Lebanon
One Year After the Israeli Withdrawal
As`ad AbuKhalil
(As`ad AbuKhalil
teaches political science at California State University, Stanislaus,
and is a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.)
May 29, 2001
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Further
Info
For deep
background on Syria's role in Lebanon, see Hisham Milhem, Syria
Between Two Transitions, in Middle East Report 203 (Spring
1997). The article is accessible online. |
Quiet
has apparently returned to the Lebanese-Israeli border after violent
incidents last week marked the first anniversary of Israel's forced
withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Israeli forces shot two Lebanese
men who were throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers across the border,
and downed a small plane flying into Israeli airspace from Lebanon.
Last year, the world, and the US in particular, heaped praise (and
in the US case, additional aid) on Israel for ending an occupation
that had lasted, in effect, for more than 24 years. But Israel left
southern Lebanon the way it has (not) left the West Bank: more impoverished
and more devastated than when it "arrived." Hizballah's
vow to continue fighting for Israeli evacuation of the disputed
Shebaa Farms area and the return of Hizballah leaders imprisoned
in Israel is only one cause of ongoing Israeli-Lebanese tension.
Israeli leaders used to assert that Lebanon would certainly be the
second Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. But the
bitter taste of the Israeli occupation remains: now, it can safely
be said that Lebanon will be the last Arab country ever to sign
a peace treaty with Israel. Many of Israel's former allies on the
Christian right wing have not forgiven Israel for what they perceive
as the abandonment of their cause. Even Antoine Lahad, former commander
of Israel's proxy militia, the disbanded South Lebanon Army (SLA),
revealed in a recent interview his anger at the "Israeli betrayal."
Just over a year since a prolonged guerrilla campaign compelled Israel's
withdrawal -- albeit incomplete -- from the south, internal and regional
tensions weigh heavily on the political system and on ordinary Lebanese.
Lebanon's political elite has written the obituary of the Lebanese
civil war more than once, officially in the 1989 al-Ta'if agreement,
which reoriented Lebanon toward the Arab world, especially Syria.
Yet the underlying conflicts that produced Lebanese civil wars in
the twentieth century, if not the nineteenth, remain unresolved. The
al-Ta'if constitutional reforms juridically established what had previously
been an informal understanding that Muslims and Christians are equal
in number in Lebanon. Lebanon is still governed according to this
myth. BILLIONAIRE
PRIME MINISTER
The post-war
era in Lebanon has largely been shaped by the personality, ambition
and financial interests of billionaire Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri,
the Silvio Berlusconi of Lebanon. Hariri made his money as a construction
mogul in Saudi Arabia, and still holds Saudi citizenship. He enjoys
the enhanced powers granted to the Sunni Muslim prime minister by
the al-Ta'if constitutional reforms. Christian leaders have raised
a hue and cry over what they see as the reduction of the powers
of the presidency -- Lebanon's highest office -- which is reserved
for Maronite Christians. But Hariri's remarkable influence stems
more from his great personal wealth and his network of alliances
and connections, which he has used not only to enhance his own standing
but to punish his rivals. Before returning to the prime ministership
in 2000, he halted many "rebuilding" projects and orchestrated
a daily drumbeat of economic doom and gloom in the media to undermine
the government of former prime minister Salim al-Huss. These moves
basically spread the message that economic misery would not end
as long as Hariri was kept out of the premier's office.
Hariri's campaign reinforced the power of money in Lebanese politics.
The summer 2000 elections were probably the most financially corrupt
in the modern history of the country. Foreign media reported the disbursement
of large sums to buy votes for political neophytes whose constituents
barely know who their new representatives are. As one poor Shiite
voter said, "If [Hariri's people] pay me, I will show up and
do what they want." Estimates vary, but Hariri certainly spent
in excess of $100 million on his glitzy, overpowering campaign, waged
mostly in the media. Glossy, oversized posters printed at high cost
in France covered edifices of buildings. Hariri's honest but weak
rival al-Huss, who lost his seat, said that since the construction
magnate now controls (directly or indirectly) all but one of Lebanon's
daily newspapers, campaigning against him was extremely difficult.
