraq. The country that was central to the long, hot summer of 2006 — Lebanon — sits directly to the west of Iran’s strategic partner Syria. With elections just around the corner, chaos could again break out in Lebanon this summer.
The political situation in Lebanon has been precarious since Syrian withdrawal in 2005. One of the most destabilizing forces has been Hezbollah, which is strongly aligned with Iran: the first generation of Hezbollah’s leadership pledged their loyalty to Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in 1982, and since then Iran has been a primary source of financial support and training for Hizballah’s fighters.
Hezbollah’s war against Israel last summer was dramatically destabilizing. There has also been a rash of political assassinations inside Lebanon. While suspicion for these incidents focuses on Syrian intelligence, high-ranking sources in American intelligence believe that Hezbollah facilitated the assassinations by aiding the assassins’ entry into Lebanon, helping to put them in a position where they could carry out the attacks, and facilitating their exit. (Hezbollah, it should be noted, receives sponsorship from Syria as well as Iran.) Hezbollah also played a small but not insignificant role in the recent month-long struggle between Lebanon’s military and the militant Fatah Islam group, which had been holed up in a refugee camp outside Tripoli. During this conflict, Hezbollah made noise about siding with the Sunni militant group against Fouad Siniora’s government.
Hezbollah also periodically leads street protests with the explicit purpose of toppling Lebanon’s government. This is a powerful symbol of the Siniora government’s impotence, as the street protests have been able to paralyze the capital city of Beirut. Lebanon’s military is not up to the task of clearing Hezbollah out.
Iran’s reach extends also to the Palestinian territories, which have been wracked by violence between Hamas and Fatah. Iran contributed to the violence that flared up in the Gaza Strip in June: Iran, Syria, and a number of private Saudi donors emboldened Hamas by proclaiming their unconditional support. This helped to give Hamas the confidence it needed to take over the Gaza Strip, where it seized Fatah’s compound and forced Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to declare a state of emergency. As Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul Gheit stated, “Iran’s policies encouraged Hamas to do what it has done in Gaza.” Indeed, as Hamas’s number one single donor, Iran has a great deal of leverage over the group.
Chaos in the Palestinian territories always presents a risk of escalation. Israel often faces violent provocations from those areas. If last summer’s battle against Hezbollah demonstrates one thing, it is that Israel is hesitant to back down from a fight. Israel already fought something of a two-front war against Iranian clients last summer, as it fought Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are stronger now than they were last summer.
There are other areas where Iranian actions are of great concern. Al Qaeda leaders who are under “house arrest” in Iran, such as Saif al-Adl and Saad bin Laden, have reportedly been able to communicate with the outside world. In his book At the Center of the Storm, former CIA chief George Tenet reveals that while al-Adl was in Iran, senior al Qaeda leaders in Saudi Arabia were able to seek his advice as they negotiated the purchase of Russian nuclear devices. Al-Adl replied that no price was too high, but cautioned “that al Qaeda had been stung by scams in the past and that Pakistani specialists should be brought to Saudi Arabia to inspect the merchandise prior to purchase.”
Meanwhile, Iranian presence is visibly increasing in South America’s tri-border region. Hezbollah also has a presence in Venezuela, where it maintains a base in Margarita Island. The increasingly cozy relationship between Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez — and in particular, their announced “axis of unity” — makes it likely that Hezbollah’s presence will continue to grow there. Hezbollah also has a presence in the United States, with past involvement in drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and sending money and equipment back to the Middle East. Although there are no known instances of Hezbollah cells in the U.S. going beyond logistical support for the terrorist group and becoming “operational,” this is not outside the range of possibility. Several Hezbollah cells have cased potential targets, and operatives who have had military training could be turned operational without great difficulty. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate certainly considers this a risk, noting that Hezbollah “may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran.”
Against this backdrop, Iran continues to pursue its nuclear capabilities. Although estimates within the intelligence community concerning how far along Iran’s nuclear development has come vary widely, the bottom line is that Iran does not appear to be backing down in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In its actions, Iran is pursuing multiple goals. Since the 1979 revolution, it has tried to position itself as a regional hegemon, and the past five years have made these designs more likely. Nuclear development fits neatly with Iran’s hegemonic ambitions, and seems tied to the regional chaos that it has stirred up. As Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait’s Arab Times, wrote in a recent editorial, “[w]henever the US forces Iran into a corner over its nuclear programme, Tehran works hard to shift this battle to Arab countries.” Indeed, last summer the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was precipitated the same day that Iran was supposed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program: Hizballah’s incursion into Israel came on July 12, the date of the IAEA deadline.
According to a senior American military intelligence source, Iranian factions are debating whether they would like chaos to embroil multiple areas in August and September in a bid to force the United States out of Iraq. Some factions disagree, arguing that it would be foolish to fight a war on so many fronts, and that they should conserve their resources for the U.S.’s withdrawal from Iraq.
Expect Iran to turn up the heat in Iraq in August. But don’t be surprised if Tehran’s “global warming” agenda reaches far beyond that.
— Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam.