Suicidal No-War No-Peace Status Quo in Beirut.
Dr. Joseph Hitti
December 21, 2008
The Siniora-Sleiman regime in Beirut yesterday (Dec. 19, 2008) notified State Department envoy Christopher Hill that Lebanon not only refuses to engage Israel in indirect negotiations, before or after Obama is vested in the White House, but that Lebanon will NEVER negotiate with Israel unless these negotiations are part of a "comprehensive settlement". For those like me who grew up in the Middle East, the term "comprehensive settlement" in essence means NEVER. For the past 70 or so years, the only advances made in the Arab-Israeli conflict were those which were NOT part of a comprehensive settlement, but rather those that resulted from bilateral negotiations, such as the Camp David Accords, the Oslo and Madrid Agreements, the Jordanian-Israeli peace and normalization treaty, and even the 1974 ceasefire agreement between Syria and Israel.
In other words, the Lebanese government has officially declared – and apparently has decided – that it wants Lebanon to remain in the no-war, no-peace limbo of the past 40 years, and to side with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in rejecting the idea of a bilaterally-reached peace between Lebanon and Israel. The Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora is effectively slapping its patrons - the US and Europe – in the face, even as it continuously begs the West for money, assistance, weapons and whatever else to keep alive this otherwise failed state called Lebanon.
The implications of this dumb rejection of negotiations are very serious, and indeed they bring to the surface the contradictions and weaknesses of the so-called "pro-American" camp in Lebanon, particularly as Lebanon contemplates parliamentary elections this coming June whose outcome could very well decisively capsize Lebanon into the Iranian-Hezbollah camp in a best-case scenario or total chaos in a worst-case scenario.
There is a logic to being "pro-American" or "anti-Syrian" or "anti-Hezbollah" that the professed adherents to this "March 14" camp seem to be unaware of, and which the Americans have not pushed hard on its Lebanese clients since the present divide in Lebanese politics came to being in 2005 after the Hariri assassination. That logic is that if you are anti-Syrian, anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah, then you must be pro-peace, pro-negotiations, pro-settlement, and at some level pro-the idea of the ultimate acceptance of Israel as a fait accompli and its recognition as a negotiating partner. As the past 40 years have shown again and again in Lebanon, the pretense of being at the same time neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Syrian – or neither pro-war nor pro-peace, or however way one chooses to label the two camps - is untenable. The Palestinian example is a living one. The schizophrenia in Palestinian politics about how to deal with Israel has led to the present stalemate and split in the Palestinian body politic. The reason why the decision by Egypt and Jordan to make peace with Israel did not degenerate into the chaos of Palestine or Lebanon is that, on the whole, Egypt and Jordan decided to be in the pro-peace camp and not simply sit on the fence. Syria, on the other hand, has decided to be in the pro-war camp and it too has been fairly stable. But Lebanon is a fence-sitter par excellence. Lebanon motto may well be "be nothing" in the belief that being nothing can make you something.
But Lebanon must decide. It cannot keep trying to placate the inevitable peace negotiations and at the same time pretend to be pro-peace. It stands to lose big time, more so than it thinks it has already lost. Lebanon has some very serious structural problems, many of which are not related to the Israeli-Arab conflict, but which that conflict has put on the back burner or sometimes exacerbated. Lebanon continues to be a failed state where corruption is rampant, basic services are inadequate, the national debt is 10 times the GDP, the borders are open to weapons and terrorism smuggling, periods of relative calm are punctuated by brief but devastating conflicts, the so-called Lebanese democracy is antiquated, dysfunctional, and really only skin-deep as Lebanese identity is a thin layer overlaying deep strata of religious, tribal, and political identities. In sum, Lebanon could explode, split or disappear at any moment if long term solutions do not begin to be addressed and take shape.
Here is a sampling of the contradictions and implications in Lebanon´s continued decision to reject negotiations with Israel:
Lebanon will remain unstable, because in 70 years no one has ever managed to compel the parties to negotiate a "comprehensive" settlement. Indications from the present international conditions are that we are drifting farther and farther from an environment where such a settlement is possible.
