"Alas, it looks like Shiites vs. the rest!"

A very interesting article by Micheal Young, it sums up the current situation, from a very interesting perspective.

"Alas, it looks like Shiites vs. the rest

By Michael Young
Daily Star staff

The tragic and senseless killing of demonstrators in Shiyyah last Sunday was, perhaps rightfully, seen as the opening shot in a new phase of the Lebanese crisis that may turn much more violent. Who was responsible for the crimes still remains unclear. But a cooler analysis of what took place shows an equally disturbing reality: Sunday was a political disaster for the Shiite opposition parties, Hizbullah and Amal, whose inability to achieve their political ends, but also to retreat from the brink, makes the likelihood of further hostilities much greater.

After the end of the summer 2006 war and the growing confrontation between the parliamentary majority and the opposition, Hizbullah was always careful to place non-Shiites in the forefront of the opposition's actions. While Sunni representatives were anemic, Michel Aoun was, for a time, someone who added credibility to the claim that the opposition was multiconfessional. That argument took a severe beating in the street protests of January 23, 2007, when the Aounists were unable to block roads for very long in Christian areas without assistance from the army. By nightfall, even that endeavor had collapsed as roads inside the Christian heartland and between Beirut and Tripoli were opened.

However, Aoun struck back in the Metn by-election last summer, when he managed to get an unknown, Camille Khoury, elected to Parliament. It was a pyrrhic victory to be sure. The vote tally confirmed that the general had lost a sizable share of the Maronite vote; it showed that he relied heavily on a unified Armenian electorate not particularly committed to the general personally, that might vote very differently in the future; but it also showed that Aoun was not out of the game, as some had predicted.

However, from the moment the March 14 coalition decided to support the army commander, Michel Suleiman, as its candidate for president, Aoun's situation changed dramatically. The general had calculated that a presidential vacuum would enhance his chances of being elected, on the grounds that the thwarted Christians would rally behind him. In fact the exact opposite has happened. Provided with the option of a potentially strong Christian president in Suleiman, displeased with Aoun's and his ally Suleiman Franjieh's wanton attacks against Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, never really convinced by the Free Patriotic Movement's alliance with Hizbullah, the Christians, many of whom voted for Aoun in 2005, have been steadily turning away from the general.

A sure sign of this is the behavior of that cunning weathervane of Christian opinion, Michel Murr. In recent weeks Murr has mounted a very damaging internal rebellion against Aoun. He has defended the Arab plan that seeks to bring Suleiman to power as "good for the Christians," when Aoun's greatest fear is that his community will embrace such a line and abandon his own candidacy. Murr has defended Sfeir against Franjieh's attacks, even as most Aounist parliamentarians who once made Bkirki their second home remained silent. And Murr declared that the Metn would not participate in opposition street demonstrations. This was an easy promise to make, because Aoun doesn't even have the capacity to organize protests in areas his bloc members represent in Parliament.

The thing is, Murr's attitude is popular among Christians. And last Sunday, Aoun found himself in the worst possible situation when his ally Hizbullah and the army - the one state institution in which the general still retains some sympathy - clashed. For most Christians the choice was an easy one to make: They sided with the army, particularly after demonstrators were reported to have broken cars in the Christian quarter of Ain al-Rummaneh, where someone later tossed a grenade that injured several people. In that context, Aoun's alliance with Hizbullah now looks to many of his coreligionists like a bad idea, one that might precipitate a civil conflict if the opposition pursues its protests, which almost nobody seriously accepts as a demand for more electricity and cheaper food.

But then put yourselves in Hizbullah's shoes, and those of the Amal movement. With your Christian partner neutralized, suddenly the opposition looks mainly like a Shiite phenomenon. Worse, it looks like a mainly Shiite phenomenon directed against the Lebanese Army, a presidential election, and, by extension, the Lebanese state itself. This is certainly not where Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, ever wanted to position himself; and it is, in a word, suicidal for Shiites.

However, that apparently has not induced Hizbullah to backtrack. The Sunday rioting was probably destined to discredit Suleiman. The opposition's follow-up criticism of the army commander as someone who is no longer a consensus presidential candidate lends credence to this theory. The Syrians have recently been trying to peddle alternative candidates, via Qatar, to the French - which Qatari and French denials in fact only confirmed. Suddenly, Hizbullah finds itself in the uncomfortable position of blocking the election of a man many Christians regard as a potentially strong leader, all because the party won't abandon Aoun, who is on the political decline. And why won't it do so? Because Hizbullah desperately needs the general as an ally in a future government.

