UN Resolutions Not Enough to Sav

UN Resolutions Not Enough to Save Lebanon

Joseph Hitti

December 13, 2007

More than two years have now passed since Syria forced the hand of Rafik Hariri and imposed an amendment to the Lebanese constitution and the re-election of Emile Lahoud, an action which ushered the cataclysmic events of the Hariri assassination, the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, and the promises of a return to democracy. Brigadier-General Francois Hajj was assassinated this week in a last of a series of destabilization events to be perpetrated since 2005 by elements allied with either the Syrian-Iranian axis or Al-Qaeda. All these murders and attempted murders have been met with a flurry of UN resolutions that have yet to be implemented, and investigations that have yet to name one suspect. With the presidential constitutional vacuum now apparently for the long haul, all indications are that Lebanon will remain in this limbo for many years to come for the sole reason that it is the fault line and the battleground between regional and international players.

I was a teenager when the war between the Lebanese people and the PLO-Islamic alliance broke out on April 13, 1975, and I remember the years that preceded that date. Today the situation in Lebanon is eerily similar to the period of 1968 – 1974: Bombings, assassinations, skirmishes between the Lebanese Army and revolutionary terrorists of the time (PLO, PFLP, etc. all friends of the West today), kidnappings etc. The Lebanese Army was paralyzed by the Lebanese Sunni Prime Ministers (Karameh, Solh) who supported the PLO against their own country and their own Army, notwithstanding that treaty after treaty between the Lebanese government and the PLO was violated by the latter. All of this was aimed at destabilizing the country enough to “attach” Yasser Arafat in Lebanon and get him off the back of Israel. The descent into war was a gradual crescendo of violence under the watchful eyes of the West which did nothing to prevent it. Instead, Henry Kissinger sealed a truce on the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria (a truce which has lasted till today) with a corollary deal of ceding Lebanon to the Assad regime which ultimately led to the Syrian invasion in 1975, later legitimized by the Arab League under the name of the Arab Deterrence Force in 1976. The Sunnis sided with the PLO under the pretext that their “Arab” identity came before their Lebanese identity, with much prodding, money and weapons flowing from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The unsaid reasons for the Sunni Lebanese to support the Palestinians include the fact that the latter are in their vast majority fellow Sunnis, and also that the Sunnis used the PLO as their proxy militia to blackmail the Christians, undermine the Lebanese State and renege on their commitment to the National Pact of 1943. And so neither the Lebanese State was allowed to finish off the PLO (like King Hussein had done in 1970 in the infamous Black September), nor did the West offer anything other than to evacuate the Lebanese Christians on board the vessels of the 6^th Fleet and out to sunny California where they would enjoy legal immigrant status, thus opening the way for Lebanon to become a federated Sunni Lebanese-Palestinian homeland.

Throughout those late 1960s and early 1970s, the Lebanese people waited patiently as hordes of US, Western and Arab envoys shuttled in and out of Beirut, admonishing and advising the Lebanese on how to solve “their” Palestinian problem, when everyone knew that Syria, the PLO and Israel were all playing Henry Kissinger’s act: To weaken the Lebanese State to the point where the PLO would find it as a substitute homeland for the Palestinian people, thus relieving Israel of the burden we know today as the “Right of Return.” The problem for the American-Syrian-Israeli plan was that the Lebanese fought back, organizing themselves in militias and paramilitary organizations that ultimately foiled the Kissinger plan. In retrospect, the Christians “lost” the Lebanese war by conceding to strip the Christian President of his powers to the benefit of the Sunni Prime Minister as part of the rewritten constitution of 1989 in the Taef Agreement. Yet, the Christians managed to hold on to the Lebanese State and institutions, get rid of the PLO, and put on hold the Kissinger plan. Unfortunately, the basic premise behind the Kissinger plan remains as alive today as it was in the 1970s.

Fast forward to 2005-2007: Lebanon appears to be in the same limbo as during the 1968-1974 interlude. The Lebanese patiently wait for their State – now under the absolute rule of the Sunnis (Hariri et al.) – to decisively act against the Syrian-Iranian terrorism, and for the West to come to terms with its own stated objectives in the war on terrorism, while the Syrians and Iranians continue their bloody ravages. The Lebanese are beginning to wonder – given the inaction of the West – whether we are in a prelude before another great conflagration like the one in 1975. There are close to 500,000 Sunni Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who, if granted Lebanese citizenship, stand to swell the Sunni community to the largest constituent community in the Lebanese mosaic. This will drastically reduce the claims of the Shiites and the Christians, virtually remove the obstacle of the Right of Return in any Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and make the Saudi-Hariri-US friendship even cozier. Everyone these days talks about how the Christians of Palestine and the Christians of Iraq are virtually extinct. The Christians of Lebanon are beginning to seriously believe that the West, led by the US, is indeed seeking their weakening, if not their annihilation, in order to give Saudi Arabia and Syria something in exchange for peace with Israel and the permanent settlement of the Palestinian refugees issue.