The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, numbering some 500,000, have more time to continue integrating into Lebanese society (under pressure from the West and Arab countries, on humanitarian grounds but also for more insidious political reasons) and ultimately their descendants will never want to return to Palestine. The "Right of Return" is being squandered as time goes by. As Lebanon´s Christians and secular constituents continue to emigrate in droves, Lebanon´s demographic balance will continue to erode towards further Arabization and Islamization, and the Swiss model of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, Lebanon will continue to fade until such time as an overwhelmingly Islamized Lebanon will have no reason to exist as an independent distinct entity and will ultimately be merged into Syria or some other Islamic entity in the neighborhood.
In Lebanon, all the parties disagree literally on everything all the time. The political process is, by definition, a stalemate, punctuated by occasional breakthroughs when the West or wealthy Arabs pump in some money to buy this or that party´s acquiescence to a lull, such as happened in Doha last May. The only thing they all agree on is, obviously the easiest and most comfortable position, to be anti-Israel and blame Israel for everything that happens in Lebanon. For example, the Israeli enemy is behind the rationing of electricity because Hezbollah and Jumblatt have to pilfer the Treasury while "resisting" Israel. On top of the paranoia, there is also an element of ignorance: yesterday, a visiting American teenager who parked his camera-equipped bicycle (from which he innocently beamed his trip to his blog) on the street as he visited his girlfriend, was arrested. The incident sent the entire Lebanese state into a commotion on the presumption that an "Israeli spy" was caught. Therefore, the starting premise to any political position is that Israel is the enemy and the enemy wants you ill.
But the constitutive rejection by Lebanon´s political establishment of negotiations with Israel is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy: Israel is a belligerent enemy that does not want peace, so Lebanon´s smart politicians tell their people, and therefore we don´t make peace with an enemy that does not want peace, and so on and so forth. In other words, Lebanon´s politicians are accomplices of the very enemy they constantly bash. They may not be smart enough to imagine challenging their enemy in peace or defeating their enemy in negotiations. But the real reason is that they are afraid of breaking the taboo, even if their brothers the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, and increasingly the Tunisians, the Moroccans, the Qataris and the Emirates have all overcome that complex. Again, as I called it in a previous opinion, the Lebanese insist on being the village idiots of the Arab world when it comes to Israel.
By rejecting peace with Israel, Lebanon´s politicians are giving Israel exactly what it wants: Time. Time has been Israel´s best friend: The longer it took the Palestinians to recognize Israel, the more time Israel had to build settlements and encroach on Palestinian land. As long as there are no negotiated resolutions, Israel can keep violating Lebanese airspace or controlling useless strips of border real estate with Lebanon, or building settlements, de-palestinizing the Gaza strip and the West bank, and creating more and more "facts on the ground" in Palestine that keep pushing an ultimate solution further and further away.
Lebanon will remain the scapegoat and the hostage of the conflict where otherwise impotent coward Arabs will seek to compensate for their inadequacy in world diplomacy by leaving Lebanon in a maelstrom of despair and resistance and empty promises.
More immediately, the Lebanese government is in fact saying that it agrees with Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, even as this consensus government includes the March 14 musketeers of "Sovereignty, Independence and Freedom" who claim to be anti-Syrian, anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran.
Finally, and more dangerously, the US and the West have sponsored all attempts at a solution in the past, and had hoped that by helping Lebanon come out from the Syrian Gulag, Lebanon will become an example of peacemaking, as much as it is supposedly an example of democracy. The West had hoped that Lebanon may be the next Arab country to normalize with Israel and show the way to peace. But the idiotic stubbornness of Sleiman and Siniora, along with their Hezbollah and March 14 pile of dung allies, is jeopardizing that support and putting Lebanon on a very dangerous course. The risk is that the US and the West will change their minds. They may come to the same conclusion that many Lebanese themselves already have: Lebanon is a failed state that cannot save itself, so why invest in trying to setting it on a straight path. Rescuing Lebanon is indeed like rescuing a drowning man: The more you try, the more it sinks and takes you with it. The current support to Lebanon is not going to last.
