One Month On
In Lebanon
By Laurie King-Irani
14 March, 2005
The
Electronic Intifada
Once
again, it seems that US President George W. Bush has declared victory
and "mission accomplished" far too early: The heralded "Lebanese
Spring," which Washington's PR experts quickly dubbed the "Cedar
Revolution," has not been a slam-dunk validation of US Middle East
policies after all. Just ten days after stepping down from the position
of prime minister in President Emile Lahoud's government, Omar Karameh
is about to step back into place again.
Meanwhile, hundreds
of Syrians took to the streets of Damascus declaring their loyalty to
President Bashar al-Assad, and most significant of all, Hizbullah's
immense demonstration last week was a clear indicator that Lebanon's
fractious, shape-shifting Opposition had a formidable rival in the highly
fluid field of Lebanese politics. Anyone who feels shocked, disappointed,
or glum about these events should remember a wise saying of Lebanon's
own Khalil Gibran: "Your pain is nothing but the breaking of the
shell that encloses your understanding."
Despite grim assessments
to the contrary, something new, amazing, and precious is indeed being
born in Lebanon: an indigenous, responsive, truly plural form of democracy
that is not Made in the USA, but rather, forged out of a long and difficult
Arab experience. Apparently, many thought this would be a Caesarian
delivery under strong anaesthia. Wrong: it will be a painful, protracted,
and loud labor and birth. Although considerable debate is now heard
inside and outside Lebanon about this baby's parentage, ideological
DNA tests do not indicate that George W. Bush is the father.
Since the Lebanese
are about to become parents, the very least they can do is grow up and
assume responsibility for what they are bringing into the world. And
they must also be congratulated for handling the first stages of labor
so admirably: in one month since the criminal assassination of former
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and nearly twenty others, all protests have
been non-violent.
Lebanese from all
backgrounds have voiced their views and aims in public, and all have
expressed hopes for a new order based on democratic and fair principles.
The demonstrations in Martyrs Square, as well as last Tuesday's demonstration,
have all been examples of people power and indices of grass roots sentiments.
They may not be in harmony, but they are all Lebanese.
Debate and dissent
are the heart and soul of democratic politicking, and freedom of expression
and assembly are keystones of any democratic society. Yet the foundation
of a democratic order is the rule of law and a judicial system capable
of providing equal access to justice while denying impunity to the powerful.
Without equality and justice, freedom is meaningless, even dangerous.
The Bush administration's
notions of democracy sounds like fitnah, the Arabic term for a complete
breakdown of social and political order. George W. Bush, a single-minded
cowboy purveying double-standards in the Middle East, has already finagled
the US government, the international community, and the UN into scorching
one Arab country, Iraq, with his "untamed fires of freedom."
Neither Lebanon nor Syria wishes to be the next to be singed.
Having survived
the conflagration of Lebanon's 1975-1990 war, a multi-dimensional conflict
that took more than 150,000 lives and saw the US, Israel, Iran, and
Syria embroiled in the bloodletting, few Lebanese embrace or trust George
W. Bush's intentions. Claims that Lebanon cannot have elections while
under Syrian occupation sound surreal, even hilarious, when juxtaposed
with the fact that the Bush administration pressed for elections to
proceed in Iraq and Palestine under conditions of military occupation.
UN Security Council
resolutions of four decades' standing, particularly UNSC resolutions
242 and 338 concerning a legal settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, are ignored while those of recent vintage (UNSC resolution
1559) are venerated as Holy Scripture. The US president's sudden interest
in Lebanese human rights raises suspicions throughout the region, while
spotlighting US neglect of Israel's ongoing, massive and systematic
human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza, which Human Rights Watch
found to have worsened considerably over the last year.
Lebanon may be,
as historian Kamal Salibi wrote, a "house of many mansions,"
but it is trying to be one state, soveriegn and free again. Lebanon
knows what it is: a multiethnic and multisectarian polity facing the
challenge of true power-sharing. Israel has not yet (at the official
level) woken up to the undeniable fact that it is, too. Though no one
in Washington wants to admit it, the criteria now applied to Iraq, Syria,
and Lebanon, if applied to Israel, would reveal that the Jewish state
is in dire need of human rights oversight and democratization. Israel's
political system is founded upon institutionalized discrimination; in
the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli rule is functionally indistinguishable
from Apartheid.
