Dragons
Of Lebanon's Past
Emerge For Gemayel Funeral
By Robert Fisk
25 November 2006
The
Independent
Amin
Gemayel wept and swooned in front of us. The tens of thousands of Christians
and Muslims burst into applause before the improvised stage. Gemayel
- a foppish man with little charisma when he was President of Lebanon
- held up his right hand and suddenly became a symbol of nobility, still
swaying on his feet, his left arm supported by the tall, far younger
figure of Saad Hariri. Only two days earlier, Gemayel's MP son, Pierre,
had been blasted to death by gunmen in Beirut; his body still lay in
the Cathedral of St George a few metres from where we were standing.
But nothing became Gemayel like his courage yesterday as he told the
vast mass of Lebanese in front of him that, yes, there would be a second
revolution in this country which would end only when the pro-Syrian
President had been removed.
The knightly St George gave
his name to the great Italianate basilica - yes, he is supposed to have
slain the dragon in Beirut - but Amin Gemayel's bravery was one of the
few moments of humanity on this brightly sunny, politically overcast,
disturbing day. For alas, the dragons that move through the dark underworld
of Lebanon's politics are still alive. One of them, the gaunt and murderous
old militia leader Samir Geagea - he spent 14 years in an underground
prison for blowing up a church - talked ominously of Lebanon's enemies,
international and domestic. "They wanted a confrontation - so be
it," he shouted.
The terrible pain of Lebanon's
body politic was all too evident in the figures silhouetted in the evening
light alongside the bullet-proof box from which Gemayel spoke. Gemayel
himself had lost his son and, in 1982, his president-elect brother Bashir,
whose baby daughter was slaughtered in a bomb explosion during the civil
war.
There was Marwan Hamade,
almost killed by a car bomb explosion in October 2004, and Saad Hariri,
whose father Rafik's murder - in an even bigger car bomb explosion in
Beirut last year - set off the first "revolution" which brought
democracy to Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. And there
was Walid Jumblatt, the eloquent, nihilist Druze leader, whose father
Kemal was murdered by armed men in March of 1977. And Nayla Moawad,
whose president-husband, Rene, was blown to atoms by a bomb in November
of 1989.
They all stood together on
the sad little podium, Pierre's broken body in the basilica behind them,
Rafik's burned corpse in the flowered grave beside them.
But yesterday's funeral bore
some of the attributes of the Roman games, partly, I suspect, because
the informality of Islam has, over the years, brushed off on the Christian
Maronite Church.
Old political enemies embraced
each other beside priests and sweating paramilitary police while the
huge crowds applauded and roared their approval of Messrs Jumblatt and
Hariri and, especially, Dr Geagea, but booed with derision Ali Hassan
Khalil of the Shia Amal party and a sinister Christian ex-militiaman
who once hurled his equally Christian civil war prisoners into the Mediterranean
with concrete tied to their legs. They were, of course, alive at the
time.
Like everything Lebanese
- to misquote Evelyn Waugh - the day's pageantry was very impressive,
but went on far too long. We had to listen to church music, church bells,
Islamic chants, the music of Majida el-Roumi (the new Fairouz) and the
tinny band of the Internal Security Forces as it whump-aad its way through
the Lebanese national anthem against the thump of army helicopters.
There were forests of flags, happily more Lebanese than militia-oriented
and thousands and thousands of Lebanese troops, reservists, gendarmerie,
riot police, interior ministry goons, traffic cops and ISF men.
All these, needless to say,
to safeguard the lives of that most endangered of species, Lebanon's
surviving politicians, from - so most of the crowd assumed - the assassins
of Damascus.
In fact, when the bodies
of Gemayel and his bodyguard, Samir Chartouni, were removed from the
cathedral for burial, there were another hundred heavily armed security
men standing around the coffins. If only, I couldn't help asking myself,
they had been as enthusiastic to protect the occupants of the caskets
when they were alive.
May Chidiac, the Christian
journalist who is a harsh critic of Syria's hegemony of Lebanon and
lost a leg and a hand in the bombing of her own car last year, bravely
gave the crowd a blond, Academy Awards smile.
Watching the great and the
good enter the basilica was a bit like spotting the stars. Grey-haired
Dory Chamoun, whose militia-leader brother, Dany, was assassinated in
1990, along with his wife, Ingrid, and two of their children, Tariq
and Julian. Boutros Harb and Nasib Lahoud (no relation to the hated
President) and Charles Rizk, all of whom would like - heaven knows why
- to be president of Lebanon when Emile Lahoud either finishes his term
in the Baabda palace or is turfed out by the anger of these crowds.
"To Baabda, to Baabda,"
they shrieked. A march on Baabda is often threatened, not least by Dr
Geagea, who does not seem to associate it with the march on Rome. But
it is Lahoud who is now regarded as the unconstitutional ruler of Lebanon.
Posters demanded his dismissal
- a demand made ever more harshly by Hariri and Jumblatt since Gemayel's
murder - and one eloquent banner even addressed the President. "Oh
Caesar of Baabda," it proclaimed, "get the hell out!"
Less of a Caesar, I would have said, than an attendant lord of Damascus.
Geagea was chilling in his
denunciations. "We will not accept that this government shall be
changed for a government of murderers and criminals," he shouted.
And since it is Sayed Hassan Nasrallah of the Shia Hizbollah who has
been abusing the Siniora cabinet as the government of "the US ambassador"
- and since it is the Shia ministers who have withdrawn from this same
cabinet - one could conclude, could one not, that Dr Geagea's "murderers
and criminals" were Shia.
Indeed, dwelling on his bloody
wartime sins, most of which were amnestied, one has to reflect why Geagea's
lads blew up the congregation of the Church of Our Lady of Deliverance
in 1994; the court said that he wanted to persuade Christians that Hizbollah
had committed the crime.
Funny how these things come
back to us. Oddly, Pierre Gemayel's murder has had exactly the same
effect on Christians and Sunni Muslims; it has persuaded many of them
that the Hizbollah, on Syria's behalf, committed the crime. A distressing
thought.
Reaction from the
Middle Eastern press
Al-Safir (Lebanon)
'It looks as if the assassination
of Pierre Gemayel marks the start of a premeditated series of crimes.
It also appears that a new bloody stage has started in Lebanon's modern
history'
Al-Quds (pan-Arab)
'Those who planned and carried
out this assassination were targeting Syria as much as they were targeting
Lebanon. Indeed, they were also targeting the entire Arab region. Syria
is the one that is most harmed by this repugnant crime'
Al-Mustaqbal (Lebanon)
'What kind of future awaits
Lebanon in the presence of parties like Hizbollah and its allies, that
promise the Lebanese a greater Tehran if it captures power, and a lesser
Baghdad if it fails in this?'
Jomhuri-Ye Eslami
(Iran)
'Undoubtedly this assassination
was planned and carried out by the Zionist regime because the Zionists
stand to gain the most from it'
Al-Ba'th (Syria)
'The new Middle East is a
US-Israeli project... Political assassinations... and killings pave
the way for sedition. This sedition leads to chaos, and it is chaos
which allows the realisation of the project'
Milliyet (Turkey)
'The biggest danger is that
the various groups in society will be dragged into civil war'
Al-Arab Al-Alamiyah
(pan-Arab)
"It appears Lebanon
is pre-ordained to stay a nation of tears. The assassination... has
extinguished the glimmer of hope'
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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