Gunpowder dialogue in Lebanon

New York, September 20, 2007

Political killing in Lebanon is serial. It is maddening. There seems to be no cure for it.

The explosion of September 19 targets the Christian community in Lebanon. The Christians of this country have become a demographic minority over the last few decades as a result of higher emigration and smaller families. They have emerged from a devastating 15-year civil war with less political power but with determination to retain political advantage. They are assigned by tradition the presidency of the republic and the position of chief of army. They have naively situated themselves for political cyclical scapegoating.

The explosion that killed seven Lebanese and injured twenty others in a Beirut suburb today is a stark reminder that the country is in deep trouble. There is a political vacuum as a result of the conflict surrounding the Lebanese presidential elections. In less than a week the parliament is expected to elect the next president.

Local politicians are crippled as Iran and the US battle each other politically in Beirut over the future of Hezbollah and Tehran’s nuclear program. Washington is also after Damascus in pressuring Beirut to push hard for the international investigation of the murder of former Prime Minister Harriri. Time is running out for a smooth election.

In Lebanon explosions are the language of hidden enemies, enemies without a cause. The enemy should not be confused with the opposition. The opposition to the ruling coalition has been transparent and peaceful so far. However, its massive downtown sit-in strike has hurt the economy too badly.

Today’s crime may be related to an event in the recent past. In May, this year a group of renegade fighters, who call themselves Fateh al Islam, murdered a battalion of Lebanese soldiers and subsequently fought with the national army for four months in a Palestinian camp. The army had a hard time terminating this mini insurgency but it finally defeated the fanatic rebels. But some of the members of this gang are still on the loose. They could have been behind the September 19 murder. Intelligence work has revealed that Fateh al Islam last year killed Pierre Gemayyel, a cabinet member, in a similar massive car explosion.

There are other crime scenarios. Think of who would benifit from halting the process of local Lebanese dialogue for reaching a compromise candidate. The answer to this implicating question is not easy. Several countries would fit in this category.

Perpetrated in a Christian neighborhood and aimed at a notable Maronite parliament figure yesterday’s murder was a familiar message of political hate. The Christian response to this act of fanatism demands inspiration, discipline, reflection and stretched tolerance.

Christians in Lebanon are divided and their politics does not reflect much learning from the civil war. Their political personalities have not changed much. Their leaders claim to be secular and modern and yet they rush to Bkirki, the seat of the Maronite Patriarchy, seeking Church based solutions whenever they face a crisis. Their insistence on keeping the presidency of the country is neither serving them nor the country. Leading the nation in an anti Syrian campaign is not wise. Strategically, Syria needs to remain emotionally close to Lebanon, despite of its political mischief in Beirut. Too many Christians are politically sympathetic to the US and culturally wedded to Europe while the Muslim world is going through a very painful and humiliating experience with the West.

Despite the fact that Christians are on both sides of the conflict in the presidential elections the policies and practices of the US in Lebanon and the rest of the region makes all the Lebanese Christians weaker. There is nothing Christian about US strategic politics but Arabs today increasingly look at Americans as modern time Crusaders. Washington and Tel Aviv 2007-2008 shared war agendas may include Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

In the past Arab Christian statesmen made great contributions as ideologues, as bridge makers with the West and as party leaders. Today, regrettably, in the context of the presidential elections established Christian warlords are allowed to repeat the same rhetoric of the civil war. Minorities can not afford to be political slow learners in the Middle East.

With each electoral event Lebanon has faced a crisis. It is an indication that the system is unfair. This may be the last time that the president of Lebanon has to come from a designated sect. The country does not have to change the system radically. Rotating the presidency among the different sects may be an interim solution for the next stage of reform. If Christians initiate electoral reform they stand to gain respect and status and if they continue to ignore their social and cultural context they would be the primary losers.
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The author is former Secretary of the Middle East of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches

* Author’s email is grubeiz@adelphia.net. His blog is .

Hezbollah and the promised president

New York, September 10, 2007


Too much responsibility has been attached to the role of the next president of Lebanon who is due to be elected on September 25. This is why it is difficult to agree on who is going to be the next president. The opposition camp wants the candidate to be friendly to Hezbollah and its regional supporters (Syria and Iran) and the government camp wants to satisfy the West (mainly the US and France) and elect a figure who would be distant from the resistance movement.

In recent days the diplomats of the world have been active in background negotiations for settling disputes of the September election. Coming nearly a year after last summer’s Lebanese-Israeli war, in which Hezbollah outperformed expectations, the election of a new leader for Lebanon has opened up an occasion for the international community to bloc Hezbollah’s renewed energy.

The question that divides Lebanese society today is how to handle Hezbollah’s refreshed military readiness in the context of UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701 and the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. The two recent Resolutions require Lebanon to terminate militia formations. Certainly the Lebanese people would naturally love to see their national army be the sole protector of their nation. But there are more factors to consider in relation to Hezbollah’s future in a fractured nation and an explosive region.

The Lebanese state is weak; the national army is feeble and the government is relying too heavily on Western governments to support it economically and politically. Hezbollah is popular and this resistance movement considers itself an auxiliary force against Israel. Moreover, in this country of four million people, four hundred thousand angry Palestinian refugees live in temporary camps and humiliating conditions. Syria wants the occupied Golan Heights back from Israel; Hezbollah is in solidarity with Hamas and Iran and Syria have a proxy war with the US through Hezbollah. This heavy cocktail of issues should not be debated through the context of the presidential elections but they are.

Hezbollah is not simply a military force. It is a political party and a social service apparatus. It has allied with a secular and powerful Christian party (Reform and Change Front) of a former army general, Michel Aoun. Hezbollah leads the opposition bloc in the parliament which is mandated to elect the president of the Republic.