On election day, Hariri's Beirut lists swept the entire three-tier
districts. The role of the Syrian government was less heavy-handed
than in past elections, as Bashar al-Asad had just assumed the presidency
in the wake of the death of his father, and was likely consumed with
internal matters. The Syrian intelligence apparatus in Lebanon, headed
by Ghazi Kanaan, was active in supporting and opposing various candidates.
But Kanaan did not succeed, for instance, in his efforts to unseat
or weaken Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. REBUILDING
FOR WHOM (AND AT WHAT PRICE)?
Hariri's reform
plans have been simple and clear: to recreate pre-war Lebanon, flaws
and all. But it is precisely the pre-war concentration of banks,
hotels and service industries in Beirut that helped to generate
the country-wide resentment which propelled civil strife. In present-day
Beirut, largely uninhabited luxury apartment buildings dot the shoreline,
but one looks in vain for subsidized housing for the poor. Hariri
took out huge loans -- increasing Lebanon's foreign debt from $3
billion to around $30 billion -- largely to finance high-profile
accommodations for Lebanon's trickle of tourists. Beirut's new Olympic
stadium, expanded and modernized airport and lavish conference center
do little for the average Lebanese. The rebuilding effort also aims
to recapture for Lebanon its pre-war status as the casino, playground
and brothel of the region. But wealthy Gulf Arabs now have European
and US destinations, and less affluent Gulf Arabs may prefer Syria,
which offers cheaper, less extravagant versions of Lebanese entertainment
and pleasures.
Hariri has been an unabashed advocate of privatization (as was his
predecessor al-Huss), and has given ownership of the Lebanese postal
service to a Canadian company which charges DHL prices for domestic
mail. The government will be privatizing the water and electric companies,
though these experiments have been abysmal for Greater London. Two
years ago, Microsoft representatives gave the government the Arabic
text of a new copyright law for the Lebanese parliament. Lebanese
officials were warned by the US Embassy that foreign investment would
not arrive without the law's passage. The parliament did what it was
told, causing the prices of software and CDs to skyrocket beyond the
reach of all but the ultra-rich. Inflation has affected consumer staples,
as well: Hariri advised those complaining about increasing poverty
to repair their old shoes, instead of buying new ones. Of course,
Hariri does not run Lebanon by himself, as much as he tries.
CONTENDING
WITH NEIGHBORS
A prime source
of headaches for the country is that Israel has not really left.
Not only has Israel continued to violate Lebanese airspace and bomb
targets deep into the heartland, but Israeli troops still occupy
the Shebaa Farms area, which the Lebanese government maintains is
part of south Lebanon. Following last year's withdrawal, the UN,
under pressure from the US, asserted that Israel had completed its
obligation to leave Lebanese territories according to UN Security
Council resolution 425, and that the Shebaa Farms are Syrian, not
Lebanese territory. It is odd that the UN accepts the US-Israeli
position on the disputed territory, although Syria itself asserts
that it is indeed Lebanese. The UN argues that Lebanon is unable
to present documentation of the 1951 Lebanese-Syrian "oral
agreement" in which Syria says it ceded the farms. But no one
disputes that the Shebaa villagers who worked the farms prior to
their occupation by Israel in 1967 live in Lebanon. It is also curious
that the UN has treated the occupation of what it says are Syrian
lands so casually. Of course, with its generous assertion of Lebanese
sovereignty over the farms, the Syrian government retains what is
called the "Lebanon card" in Arab-Israeli diplomacy.
The Lebanese government always has to contend with Syrian influence:
30,000 or more Syrian troops, and many Syrian workers, are in Lebanon.