Whether Hizbullah's calculations are mainly domestic, or are shaped to a large extent by Syria is irrelevant. The party is, perhaps unintentionally, pushing Shiites into a confrontation with the rest of Lebanese society to protect itself, and nothing could be worse for the community. Hizbullah's inability to achieve any of its political aims in the past 13 months has only increased its sense of frustration, and the prospect of violence. The party is flailing, but March 14 must at all costs help think of creative ways to prevent the Shiites from succumbing to a new "Kerbala complex," a sense that victimhood is the historical lot of their community.

In 1975, the Christians had their own Kerbala complex, one that dictated stubbornness in the defense of Christian prerogatives, which at the time were regarded as an existential red line. In the process they lost their control over the state. Hizbullah has made defense of its weapons an existential red line for the Shiite community. But Kerbala, as one astute analyst has put it, is hardly something the Shiites should want to remember, as it ended in a massacre and defeat. Nor is it something any Lebanese should want the Shiite community to remember, or repeat.

The Christians learned to their detriment during the 1975-1990 conflict that a war against the Sunnis was also in many ways a war against the Arab world. The Christian community never recovered from that disaster. That's a lesson the Shiite community should not have to learn."

"A lesson in courage!"

These days I am getting so disgusted and disgruntled with Lebanese politics that I can barley write... so I will leave you with this poignant piece by Robert Fisk.

Robert Fisk: Dinner in Beirut, and a lesson in courage

Secrecy, an intellectual said, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Secrecy is exciting. Danger is darker, more sinister. It blows like a fog through the streets of Beirut these days, creeping down the laneways where policemen – who may or may not work for the forces of law and order – shout their instructions through loud-hailers.

No parking. Is anyone fooled? When the Lebanese MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated last week, the cops couldn't – or wouldn't – secure the crime scene. Why not? And so last Wednesday, the fog came creeping through the iron gateway of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's town house in Beirut where he and a few brave MPs had gathered for dinner before parliament's useless vote on the presidential elections – now delayed until 23 October. There was much talk of majorities and quorums; 50 plus one appears to be the constitutional rule here, although the supporters of Syria would dispute that. I have to admit I still meet Lebanese MPs who don't understand their own parliamentary system; I suspect it needs several PhDs to get it right.

The food, as always, was impeccable. And why should those who face death by explosives or gunfire every day not eat well? Not for nothing has Nora Jumblatt been called the world's best hostess. I sat close to the Jumblatts while their guests – Ghazi Aridi, the minister of information, Marwan Hamade, minister of communications, and Tripoli MP Mosbah Al-Ahdab and a Beirut judge – joked and talked and showed insouciance for the fog of danger that shrouds their lives.

In 2004, "they" almost got Hamade at his home near my apartment. Altogether, 46 of Lebanon's MPs are now hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel, three to a suite. Jumblatt had heard rumours of another murder the day before Ghanem was blown apart. Who is next? That is the question we all ask. "They" – the Syrians or their agents or gunmen working for mysterious governments – are out there, planning the next murder to cut Fouad Siniora's tiny majority down. "There will be another two dead in the next three weeks," Jumblatt said. And the dinner guests all looked at each other.

"We have all made our wills," Nora said quietly. Even you, Nora? She didn't think she was a target. "But I may be with Walid." And I looked at these educated, brave men – their policies not always wise, perhaps, but their courage unmistakable – and pondered how little we Westerners now care for the life of Lebanon.

There is no longer a sense of shock when MPs die in Beirut. I don't even feel the shock. A young Lebanese couple asked me at week's end how Lebanon has affected me after 31 years, and I said that when I saw Ghanem's corpse last week, I felt nothing. That is what Lebanon has done to me. That is what it has done to all the Lebanese.

Scarcely 1,000 Druze could be rounded up for Ghanem's funeral. And even now there is no security. My driver Abed was blithely permitted to park only 100 metres from Jumblatt's house without a single policeman checking the boot of his car. What if he worked for someone more dangerous than The Independent's correspondent? And who were all those cops outside working for?

Yet at this little dinner party in Beirut, I could not help thinking of all our smug statesmen, the Browns and the Straws and the Sarkozys and the imperious Kouchners and Merkels and their equally smug belief that they are fighting a "war on terror" – do we still believe that, by the way? – and reflect that here in Beirut there are intellectual men and women who could run away to London or Paris if they chose, but prefer to stick it out, waiting to die for their democracy in a country smaller than Yorkshire. I don't think our Western statesmen are of this calibre.