If the candidate for president is perceived to be hostile to Hezbollah, the opposition will boycott the election. Many in the government’s pro-West camp consider Hezbollah to be a militia that weakens the sovereignty of the state and promotes cross-border violence. Their first choice for a presidential candidate is likely to antagonize the opposition. Their ideal candidate would also be considered a threat to Syria and to Iran. The current government is asserting itself against Syrian influence on Lebanese affairs and it is supporting an international tribunal to find out who assassinated (in 2005) the former Prime Minister Harriri.

The government’s pro-West coalition plans defiantly to proceed with the election even without the participation of the opposition block. In that case, the new president would be elected by a slim, near 51% majority vote, instead of the truly representative two-third majority.

Ideally, the new president’s primary mandate will be to establish a workable policy on the role of Hezbollah and its militia in the overall Lebanese defense system. At the same time he should be equidistant from the West and the Syrian-Iranian front. But in reality the momentum of decision making is coming from outside.

The presidential elections have turned into an international consultation of donor governments. Local politicians have formed irreversible international alliances and have frozen their problem solving through emotional rhetoric over the last ten months after the opposition block suddenly withdrew from the government and staged a massive sit-in strike. It is in Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Cairo, Damascus and Tehran where the Lebanese candidate for the presidency is being negotiated. To have Tehran and Damascus agree with Washington on Lebanon’s future while they disagree on just about everything else is what explains the formidable challenge that faces Lebanon.

In a matter of days the country will face a historic turning point. There is justifiable fear that if the elections do not take place in harmony Lebanon will explode and fragment. If there is no compromise soon there may be a divided nation: one government will be formed for the Hezbollah led opposition and one for the current regime.

It would be a gross political error on the part of the Lebanese current government and its international supporters to alienate over half the country, particularly the Shiite community, in scoring a technical victory in a rushed election with a slim majority. One hopes, that survival instincts will lead the Lebanese soon to a candidate that would satisfy both the government and the opposition. The presidential elections should not be the occasion for solving all the political problems of the country. Never has Lebanon depended so heavily on the power of its president. In trying to fix Lebanon the international community may be breaking it. Can we draw a lesson from Iraq and Palestine?

The West is sectarian in the Middle East

New York, August 29, 2007

When a nation claims God is on its side beware of evil. This observation is supported by a powerful essay of Columbia University Professor Mark Lulla. “God’s Politics”, an August 19 article in the Sunday Magazine section of the New York Times argues that all messianic religions have a tendency to exploit the Divine in the pursuit of politics.

Lulla is worried about Islam’s fundamentalism but he is not alarmed. The American professor explains that Christians have to study their history to figure out how to react patiently to the violence that emerges from radical Islam. He finds hope in the work of two modern Islamic scholars and urges policy makers to partner with Islamic “renovators”, change agents who mold but do not break, evolve but do not revolt.

The humanities lecturer cautions that Islam is not likely to ever separate religion from politics. He reminds us that Christianity has only lately succeeded to achieve what he calls the “Great Separation” between religion and politics.

Lulla quotes Hobbes, Rousseau and Lock to explain the many steps of reflection over recurring religious wars that have led to the full separation of state and church in the Western world. That radical change was culturally determined and unique. He consequently infers that the change, the “separation”, will not be replicated in the Muslim world. This is an excellent point, but wait, the professor has traditional Western ideas about Islam.

The professor states that the West should welcome a slow evolution from within Islam that will retain the symbiotic connection between Mosque and state. This is how Lulla phrases his very measured expectations of Islam in relation to modernity: “… a number of Muslim thinkers around the world have taken to promoting a 'liberal' Islam. What they mean is an Islam more adapted to the demands of modern life, kinder in its treatment of women and children, more tolerant of other faiths, more open to dissent.”

To the Western ear this quote sounds reasonable. But from a Muslim perspective it sounds too judgmental. Does Lulla imply that Islam is not suitable to modern life, not kind to women and children, not tolerant of other faiths and not open to dissent?

Moreover, Lulla fails to see that Islamic fanatism is partly a reaction to what is perceived by Muslims as Christian and Jewish injustice. The placing of a Jewish state in the midst of an Islamic world and the consequent displacing of a Palestinian nation are perceived by the Muslim world as continuation of the crusader politics of the 12th and 13th century. The creation of Christian dominated Lebanon (by France in 1920) is similarly viewed by Muslims as religious hegemony. The US current messianic war in Iraq and the colonial policy of divide-and-rule in the Middle East is viewed by Islam as Judeo-Christian politics.

The Columbia University Scholar sees Muslims living in a “politically intoxicated world” and implies that the West is politically detoxified. Indeed the West is generally secular but often European and US politics in the Middle East have been manipulative, sectarian and unjust.

How can Lulla assume that Americans are secular in politics? Millions of Americans believe that Israel is a fulfillment of religious prophecy, according to a recent Time/CNN pole: “ While only 36 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible is God's Word and should be taken literally, 59 percent say they believe that events predicted in the Book of Revelation will come to pass”.

The professor attributes violence in the Muslim world to messianic theology: “Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin.” A fair reading of Islamic literature reveals a wealth of flexible theology in the works of scholars like al Ghazali, al Pharabi, Ibin Khaldoon and Jalal’ din’ Rumi. The era of Islamic-run Spain represents seven hundred years of interfaith coexistence among Muslims, Christians and Jews. It is from Muslim Spain where much of the European enlightenment took of during the thirteen through fifteenth centuries.

Lulla should be more hopeful about Islam and more concerned about the provocative Middle East foreign policy of the Judeo-Christian “secular” West.