Here is why. Two years after the Syrian withdrawal and the “Cedars Revolution” and all the great talk about a revival of Lebanese democracy, Lebanon is nowhere near to regaining its democracy or its stability, and appears instead to be sliding to another war and partition. Consider those actions that the US, the West, and the US-backed Siniora government could have done over the past two years to at least stem the tide of violence:

The US has not encouraged any of the human rights organizations or dissident movements that speak of democracy, human rights, and the rule of Law. We have Dr. Muhammad Mugrabi, a giant of the rule of law and human rights who was persecuted by the then-Syrian puppet Rafik Hariri’s government for a decade. We have Dr. Chibli Mallat, a legal scholar and an academic with a brilliant record of pushing for a genuine democracy and institutions, and who presented himself as a candidate for the presidential elections. We have the Lebanese Center of Human Rights whose offices have been broken into by the Siniora government’s security apparatus because it has been calling for the application of the due process of the law. No one in the West speaks of strengthening civil society in Lebanon as the foundation for democracy. In the view of the Bush Administration, Lebanese democracy consists in having the criminals, the corrupt, the warlords, the feudal families and all those whose hands are soaked in either blood or dirty money or collaboration with the Syrian occupation, rule the country with complete disregard for justice, a bankrupt economy, dysfunctional infrastructure and corruption.

The West and the US have not shown any muscle beyond issuing dozens of UN resolutions that go nowhere while the Lebanese emigrate in droves, their leaders get assassinated and the Siniora government’s ineptitude and incompetence is rewarded with Western endorsements.

The West and the US pay only lip service to building a strong Lebanese army. Crumbs are all that the Lebanese army received this past summer to fight the Fatah Al-Islam extremists in Nahr El-Bared. Why isn’t there more assistance with weapons and training to the army so it can one day stand up to Hezbollah? Israel failed to defeat Hezbollah from the air, and only a ground battle is what will eradicate the Hezbollah cancer. The West is nowhere near dispatching NATO forces or even UN forces under a Chapter 7 mandate. So can anyone explain what is the international community’s strategy for defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon? If Hezbollah’s lifeline comes from Iran via Syria, why isn’t there anything serious done to cut off the Syrian link in the chain? For example, seal the Lebanese-Syrian border; bomb Damascus with a clear warning to cease interfering in Lebanon; impose sanctions on Syria; carry out covert assassinations inside Syria; etc. Instead, we see Syria being rehabilitated by France and the US and brought back to the negotiations table. We see Syria still issuing warnings and threats that “it cannot be defeated in Lebanon.” And we see Syria impose its own candidate for the presidency of the republic in the person of Michel Suleiman.

The West and the US have not condemned their allies (the Siniora government and the Saudi-Lebanese Saad Hariri) for failing to undertake any domestic investigation into the 18 assassinations and bombing attempts that have plagued Lebanon. What are we waiting for to prove to the world that Syria is indeed behind these assassinations and bombings? Why not produce the evidence that would legitimize drastic action, including the military one, against Syria and the Assad regime?

The West and the US have not condemned Siniora and Hariri for their denunciation of Israeli air incursions over Syria. Siniora and Hariri don’t even condemn Israeli incursions over Lebanon, yet they find it compelling to defend Syria against such incursions! Siniora and Hariri, we are told, are “anti-Syrian”, and they themselves are potential targets of the Syrian-Iranian terror campaign, yet they have the gall to defend the Assad regime against Israeli air incursions and complain that Israel is receiving too much military support from the US, back in 2006 when Israel was doing their dirty work for them, namely to try and defeat Hezbollah.

Why is the US not demanding that the Siniora government initiate peace talks with Israel and settle the border issues? Instead, Siniora caves in to his inferiority complex to the Arabs and proclaims that Lebanon will be the last to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Meanwhile, he and his ilk have no problem with the Egyptian and Jordanian envoys who come visiting every other day and whose countries have exchanged embassies with Israel and have signed peace treaties with Israel. The Siniora government from its inception (in its ministerial program statement) and to this day has encouraged, aided and abetted Hezbollah in its “resistance” platform, contrary to all that is being said in the media. And the Bush administration wants us to have faith in the Siniora-Hariri tandem as the vanguard of democracy, sovereignty and independence?

Why hasn’t the US-backed Siniora government dispatched any significant numbers of troops to the Syrian-Lebanese borders to tightly seal those borders? Why hasn’t the Siniora government being pressured by the US to take back the thousands of Lebanese refugees in Israel who were evicted by Hezbollah from their southern villages after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon? If these people fought Hezbollah for more than 20 years, shouldn’t they be treated as heroes by the anti-Hezbollah, anti-Syrian Siniora government and Hariri? These people were the first to pay the price of confronting Hezbollah. Shouldn’t they be the allies of Hariri and Siniora today?

As was the case between 1968 and 1975, Lebanon today has been transformed into a battlefront for the wars of others, and the Lebanese are paying the price. We do not see the West mustering the same resolve and determination it displayed when it rushed to save Bosnia and Kosovo, or when it rushed to rescue East Timor. If indeed we are asked to believe that Lebanon’s success in overcoming the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis is of such paramount importance in the global war of terror, then why is Lebanon being abandoned to a no war-no peace limbo, yet again? If the US really believes in Lebanon’s future of democracy, and if it really wants the Lebanese Christians to believe that they will not abandoned by the West like the Christians of Palestine or Iraq, then there’s got to be more that the US and the West have to offer than more UN resolutions.