Particularly to the simpletons of the so-called Cedars Revolution, who are supportive of the Siniora-Sleiman regime and its pro-Hezbollah stances vis-à-vis Syria and Hezbollah´s rejection of negotiations with Israel, the US will have to change its course on Lebanon. If, after helping Lebanon get rid of the Syrian occupation, the "pro-American" Siniora, Hariri, Gemayel, Sleiman, Geagea, Jumblatt horde does not take a strong stance in favor of negotiations with Israel and end the state of war between Lebanon and its southern neighbor, even at the risk of conflict with Hezbollah, then the Americans will feel betrayed and in a dead-end. As it did in the 1970s, the US – particularly under an Obama presidency and a Clinton at State Department – will then turn to its enemies to try for a breakthrough. As it did in the 1970s, the US may well accept a long term modus vivendi with Syria and Hezbollah, because the US may feel that it is only through appeasement that they can placate the anti-peace camp. For Lebanon, this necessarily will mean a return of Syrian hegemony under American sponsorship, no matter what Christopher Hill and other State Department and US foreign policymakers keep telling the slow-witted Lebanese. Clinton and Obama are very very likely to reverse the Bush stance with Syria and re-recruit Syria to take a stab at "stabilizing" Lebanon and muzzling Hezbollah. For the US, this may, yet again, be its only path to a solution. For the Lebanese, this may be, yet again, their way of committing mass suicide.
Then again, why worry about it? Right now, it is 7:00 PM in Beirut. The "government" electricity just went out (there is still rationing after 20 years of the official end of hostilities), and the local crony of the local politician to whom we pay a second electric bill, turned his generator on. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Defense Minister just bought 10 Mig 90 jet fighter planes from Russia. A state that can´t even provide running water and electricity to its people, that keeps begging the world for everything, has no business building arsenals. What enemy that hasn´t invaded, occupied and destroyed Lebanon a million times over is Lebanon going to stand up to with 10 jet fighter planes? Lebanon should go back to the formula that secured its success and prosperity in the 19502 and 1960s: It should make peace, declare its neutrality and, for real this time, become the Switzerland of the Middle East.
In other words, the Lebanese government has officially declared – and apparently has decided – that it wants Lebanon to remain in the no-war, no-peace limbo of the past 40 years, and to side with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in rejecting the idea of a bilaterally-reached peace between Lebanon and Israel. The Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora is effectively slapping its patrons - the US and Europe – in the face, even as it continuously begs the West for money, assistance, weapons and whatever else to keep alive this otherwise failed state called Lebanon.
The implications of this dumb rejection of negotiations are very serious, and indeed they bring to the surface the contradictions and weaknesses of the so-called "pro-American" camp in Lebanon, particularly as Lebanon contemplates parliamentary elections this coming June whose outcome could very well decisively capsize Lebanon into the Iranian-Hezbollah camp in a best-case scenario or total chaos in a worst-case scenario.
There is a logic to being "pro-American" or "anti-Syrian" or "anti-Hezbollah" that the professed adherents to this "March 14" camp seem to be unaware of, and which the Americans have not pushed hard on its Lebanese clients since the present divide in Lebanese politics came to being in 2005 after the Hariri assassination. That logic is that if you are anti-Syrian, anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah, then you must be pro-peace, pro-negotiations, pro-settlement, and at some level pro-the idea of the ultimate acceptance of Israel as a fait accompli and its recognition as a negotiating partner. As the past 40 years have shown again and again in Lebanon, the pretense of being at the same time neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Syrian – or neither pro-war nor pro-peace, or however way one chooses to label the two camps - is untenable. The Palestinian example is a living one. The schizophrenia in Palestinian politics about how to deal with Israel has led to the present stalemate and split in the Palestinian body politic. The reason why the decision by Egypt and Jordan to make peace with Israel did not degenerate into the chaos of Palestine or Lebanon is that, on the whole, Egypt and Jordan decided to be in the pro-peace camp and not simply sit on the fence. Syria, on the other hand, has decided to be in the pro-war camp and it too has been fairly stable. But Lebanon is a fence-sitter par excellence. Lebanon motto may well be "be nothing" in the belief that being nothing can make you something.