Well, we talked about death and not long before midnight a man in a pony tail and an elegant woman in black (a suitable colour for our conversation) arrived with an advertisement hoarding that could be used in the next day's parliament sitting. Rafiq Hariri was at the top. And there was journalist Jibran Tueni and MP Pierre Gemayel and Hariri's colleague Basil Fleihan, and Ghanem of course. All stone dead because they believed in Lebanon.

What do you have to be to be famous in Lebanon, I asked Jumblatt, and he burst into laughter. Ghoulish humour is in fashion. And at one point Jumblatt fetched Curzio Malaparte's hideous, brilliant account of the Second World War on the eastern front – Kaputt – and presented it to me with his personal inscription. "To Robert Fisk," he wrote. "I hope I will not surrender, but this book is horribly cruel and somehow beautiful. W Joumblatt [sic]." And I wondered how cruelty and beauty can come together.

Maybe we should make a movie about these men and women. Alastair Sim would have to play the professorial Aridi, Clark Gable the MP Al-Ahdab. (We all agreed that Gable would get the part.) I thought that perhaps Herbert Lom might play Hamade. (I imagine he is already Googling for Lom's name.) Nora? She'd have to be played by Vivien Leigh or – nowadays – Demi Moore. And who would play Walid Jumblatt? Well, Walid Jumblatt, of course.

But remember these Lebanese names. And think of them when the next explosion tears across this dangerous city.

Several issues...

It seems that I have several issues to talk about. First there is an article by Michael Young (the Opinion editor of the Daily Star -a Lebanese English newspaper- and who usually write poignant article that leans towards March 14^th position) that speaks about the lack of serious and on the ground efforts of Saad Hariri and the Future Movement towards their popular base and how he must come back to Lebanon to spear head the 14 of March movement in these critical months. A very interesting and honest article, in my opinion.

Next there is the whole mess with the Human Rigth Watch organization and their report on Hezbollah's violations and war crimes in July 2006 fighting with Israel. The HRW planned to published the report during a press conference, Hezbollah objected and threatened that they will hold demonstrations in front of the hotel, where the press conference would take place. HRW backed down and launched the report on its website without a press conference. A terrible shame if you ask me.

Here is the link to the report, and the page of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict (if you wanna judge the fairness of the organization) I recommend everyone to read it (at least the summary) and I will post a full analysis of the report soon.

Finally, I still to write my comments on the Annahar study of Lebanon’s population that I talked about in my previous post.

Annahar study of Lebanon's population!

Annahar -one of Lebanon's most trustworthy and unbiased newspapers- published a very interesting study on the sectarian breakdown of Lebanon's population, and the future change it may witness.

The study is in Arabic and Annahr articles are only free for one day, so if you wanna have a look you need to hurry. However i will try to post a summary of the major findings tomorrow.

Sofres Poll on Aoun popularity

While browsing the latest Lebanese news site, called NowLebanon, i found out this opinion poll made in early august (before the by-election) I found it interesting so here is the link and the most important results:

According to a recent Sofres poll, Lebanese Christians have become steadily more critical of opposition leader Michel Aoun since the escalation of Lebanon’s political crisis in January. Nevertheless, Aoun remains the most popular choice for president. Explaining this situation goes a long way to revealing Aoun’s political strengths and weaknesses.

According to the poll’s findings, the ongoing political deadlock has caused Aoun’s reputation to erode significantly among Christians. In a January Sofres poll, 50% of Christians stated that they had a favorable impression of Aoun, while 40% had a negative impression. By May, only 41% of Christians answered that they had a favorable opinion, and 52% had a negative opinion.

In contrast, March 14 leader Samir Geagea saw his favorability rating improve from 43% positive and 45% negative in January, to 54% positive and 40% negative in May.

The decline in Aoun’s reputation has been mirrored by a Christian shift toward March 14 in general. Christian support for March 14 grew from 35% in January to 42% in May, while support for March 8 shrunk slightly during the same time period, from 34% to 31%. 27% of Christians, however, still respond that they support neither March 8 nor March 14, a figure that has been relatively stable throughout the duration of the conflict.