In the 1970s, Syrian officers and soldiers engaged in notorious acts
of thuggery and criminality. Today the military presence is felt mostly
in the political arena. In April, Hariri displeased his Syrian allies
by allowing his main daily mouthpiece al-Mustaqbal to question the
wisdom of Hizballah's most recent attack on Israeli soldiers in the
Shebaa Farms. Syrian President Bashar al-Asad canceled a scheduled
meeting with Hariri, receiving instead his Greek Orthodox deputy,
Isam Faris, the other billionaire in the cabinet (who contributed
to George W. Bush's campaign). Asad did not meet with Hariri until
May 22, apparently feeling the need for a united front against Israel
as the withdrawal's anniversary approached.
There are substantive Lebanese grievances against the Syrian intervention
in Lebanon; many would simply like Syria to produce a timetable for
withdrawal or to redeploy its forces outside of the environs of Beirut.
Southern Lebanese farmers complain that the influx of cheap produce
from Syria undercuts their livelihood. But many complaints of the
"anti-Syrian" camp are xenophobic. Led by Jubran Tuwayni
of the Beirut daily an-Nahar, "anti-Syrian" analysts have
highly exaggerated the number of Syrian workers in Lebanon in order
to blame them (and, by extension, Syria) for the worsening economic
conditions in the country. Syrian workers are the gypsies of Lebanon
-- many sleep in parking lots or abandoned cars -- but the right continues
to insist that they are stealing the country's wealth.
SECTARIAN
TENSIONS
Hariri also
needs to navigate between various interests in a small republic
teeming with sects and political bosses. Last September, Maronite
patriarch Nasrallah Sfayr began vocally demanding that Syria commit
to withdrawal from Lebanon -- a demand which had previously been
the domain of the exiled right-wing General Michel Aoun and his
cohort. Sfayr does not necessarily speak out of a firm attachment
to the sovereignty of Lebanon, as he was largely silent about the
Israeli occupation, and recurrently pleads for judicial mercy for
ex-SLA militiamen charged with crimes. Many members of the Maronite
establishment still harbor the fantasy of restoring Maronite political
hegemony in a country that is over 70 percent Muslim. The patriarch
is emboldened in his pronouncements by the change in government
in Syria; critics of the Syrian presence seem confident that Bashar
will not resort to the tactics of his father in Lebanon. Complicating
the constantly confusing political map of Lebanon is the emergence
of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt (formerly the leader of the Lebanese
left) as a critic of the Syrian presence. Jumblatt claims to argue
on principle, though his new stance has served his electoral interests,
since his districts now have a heavy Christian presence. He can
no longer win elections with only Druze votes, as he did in 1992.
On May 22, however, Jumblatt also met with Asad, and emerged from
the meeting talking about Arab unity.
Still,
the recent intensification of Lebanese sectarian tensions paints
a grim picture. In April, the commemoration of the anniversary of
the Lebanese civil war turned into a sectarian spectacle. The increasingly
assertive Maronite-oriented right wing, hoping to reduce Muslim
political power, highlighted the imperative of Syrian withdrawal
from Lebanon, prompting the government to ban public demonstrations.
Nevertheless, members of the cultish Sunni movement known colloquially
as al-Ahbash took to the streets brandishing swords, hammers and
axes, sending a sectarian message to the right. The constitutional
reforms of al-Ta'if, which ostensibly ended the civil war, may have
only provided a respite from bloody sectarianism. They failed to
address the roots of the conflict: a political system which cannot
guarantee democratic freedoms and constitutional equality, as long
as it adheres to obsolete arithmetic formulas for the distribution
of power according to sectarian affiliations. It is hazardous to
predict the future of Lebanon, given the multiplicity of domestic
and regional variables to which Lebanon has been held hostage for
decades. But it is safe to say that the last chapter in the centuries-old
conflict in Lebanon has not yet been written. If the Syrians do
withdraw, many fear that Lebanese feuds could easily be reignited.
The Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon, which already suffers
cruel treatment at the hands of the Syrian and Lebanese governments,
could serve as a convenient scapegoat.
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