But Lebanon must decide. It cannot keep trying to placate the inevitable peace negotiations and at the same time pretend to be pro-peace. It stands to lose big time, more so than it thinks it has already lost. Lebanon has some very serious structural problems, many of which are not related to the Israeli-Arab conflict, but which that conflict has put on the back burner or sometimes exacerbated. Lebanon continues to be a failed state where corruption is rampant, basic services are inadequate, the national debt is 10 times the GDP, the borders are open to weapons and terrorism smuggling, periods of relative calm are punctuated by brief but devastating conflicts, the so-called Lebanese democracy is antiquated, dysfunctional, and really only skin-deep as Lebanese identity is a thin layer overlaying deep strata of religious, tribal, and political identities. In sum, Lebanon could explode, split or disappear at any moment if long term solutions do not begin to be addressed and take shape.
Here is a sampling of the contradictions and implications in Lebanon´s continued decision to reject negotiations with Israel:
Lebanon will remain unstable, because in 70 years no one has ever managed to compel the parties to negotiate a "comprehensive" settlement. Indications from the present international conditions are that we are drifting farther and farther from an environment where such a settlement is possible.
The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, numbering some 500,000, have more time to continue integrating into Lebanese society (under pressure from the West and Arab countries, on humanitarian grounds but also for more insidious political reasons) and ultimately their descendants will never want to return to Palestine. The "Right of Return" is being squandered as time goes by. As Lebanon´s Christians and secular constituents continue to emigrate in droves, Lebanon´s demographic balance will continue to erode towards further Arabization and Islamization, and the Swiss model of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, Lebanon will continue to fade until such time as an overwhelmingly Islamized Lebanon will have no reason to exist as an independent distinct entity and will ultimately be merged into Syria or some other Islamic entity in the neighborhood.
In Lebanon, all the parties disagree literally on everything all the time. The political process is, by definition, a stalemate, punctuated by occasional breakthroughs when the West or wealthy Arabs pump in some money to buy this or that party´s acquiescence to a lull, such as happened in Doha last May. The only thing they all agree on is, obviously the easiest and most comfortable position, to be anti-Israel and blame Israel for everything that happens in Lebanon. For example, the Israeli enemy is behind the rationing of electricity because Hezbollah and Jumblatt have to pilfer the Treasury while "resisting" Israel. On top of the paranoia, there is also an element of ignorance: yesterday, a visiting American teenager who parked his camera-equipped bicycle (from which he innocently beamed his trip to his blog) on the street as he visited his girlfriend, was arrested. The incident sent the entire Lebanese state into a commotion on the presumption that an "Israeli spy" was caught. Therefore, the starting premise to any political position is that Israel is the enemy and the enemy wants you ill.
But the constitutive rejection by Lebanon´s political establishment of negotiations with Israel is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy: Israel is a belligerent enemy that does not want peace, so Lebanon´s smart politicians tell their people, and therefore we don´t make peace with an enemy that does not want peace, and so on and so forth. In other words, Lebanon´s politicians are accomplices of the very enemy they constantly bash. They may not be smart enough to imagine challenging their enemy in peace or defeating their enemy in negotiations. But the real reason is that they are afraid of breaking the taboo, even if their brothers the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, and increasingly the Tunisians, the Moroccans, the Qataris and the Emirates have all overcome that complex. Again, as I called it in a previous opinion, the Lebanese insist on being the village idiots of the Arab world when it comes to Israel.