The engine for this growing discontent seems to be Aoun’s alliance with Hezbollah. Many Christians are, and always have been, wary of the armed Shia group. When asked which party represented the greatest threat to them, 25% of Christians, a plurality, named Hezbollah. 55% of Christians favored the unconditional disarmament of Hezbollah in May – an increase from 47% two months prior. Disapproval of Aoun’s Memorandum of Understanding with Hezbollah has also increased recently, from 41% in March to 52% in May.

Aoun’s advisors should be telling him that his presidential chances remain good – but that his alliance with Hezbollah is causing him to slowly bleed Christian support. He is currently benefiting from divided Christian strength among the March 14 forces and the strong support base he built up before 2005. However, these are two rapidly-dissolving advantages: the March 14 coalition will likely soon unite around a presidential candidate, and the longer Aoun remains tied to groups like Hezbollah, the faster many Christians are going to forget about his past accomplishments.

A very intresting article!!!

A very interesting article by Michael Young that analysis the current electoral battle in the Metn from a different and stricking perspective:

Is Michel Aoun walking into a trap?

By Michael Young

All the signs are that the voting will go ahead in the Metn by-election this coming Sunday. However, partisans of both Michel Aoun and Amin Gemayel should be very careful. An Aoun victory would indeed be a setback for those who oppose Syrian efforts to return to Lebanon; but the election could potentially be a trap for Aoun, its practical outcome the general's political ruin and the destruction of Christian unity.

Whatever one thinks of Aoun, he has been a victim of two cutting blows coming from Damascus, and there is some question as to how we should read them. The first was the publication on a Syrian regime Web site, Champress, of alleged statements Aoun made in Berlin in which the general expressed sympathy for Syria. It turned out that Aoun did not utter the words in question, even if a compilation of his past remarks would show that he has said things not so very different.

The second blow was the announcement on Sunday by Ali Qanso, the head of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, that the party would back Aoun in the election. For anyone who knows the mood in the Metn and the antipathy felt for Syria and its utensils, Qanso's expression of comradeship could only harm Aoun in the eyes of many voters.

What's going on here? One interpretation could be that Syria is trying so maladroitly to appear like it is sinking Aoun, that the general will actually benefit from a contrary reaction of public compassion. That's possible. But another theory seems more credible, namely that Syria is looking to weaken Aoun, just as its main intention is to push the Christians into a destructive internecine crisis. Why? Perhaps to advance an alternative presidential contender at the right time, and to ensure that the Christians are so divided after the Metn election that they will be unable to agree on a different consensus candidate for the presidency.

An obvious question poses itself. If you are Michel Murr and the Tashnaq Party, doesn't recent Syrian behavior send a message that neither bloc will be penalized much for failing to fully support Aoun on Sunday? If Aoun is being set up for a fall, then Murr and the Armenians, by giving the general some votes, but not enough to win, may be there to implement that fall, even as they preserve their own interests. Murr will have saved his good ties with the Gemayels; the Armenians will have avoided a confrontation with March 14 and Saad Hariri, perhaps allowing them to negotiate a return of their candidates in Beirut in the next election; and both will have given Aoun enough votes so that he cannot blame them for his defeat.

Make sense? Let's take the speculation a bit further. If Aoun is to be eliminated, who do the Syrians really have in mind for the presidency? It's difficult to say, but if we go back to 1998, we might recall that Damascus, in turning Emile Lahoud into a president, was also advancing a broader political program: the militarization of the Lebanese regime. Part of the logic was that only the army and the security forces could contain the traditional political class - people like Rafik Hariri, Walid Jumblatt, and others. It's difficult to imagine that the Syrians have given up on that reasoning.

Let's also recall that recently Michel Murr floated the idea of bringing the army commander Michel Suleiman in as interim president for two years. Why would Murr do that, given that he is purportedly an ally of Michel Aoun, who sees Suleiman as a mortal rival? Could it be that Murr sensed something and that Syria's emerging candidate for the presidency is the army commander, now regarded by many Lebanese as something of a national champion? That doesn't mean that Suleiman is Syria's man - he has lost far too many soldiers fighting a Syrian-inspired project in Nahr al-Bared. However, it is defensible to have presidential ambitions, and none of the presidential candidates today, even those of March 14, would seriously contemplate being elected against Syria. The army commander's recent threat to resign if a second government were formed by the opposition suggested he was placing himself above the fray. As for his statement to the troops on Tuesday in Nahr al-Bared that the "salvation of the country will come from you," few things could have been clearer.