Lebanon's coming
changes will not take place in a calm and stable context, or in a vacuum.
Indeed, Lebanon's political revitalization may have a significant impact
on the hegemonic political discourses in Israel and raise very troubling
and long-overdue questions about Zionism as a system of governance and
a machine of occupation and grave human rights violations.
Maybe this is what
scares many, Arabs and Israelis alike, upon realizing that Lebanon is
stirring from its long and fitful post-war slumber. Just as "people
power" in Lebanon would shake the foundations of states like Eypt
and Saudi Arabia, indigenous democratization efforts in Lebanon may
well make the two-state solution in Israel, or the current exclusivist
and abusive one state solution, look quite out of place, hypocritical,
or simply wrong.
Were the US truly
concerned about attaining democracy and human rights in the Middle East,
there is no better place to start than in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza Strip, where US funds, diplomatic support, and weaponry ensure
that everyday life is a living hell for millions of innocent people.
As long as clear
double standards obtain in the Middle East, the new political developments
in Lebanon will be viewed with doubt throughout the Arab and Islamic
world, where suspicions are growing by the day that the Lebanese are
motivated not by indigenous, experienced emotions and autonomous choices,
but rather, by a US imperialist plot to remove regimes that Washington
does not like while protecting others, just as abusive, that are allied
with America.
But those who angrily
mount a knee-jerk defense of Damascus simply because the US is against
Syria, or out of an understandable outrage at US hypocrisy, should listen
carefully to all the contending voices in Lebanon. No one in Lebanon
wishes to see the destruction of Syria; even those who have publicly
praised Syria also say clearly that it is time for Syrian troops to
leave.
Some Western media
have given the false impression that those calling for Syrian intervention
to cease are all of one confessional or ideological membership, and
that the Martyrs Square demonstrations are tantamount to full support
of US policies. Since the so-called "Opposition" in Lebanon
is neither cohesive nor organized, it is hard to discern who truly speaks
for it, or what, indeed, it truly wants.
The thousands of
people demonstrating in Martyrs Square do not, thus far, articulate
with a clear and consistent leadership. So, while everyone in Lebanon
has been speaking out freely and fearlessly over the last month, the
biggest difference within Lebanon now is between those who are well-organized,
like Hizbullah, and those who are not.
When I lived and
taught in Lebanon in the mid-1990s, I was astounded by the breadth of
programming on television: everything from call-in talk shows about
domestic violence to the rights of Gays and Lesbians, to video footage
of Hizbullah's latest attacks on occupying Israeli forces in the south
overlaid with Quranic recitations. I remarked in class one day that
there was probably more diversity of opinion expressed on Lebanese television
than in the US. A student said, "Yes, in Lebanon, everything is
permitted, but nothing is possible."
Maybe this cynical
reply will have to be reviewed in light of the last month's events.
Freely discussing various ideas and beliefs is one thing. Politicking
in public for them is quite another, but the Lebanese are now actively
politicking and thereby expanding the definition of the possible.
Lebanon is less
in need of personal liberties and freedoms than it is in need of public
accountability and a renewed and reformed state structure. The judiciary
requires special attention. As long as 17000 disappeared people are
still missing and their families denied emotional and legal closure,
there will never be trust in Lebanon, and without trust, a democratic
order will not survive long. The Syrians have been "babysitters"
of the Lebanese since the war ended in 1990, and given that the war
did not break out again, they deserve credit. Up until recently, the
Lebanese have needed them because they have not wanted to deal with
the baggage of the war years.
Thus far, considering
that virtually all demonstrations have been conducted in a civil fashion,
it is clear that the Lebanese are showing real political maturity in
a very emotional and nebulous situation. As they prepare to mark one
month since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri,
they could best honor his memory by pledging never again to destroy
Beirut through internally generated or externally manipulated conflicts.
EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani, a social anthropologist and former
editor of Middle East Report, lived and worked in Beirut from 1993-1998.