By rejecting peace with Israel, Lebanon´s politicians are giving Israel exactly what it wants: Time. Time has been Israel´s best friend: The longer it took the Palestinians to recognize Israel, the more time Israel had to build settlements and encroach on Palestinian land. As long as there are no negotiated resolutions, Israel can keep violating Lebanese airspace or controlling useless strips of border real estate with Lebanon, or building settlements, de-palestinizing the Gaza strip and the West bank, and creating more and more "facts on the ground" in Palestine that keep pushing an ultimate solution further and further away.
Lebanon will remain the scapegoat and the hostage of the conflict where otherwise impotent coward Arabs will seek to compensate for their inadequacy in world diplomacy by leaving Lebanon in a maelstrom of despair and resistance and empty promises.
More immediately, the Lebanese government is in fact saying that it agrees with Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, even as this consensus government includes the March 14 musketeers of "Sovereignty, Independence and Freedom" who claim to be anti-Syrian, anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran.
Finally, and more dangerously, the US and the West have sponsored all attempts at a solution in the past, and had hoped that by helping Lebanon come out from the Syrian Gulag, Lebanon will become an example of peacemaking, as much as it is supposedly an example of democracy. The West had hoped that Lebanon may be the next Arab country to normalize with Israel and show the way to peace. But the idiotic stubbornness of Sleiman and Siniora, along with their Hezbollah and March 14 pile of dung allies, is jeopardizing that support and putting Lebanon on a very dangerous course. The risk is that the US and the West will change their minds. They may come to the same conclusion that many Lebanese themselves already have: Lebanon is a failed state that cannot save itself, so why invest in trying to setting it on a straight path. Rescuing Lebanon is indeed like rescuing a drowning man: The more you try, the more it sinks and takes you with it. The current support to Lebanon is not going to last.
Particularly to the simpletons of the so-called Cedars Revolution, who are supportive of the Siniora-Sleiman regime and its pro-Hezbollah stances vis-à-vis Syria and Hezbollah´s rejection of negotiations with Israel, the US will have to change its course on Lebanon. If, after helping Lebanon get rid of the Syrian occupation, the "pro-American" Siniora, Hariri, Gemayel, Sleiman, Geagea, Jumblatt horde does not take a strong stance in favor of negotiations with Israel and end the state of war between Lebanon and its southern neighbor, even at the risk of conflict with Hezbollah, then the Americans will feel betrayed and in a dead-end. As it did in the 1970s, the US – particularly under an Obama presidency and a Clinton at State Department – will then turn to its enemies to try for a breakthrough. As it did in the 1970s, the US may well accept a long term modus vivendi with Syria and Hezbollah, because the US may feel that it is only through appeasement that they can placate the anti-peace camp. For Lebanon, this necessarily will mean a return of Syrian hegemony under American sponsorship, no matter what Christopher Hill and other State Department and US foreign policymakers keep telling the slow-witted Lebanese. Clinton and Obama are very very likely to reverse the Bush stance with Syria and re-recruit Syria to take a stab at "stabilizing" Lebanon and muzzling Hezbollah. For the US, this may, yet again, be its only path to a solution. For the Lebanese, this may be, yet again, their way of committing mass suicide.
Then again, why worry about it? Right now, it is 7:00 PM in Beirut. The "government" electricity just went out (there is still rationing after 20 years of the official end of hostilities), and the local crony of the local politician to whom we pay a second electric bill, turned his generator on. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Defense Minister just bought 10 Mig 90 jet fighter planes from Russia. A state that can´t even provide running water and electricity to its people, that keeps begging the world for everything, has no business building arsenals. What enemy that hasn´t invaded, occupied and destroyed Lebanon a million times over is Lebanon going to stand up to with 10 jet fighter planes? Lebanon should go back to the formula that secured its success and prosperity in the 19502 and 1960s: It should make peace, declare its neutrality and, for real this time, become the Switzerland of the Middle East.
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