So as the Christians fight it out, Syria is figuratively taking us back to 1988, when Amin Gemayel left office. They start out with an unworkable demand - at the time the election of Suleiman Franjieh as president, today Aoun's candidacy. When unhappy Christians rally to block the option, the Syrians offer two other choices just as advantageous to them: Mikhail al-Daher or chaos, to paraphrase what the American envoy Richard Murphy supposedly told the Lebanese in encouraging Daher's election. Very soon, Suleiman will look like a superlative choice amid the ambient discord - both to the Lebanese and to an international community anxious about a vacuum at the top of the state. And if the Christians hinder that project, then what will follow is chaos.

The Metn by-election has already confirmed that Christians are more divided than ever before. In that sense, Aoun made a big mistake by pushing Camille Khoury into the ring in the first place. After all, what advantage was it for the general to highlight Christian differences when he could have affirmed that most Christians supported him on the basis of the 2005 elections? Whether Aoun and Gemayel compromise at the last moment is almost irrelevant at this stage. Avoiding a battle will lessen the damage, but already the Christians are at each other's throats, and the Syrians can only welcome this with their usual sense of humor.

Standing Up to Killers

I feel too empty, too apathic to even try to express my feelings, so for the mean time this excellent article should do...

Standing Up to Killers
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Washington Post

A bomb in Beirut yesterday killed Walid Eido, a member of the Lebanese parliament, and his son, Khaled, one of the smartest, sweetest and most delightful friends I have ever had.

I should wait for the results of an investigation into the explosion to learn who killed Khaled and his dad. But I will not wait. I am tired of the murders in Lebanon. I accuse the Syrian regime, headed by President Bashar al-Assad, of killing Khaled. As a friend of the family, I want to press charges against Assad and his Syrian and Lebanese associates. Enough is enough with the Syrian regime and its Lebanese puppets.

Walid Eido was a member of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority. Before his untimely death, the majority bloc comprised 69 of the legislature's 128 members. Now, the majority's margin has been narrowed to five, and there is no reason to believe that Syria will not go after these people and kill them, one after another, until it forces the government to collapse.

For the past few months Eido had been the target of a demonizing campaign by Syria's foremost ally, Hezbollah. Similar Hezbollah campaigns against other anti-Syrian lawmakers preceded their assassinations.

Hezbollah has been a supportive partner to Syria, often thanking the Assad regime for what it has "offered" my country. In truth, Hezbollah has sold out Lebanon's national interests to the regional autocrats of Syria and Iran.

Hezbollah might not have started the streak of assassinations of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians that began with the killing of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005, but the militant group has certainly been complicit with the criminal Syrian regime.

Since Hariri's murder, we in Lebanon have seen the best of our politicians and journalists murdered, one after another.

Before Khaled's death, I had already lost one of my most inspirational friends, journalist Samir Kassir. He was murdered by a car bomb on June 2, 2005.

Gebran Tueni, who had been my boss at the Arabic daily An Nahar, was killed that December, also by a car bomb.

With each murder, we Lebanese have swallowed our anger and fought hard for an international tribunal, which the U.N. Security Council approved last month. We hoped the tribunal would deter the Syrian regime and its Lebanese puppets from further killings. Yet a murderer is a murderer, with or without a tribunal, and the killings don't stop.

As I write these words, I understand that I am risking my personal safety. Speaking out could jeopardize my security during visits home.

But I owe it to Samir, Gebran and now Khaled to write this. I want to tell the Syrian regime and its Lebanese cronies that the Lebanese are willing to fight for their freedom despite the heavy cost.

And while I'm at it, I have some words for our Syrian brethren living under the tyranny of the Damascus regime: Stand up for your rights and say no to dictatorship. Tyrants might kill some Lebanese politicians and throw other Syrian human rights activists in jail, but they cannot kill all of the Lebanese or imprison all Syrians.

We shall prevail. We shall prevail for Kamal Jumblatt, Rene Moawad, Rafiq Hariri, Samir Kassir, George Hawi, Gebran Tueni, Pierre Gemayel and all other Lebanese killed at the hands of the Assad regime. We shall stand up for the Syrian freedom lovers Anwar and Akram al-Bunni, Aref Dalila, Riad Seif, Mamoun Homsi and Kamal Labwani, among others, no matter how ruthless and ugly the Syrian dictatorship can get.

There will come a day when Lebanon is free and Syria democratic.

