Opposition in Lebanon

Two days ago, I was watching CNN’s coverage of the situation in Lebanon, in order to see how the situation was portrayed in the Western media. On Friday, the opposition had taken to the streets in order to demand a wider representation in the government or the resignation of the PM, Fouad El Seniora and his government. The opposition constituted the mostily Shiite Hizbollah and Amal alongside the mostly Maronite Free Patriotic Movement, who follow Michel Aoun and other smaller factions, such as the People’s Movement (Commoners), who follow the former MP Najah Wakim. However, according to CNN, the movement represented a Shiite coup against the Sunni leadership. It is strange how CNN just ignored what constitutes around 70% of the Lebanese Christians. But CNN’s stance is understandable and has been standard procedure for most American media outlets. More and more frequently, these outlets portray current events in the Middle East as a Shiite uprising against the mostly Sunni leadership in Arab countries. Thus, it can win the hearts of the Sunnis and assure that Arab leaders won’t take a neutral stance, or more dangerously, take the side of the insurgency. It is also not a secret that years of negligence and outright abuse of the large Shiite population in the Arab world has led us to this situation and made possible the playing of one sect against the other. In Saudi Arabia, Shiites constitute around 20% of the population. However, the government acts as it they are not there and won’t admit as to how many Shiites are in Saudi Arabia. When the Israelis were pounding Lebanon this summer, the Saudis took a stance against Hizbollah, calling their actions foolish and an uncalculated adventure. When Shiites demonstrated against Israeli aggression, some were imprisoned, allegedly for displaying pictures of the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. In Iraq, and even prior to the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), Shiites were considered as second-rate citizens and many were dislocated from their homes. Many had to move to the more developed Sunni areas to work. After the war started, many were considered as traitors and Irani sympathizers and many others were stigmatized. In Lebanon, and after the murder of Rafiq Hariri in February of 2005, many Shiites were dubbed as traitors and accused of sympathizing with Syria and Iran. Until now, many sect leaders like Jumblat, who is the leader of the Socialist Progressive Movement, keeps hinting that Hizbollah want to convert Lebanon into an Irani state. These remarks don’t go down well with the Shiite population especially since they are a majority of the Lebanese population. Development in Shiite sections of the city is usually inferior to that in other regions, especially Christian areas. War has divided the country and Beirut into areas based on sect. And any casual observer can immediately sense the difference between Shiite, Sunni, and Christian areas. The government has long neglected Shiite areas such as the southern suburb of Beirut thus giving such movements as Hizbollah more power as they strived to replace the government in these areas.

Gaining the support of Arab leaders and the sympathy of the Sunni population will help the Americans in Iraq since portraying the opposition to the US forces and its puppet government in Iraq as mostly Shiites with dreams of autonomy will demonize the resistance in Iraq in the eyes of the Arab world. Indeed, Hizbollah’s excursion into Israel this summer has been linked to the resistance in Iraq and to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It is a pity to see the some media outlets in the Arab world reflecting the American views and many residents in the Arab world buying into this story, thus creating a rift between Sunnis and Shiites and a potential of civil war everywhere. Calling Shiites traitors whenever they voice their opinions has got to stop. The opposition has legitimate claims in Lebanon now since they form around or even more than 50% of the population and thus require more representation in the government.

9/11

I just received an email ennumerating the coincidences between the 9/11 attacks on the US. It had the usual thing about how all the number added up to 11 and such. However, what most attracted my attention was the following verse which the author claims to be from the Holy Quran: "For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace." The author even claims that this is the 9th verse of the 11th chapter of the Quran. I have read the entire Quran and this verse is nowhere in it. Adding up number and trying to find connections may be a nice passtime for some but when it comes to creating whole verses of a holy book, this becomes dangerous and misleading.

BiH

I Returned to Beirut last week. I had been incarcerated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna I Hercegovina (BiH)) for 2 months because of the ongoing war in Lebanon. In these two months I had forgotten what I hated about Beirut and more generally, Lebanon. Gone were the annoying sounds of honking cars every hour of the day. Gone were the infernal traffic jams, the car fumes, the stifling heat and humidity. Gone was the inferiority complex that every Lebanese suffers from and which makes him/her want to buy the latest car or phone, or both. Tranquility and peace at last! Of course, there remains the language barrier to overcome. Here, in BiH, only recently are people trying to learn English to facilitate their interaction with foreigners. The first two words I learned were Dobar Dan, ‘good day’. But I learned that I could that I could just as well say ‘Assalamu ‘aleikum’: the official greeting of Islam, and gotten a favorable response. To say your farewells, you could just say: ‘Allahimanet’ a perversion of the Arabic phrase for: ‘God be with you’. Or you could just settle for the common ‘Ciao’. Here, paradise is not the heaven we know but ordinary tomatoes: the word that sounds like the English word ‘paradise’ is spelled paradajz. I learned how to count from one to ten but that did not help me when I needed directions to my uncle’s house since he lived at 19 Hasana Bibera street. I later learned that nineteen is devetneset in Bosnian. Another pitfall for foreigners is the difference between the languages of the states of the former Yugoslavia. In Serbian, bread is ‘Hleb’ but in Croatian and Bosnian it is ‘Hljeb’. Also, most Bosnians use other names for their varieties of bread and thus saying to a baker that you želim kupiti hljeb, might just draw blank stares. The food is real cheap. It might be cheaper to eat out than to prepare food in your house. Börek and sausages are the most commonly consumed foods. Cafes and the bistros in downtown Sarajevo are always full at every hour of the day. Bosnians consume huge amounts of coffee (kafa) and smoke a lot. One popular way of drinking coffee is dunking sugar (šečer) cubes in coffee and eating them, although I haven’t seen that in my current visit.
In the end, I left BiH to go back to Lebanon with plenty of enjoyable memories. I haven’t said everything I have to say on Bosnia to keep this short. I will come back to it soon.
So, remember: this is not a closed country which still resides in the Middle Ages but a rapidly developing country with roots in the past. Coffee comes in a čaša (derived from Ca’s, a cup in Arabic), an airplane is an ‘avion’ (like in French). To invite someone in you can say ‘borjum’ (taken from Turkish) or ‘zvolte’. Ciao.