"I hope they will attack us soon. Then we'll strike back and finish them off"

Here is some excerpts for a Der Spiegel article about the situation in naher el Bared camp. I choose the parts where the journalist interviews a Lebanese soldier.
As a side note, I've always respected the army and its soldiers but after these past days, damn I have become proud and fiercely supportive of our boys!!!

Head here to read the full article
Thanks for Beirut Spring for pointing it out.

Excerpts:

"During the next 48 hours, we will eradicate them," says the elite Lebanese soldier, lying behind a freshly raised mound of red earth. "They," of course, are the militants of the radical Palestinian group Fatah Islam. And the effort to eradicate them has virtually destroyed the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared where they are holed up.
The ground is strewn with the empty casings of high-caliber bullets; the soot-blackened ruins of the camp north of the Lebanese seaport of Tripoli stand about 200 meters (650 feet) away. Fatah Islam snipers on the roofs take aim at the Lebanese rangers who have dug in east of the camp. "I hope they will attack us soon. Then we'll strike back and finish them off," says the officer, who wants only to be called Spiro.
[…]
The terrain on the edge of the camp where Spiro's soldiers have dug in was still in the hands of the Fatah Islam militants on Tuesday. The rangers moved in at dawn on Wednesday, flattening the reeds that grew there and raising protective mounds of earth among the cypress trees. Ranger Rommel can't say how many people he has killed in the past few days. "It must have been a lot," says the 27-year-old, whose parents named him after the German Field Marshal who commanded the Nazi Afrikakorps. "At first it was a shock to be in a real battle after all the training," Rommel says. Later, he adds, it was like being in a movie. "A drunk state in which you don't care whether you're shooting at children, the elderly or militants."

It looks like the movie will play again soon, he says: "We have precise indications that our position will be a target for suicide attacks." The information he has indicates that the attackers will be old women.
[…]
At the camp, the soldiers are busy preparing for more fighting. Some, though, are also reflective after the four-day orgy of violence. Spiro, standing next to the wreck of a vehicle that is missing all of its windows, says: "People sought safety in this bus." Large puddles of blood have dried on the pavement below. "They drove towards us. They could have been militants," Spiro says.
His troops were the ones who opened fire on the bus -- before retrieving three corpses and several injured from the wreck. "Terrible, but that's just what war is like."

An intresting article

The Arab Commission
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made a remarkable statement last week. He praised Israel for conducting an inquiry into last year’s war with Hezbollah — an inquiry that accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of “serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.”

Mr. Nasrallah was quoted by the BBC as saying Israelis “study their defeat in order to learn from it,” in contrast with the Arab regimes that “do not probe, do not ask, do not form inquiry commissions ... as if nothing has happened.”

One has to be impressed by his honesty, but he did not take it all the way, since the Arab leader who most needs to be probed is Mr. Nasrallah himself. He started the war with Israel, which was a disaster for both sides. If there were an honest Arab League Inquiry Commission into the war, here is what it would say about him:

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah fighters directed by Mr. Nasrallah abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in an unprovoked attack across the Lebanon-Israel border, on the pretext of seeking a prisoner exchange. This triggered a war that killed about 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis. After interviewing all relevant parties, the Arab League Commission finds Mr. Nasrallah guilty of a serious failure of judgment, responsibility and prudence — for the following reasons.

1. Mr. Nasrallah demonstrated a total failure to anticipate Israel’s response to his raid. He assumed Israel would carry out the same limited retaliation it had with previous raids. Wrong. He failed to take into account the changed circumstances in Israel. The kidnapping of an Israeli soldier in Gaza a few weeks earlier, plus the fact that a new chief of staff of the Israeli Army, a new prime minister and a new defense minister had just taken office and all felt they were being tested, triggered an enormous Israeli response. Some 1,200 Lebanese died because of this gross error in judgment.

2. In unilaterally launching a war against Israel, without a vote of the Lebanese cabinet — of which Hezbollah is a member — the militia did grievous harm to Lebanon’s fragile democracy and democratization in the Arab world. All the fears that if you let an Islamist party into government it will not respect the rules of the game were fulfilled by Hezbollah.

3. Iran and Syria gave Hezbollah its rockets for their own deterrence. Hezbollah was their long arm to pressure Israel into political compromises and to threaten Israel if it attacked Iran or Syria. By launching all these rockets prematurely, without strategic purpose, Hezbollah has diminished its capability and Syria’s and Iran’s. The commission can’t find a single strategic gain from Mr. Nasrallah’s actions.

4. When the war started, Hezbollah’s fighters were sitting right on the border with Israel, operating freely. This was a real threat to Israel. As a result of the war, Hezbollah was pushed off the border by Israel and, in its place, the U.N. inserted a new peacekeeping force of some 10,000 troops, including a big European contingent, led by France and Italy. Yes, Hezbollah still has fighters in the area, but it has lost its military infrastructure, and can’t attack Israel now without getting embroiled with France and Italy — a huge strategic loss for Hezbollah.

5. Israel had allowed its ground forces to be degraded in order to invest more money in its air force’s ability to deter Iran and into policing the West Bank. Hezbollah’s attack exposed just how degraded Israel’s army had become. As a result, Israel has embarked on a broad upgrade of its military. In any future war Arab armies will meet a much better trained and equipped Israeli force.

6. Hezbollah claims that its Shiite militia, in attacking Israel, was serving the security needs of Lebanon. But Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s attack has resulted in billions of dollars of damage to Lebanese homes, factories and roads, with Shiite areas the worst hit and with zero security benefit to Lebanon.

Lebanon has had to rely on Arab and Iranian charity to rebuild. Israel, by contrast, suffered relatively minor damage and, after the war, its economy enjoyed one of its greatest growth spurts ever, as foreigners invested a record amount in Israel’s high-tech industry.

In sum, Mr. Nasrallah may have won popularity for himself and Hezbollah by fighting Israel. But so what? Today, less than a year after a war that Hezbollah called a “divine” victory, Lebanon is weaker and Israel is stronger. That’s what matters. And that is why, if the Hezbollah leader had any honor, he would resign.

When Love Is a Casualty of War

Here is a very nice article by Joshua Gross, on how the last summer war affected his relation with his girl friend which happen to be Lebanese, while is he is Jewish:


My Lebanese girlfriend does not want to listen to The Cure’s song “Killing an Arab.”

“Turn it off,” she demands.

This is odd. Helen is a huge Cure fan; in fact, I never really listened to The Cure until we started dating. I turn around to face her, my mind racing to produce some witty remark that will make her laugh and defuse the sudden tension, but our eyes meet and I am utterly disarmed. I hear her sigh as she walks away.

It’s not that Helen doesn’t like this particular song, it’s that she doesn’t like songs about killing Arabs, especially when in real life, our peoples are killing each other day after day. We cannot enjoy the song’s catchy rhythm or ironic lyrics when bombs fall and Katyushas fly. What used to be a harmless song has become an unwanted reminder of the gulf that exists between us.

Together, Helen and I had tried to create a tidy little universe with a population of two. In this universe, it didn’t matter that I was a Jew and Helen was an Arab. We were beyond the politics.

On our first date, we set a precedent by skipping out on a proposed tour of the Lincoln memorial, preferring to tour each other’s contours rather than those of a lifeless statue. As the months passed, we discovered that Helen’s attempts to teach me French were as doomed as my own throat-clearing lessons in the correct pronunciation of challah, her favorite new food. We could even laugh at the irony when Helen peeled off my sweater to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with “Don’t Worry America, Israel Is Behind You.”

Politics slumbered alongside us. Sometimes it spoke in its sleep, sometimes it rolled over, but it did not wake up.

And then, the war.

When the morning newscast announced that two Israeli soldiers had been kidnapped along the border of Lebanon, I felt the dream world that Helen and I had constructed around ourselves begin to evaporate. Helen was still asleep in my arms, the splayed skirt of her eyelashes undisturbed.

“Two-hundred twenty rockets fired, antitank missiles, civilian deaths,” the radio continued. Reluctantly, I shook Helen awake.

Helen’s broad face and enormous anime-eyes make her look like a Lebanese version of the waving cat statues you find at Chinese restaurants. When she is happy, that face can move in a hundred directions at once, eyebrows bending and arching, nose scrunching, chin moving in slow semicircles as she bites her upper lip. Her laughter is intoxicating, and I spent much of our time together trying to keep her laughing.

But a serious thought drains Helen’s face of this playfulness like sand sucked through a sieve. As Israelis reservists hitchhiked their way to the northern front, Helen became consumed by serious thoughts, her laughter a distant memory.