Lebanese Politicians

Lebanese politicians, particularly those of the so-called February 14 and March 14 coalitions always object that the Syrians used to and indeed still are interfering with every aspect of Lebanese sovereignty, especially with the selection of members of the cabinet. They whine that no one could be elected for a position as minister or MP without Syrian consent. But when a member of the coalition who used to be an MP or minister before February 14th, 2005 is asked if the Syrians supported him to get to his position, he indignantly replied in the negative. His party supported him for his position. Knowing that most of the government was formed from people who are now in the coalition, that means that the Syrians had no say in the selection of ministers or MPs. The other alternative is that they are all liars and they just are used to ‘ride the wave’.

The War on Lebanon

A month has passed, not so quickly, and the savage war that took place in Lebanon is supposedly over. In the aftermath of the war, many people will feign to forget what this war was about. The atrocities committed by the Israelis should not blind us from the real reason this war was waged: the New Middle East. Miss Rice could not hide her elation at the destruction in Lebanon and she shamefacedly commented as innocent children, men and women were slaughtered that we were witnessing the birth of the New Middle East; a bloody and ruthless labor. The intentions of the American administration have been clear from the start and the New Middle East is their ultimate aim to end once and for all the crises that break out every now and then. The American administration does not intend for such a vital region of the world to remain fraught with strife and violence. And of course, the reason remains the same: precious oil. The age of cheap oil is over and many newspapers in the US addressed the energy crisis and commented on how more and more people in the US were using bicycles to commute to and from work this summer. Oil reached a record $80 a barrel and Iran has even compounded the USA’s fears when it announced that if any attempts are made to halt its nuclear program, it will cut off its oil and take the price of oil up to $200 a barrel. Iraq was clearly the US’s first target because of its abundant oil reserves and crumbling regime weary after a decade of siege. Now it seems that Lebanon, and not Syria, was the next target. A report in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that the Israeli plan to strike Lebanon which was carried out now was hatched in the year 2000 shortly after the Israeli withdrawal from the south of Lebanon. The plan was revised and modified up to the year 2004 and it was even passed by the Americans who were privy to the details of the plan. It seems Israel was just waiting for the opportune moment to launch its assault and it came this summer. The Guardian’s George Monibot wonders why Israel decided this particular moment to launch its attack and refuses Israel’s claims that its attacks came as a response to Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers. Monibot recounts various breaches of the border from both Israel and Hezbollah, mostly from Israel, between the year 2000 and now. He even goes to show that Israel violated Lebanese sovereignty weeks before July 12th when Mossad operatives killed two members of the Jihad movement in a car bomb. Why Israel chose this moment to launch such a wide assault is the post-Hariri scenario. After February 14th, 2005, Lebanon was forever changed. The Lebanese populace was now divided into two teams: one with Syria and Hezbollah was among these and the other against Syria. After the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon most of the members of what was known as the 14th of February coalition began to call for the disarming of Hezbollah and attacking the group because of its pro-Syrian stance. Apparently, Israel was under the illusion, possibly from the US, that if it were to strike with force against the population and infrastructure of Lebanon, that enough of the Lebanese population will rise against Hezbollah and the Israelis will win the war in a few days. Nothing else can explain the lack of planning and the sloppy execution of land operations that we have witnessed. The Israelis weren’t planning on land operations because they often proved costly in Lebanon and thus limited themselves to operations carried out from the air and sea. Many analysts in Israel have criticized Olmert for not launching the land offensive earlier than he did. The reason that Olmert ultimately resorted to a land operation is that his initial plans were thwarted; the Lebanese people stood around the resistance and the Lebanese leaders they were counting on to lead the people against Hezbollah remained in the shadows. Israel, after two weeks of heavy bombing, ran out of targets to hit and with the US saying ‘no’ to an early cease-fire had to launch a land operation. The Israelis’ patience was thin and wanted a swift victory, something that Olmert could not deliver. In addition, with no real direction, and with Hezbollah much better trained in this kind of warfare, the Israeli army suffered humiliating defeats.

What is also striking is the symmetry between this war and Israel’s strikes of 1996. Many have commented that the second Qana massacre came 10 years after the first one. But there are other points in common. In 1996, the prime minister back then was Shimon Peres who was acting PM following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin allegedly by a Jewish fanatic by the name of Yigal Amir. However, Gordon Thomas reveals in his book Gideon’s Spies that the perpetrators were actually the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Rabin’s actions clashed with the Mossad’s plans and thus he had to be removed. Olmert is also an acting PM after the sudden illness of Ariel Sharon who has been in a coma for quite some time. A friend of mine who is studying for his MD told me that the way Sharon was handled after he was admitted to hospital may have been the cause of the coma. This quickly brought to mind the case of Rabin who was killed in the ambulance that was taking him to the hospital after he had been hit by a ‘blank’ bullet. Is it possible that Sharon was removed because he wouldn’t have launched this offensive against Lebanon?

However, the war is not over and as was apparent during the war, influential people in the Lebanese government were cooperating with the Israelis in the hope of forever removing Hezbollah from the scene. These people will not stop now and are going to be working in order to eliminate Hezbollah and achieve a Lebanon that is more in concordance with the US plans for the region.