As the war raged on, our morning ritual of listening to the news on NPR became agonizing. Helen still hadn’t heard from her aunts and uncles and cousins, and she feared the worst. I switched my alarm clock from “radio” to “buzzer.”

One morning, about a week after the conflict had begun, the tension was especially palpable. All of a sudden, Helen threw down her boots in frustration. Her fingers balled into fists.

“We have to talk,” she said.

“I know,” I replied.

“You are so distant,” she said. Helpless and angry, she stared out the window.

I picked up Helen’s boots and brought them to her.

“I don’t even know what to say,” was the best I could do. I was afraid that if we talked, we would discover that we just could not be together. I was afraid of discovering that love had failed to elevate us to a place beyond politics. “Please,” I begged, “give me some time.”

A few days later, I left Helen in Washington and attended the wedding of a college friend, a Jewish wedding. Most of my friends had already met Helen and, given the circumstances, they were concerned. I told them we were doing our best, trying to get though it, focusing on each other and trying to stay positive.

What I didn’t tell my friends was that I was terrified. Terrified that someone from Helen’s family could get killed by an Israeli bomb. Terrified that every time I saw her Caller ID, I thought it would be our last conversation. I kept imagining her carefully chosen words, her contrite tone as she whispered through the tears, “I’m sorry, I just can’t do this anymore.”

My friends were supportive, and a few admitted to being inspired by us, framing our relationship in hopeful, hyperbolic terms, a microcosm of the peace process itself. When I expressed my own doubts, one overzealous friend scolded me, “You can’t give up! You owe it to humanity to make this work.”

As if I didn’t have enough on my mind. Now world peace hinged on my ability to find common ground with my girlfriend.

While I had spent the weekend dancing and celebrating with my friends, Helen had been glued to the TV, watching the carnage unfold. She did not sound happy to hear my voice.

Why is it that when it comes to Jews and Arabs, there are plenty of books about coexistence between peoples but significantly fewer about love between individuals? In a market flooded with books about relationships and dating rules, helpful pointers for Jews and Arabs are in short supply.

An hour later, we were at a coffee shop, staring at each another, barely speaking. The whole endeavor seemed a lost cause. I prepared myself for the worst and waited for a server to offer us some coffee.

We didn’t even get a chance to order. Suddenly Helen was crying, I was fighting back tears and we were out the door. We spent the next two hours wandering through downtown D.C., exhausted by the heavy, humid air and the burden of our own emotions.

“I just want to be with my own people right now,” she said, her hands sweeping through the space between us. “They’re the only ones that would understand.” “Why?” I said, trying to catch her hands midair but missing. She folded her arms across her chest.

We stopped talking. For a full minute we waited for our heartbeats to slow down and listened to the traffic.

“I don’t want to keep fighting with you,” Helen said, looking into my eyes. I put my arms around her, drew her close.

“Then we need to get through this. If we can’t get through this, what chance is there that anyone else could?” I said. “We can’t allow ourselves to be infected by the hatred that we’ve escaped, that they’ve been born into.”

I thought of Helen picking apples, of the dinners we’d cooked together, all those times we held politics spellbound with our love.

“But still,” she paused, looked away. “This hurts.”

Early last October, weeks after the cease-fire, I attended another wedding. This one was Lebanese, and Helen and I were still together, still very much in love. Our feelings for each another had not become a casualty of the war between our peoples, but I was nervous. The bride’s family members from Lebanon could not come, and the specter of their absence threatened to haunt the ceremony. Despite my best intentions, I could not help feeling like a Jew in enemy territory.

My trepidation was foolish. In the end, the wedding was beautiful, no one talked politics, and at one point a relative of the bride announced that the couple would be making a substantial donation to St. George’s Medical Center, a hospital in Beirut.

The guests applauded passionately. I was one of them, and for a few fleeting moments I felt as if I truly was one of them, without division, just another human experiencing genuine empathy for the suffering of others.

It was a liberating feeling.

But as I write these words, all is not well in the Middle East. The same bellicose rhetoric bounces back and forth. How many more times will we be forced to run this gauntlet of who we are and what we believe?

Another war may come, but for now all that truly matters is what Helen and I see in ourselves when our eyes lock and the rest of the world and all of human history dissolves, when we are filled with the warmth of our bodies and hearts intertwined and it is us, only us, alone in our private universe.

Perhaps, in our relationship, “Killing an Arab” can never just be a song. But there are other, better songs.

By Joshua Gross, who is a public affairs consultant in Washington.