Tensions have been rising on the Israel-Lebanon border. Days before Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Washington at the end of last month – his first official visit to the United States – Israel concluded military exercises just across the border. Code-named “Turning Point,” Israel has held annual drills since the summer war with Hezbollah in 2006. This year, however, the exercise took on new significance, as it came amid reports that Syria had transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah, perhaps moving the weapons – which could reach any corner of Israel – into Lebanese territory (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said the weapons remained in Syria but had been transferred to Hezbollah control). Then, in early June, Lebanon’s armed forces reported that they had fired upon two Israeli jets flying over its territory in an alleged violation of a UN resolution. Sadly, it is not hard to get the impression that there remains unfinished business along the contentious borders weaving between Lebanon, Israel, and Syria.
As always, Lebanon’s internal politics – driven by its multiple religions and sects – are a reflection of regional politics. At the same time as the uneasy regional calm since 2006 has steadily eroded, dynamics in Lebanon are shifting as well. The power of the anti-Syrian political movement is waning and the predominately Shia paramilitary and political organization Hezbollah is ascendant, having survived the war with Israel and prevailed upon the rest of Lebanese society that it will not be disarmed.
It was not always this way. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and France began assiduously building support for anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian factions in the country, helping transform the March 14 movement – named for the massive memorial protests following Hariri’s death and today led by his son Saad – into a diverse grouping largely composed of Sunnis, Maronite Christians, and Druze to take over Lebanon’s government. March 14 would wrest control out from under Syrian occupation, which had been in place since the end of the devastating Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Yet March 14’s gains have proven difficult to hold. Not only did the summer war with Israel set events on a course outside of the government’s control, Bashir al Assad’s Syria has managed to successfully wait out the dark days of 2005. Today, Damascus is able to order Lebanese politicians to visit the capital, including some of its erstwhile critics in the March 14 movement. Iran, after flooding the south with reconstruction dollars following Israel’s destructive aerial assault, enjoys widespread support among Lebanese Shi’a. And Hezbollah, after having received much criticism from within Lebanon for instigating the summer war, sent forces into the streets in 2008 in response to feeble government attempts to shut down its autonomous telecommunications system and remove strategically placed Hezbollah officials (including the chief of security at Beirut’s international airport, through which the group allegedly receives materiel from Iran). After seizing March 14-controlled areas of West Beirut, Hezbollah seemed to definitely settle the debate about whether it would be disarmed.
Beirut itself reveals the rift emerging in Lebanese society. On the approach to Rafic Hariri International Airport, one’s eyes glide across the mountainous landscape cradling the half-glistening, half-dusty city of Beirut. As the details of the city come into view, the waters of the Mediterranean can be seen abutting the teeming Shi’a slum of Ouzai. Former Prime Minister Hariri attempted to move the slum, which he viewed as facilitating Hezbollah’s takeover of the airport. Notwithstanding that attempt, Hezbollah now can claim the airport’s top security official, Wafic Shkeir. After separate border control officials meticulously flip through each passport page looking for Israeli stamps, a quick drive from the airport up Hafez al Assad highway – named after Bashir’s father, one of the most influential players in modern Lebanon, despite serving as the president of Syria – a Hezbollah-run hospital appears, staring over the infamous Palestinian refugee camp Sabra and Shatila. Between the hospital and the camp flies a building-sized poster of Imad Mughniyeh, the senior Hezbollah operative associated with the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon and the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aries. Mughniyeh, believed responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist until 9/11, was assassinated by unknown attackers in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus. Memorialized in army fatigues, Mughniyeh’s bespectacled face stares askance towards the camp with determination and certainty of purpose.
Inside the camp, alongside fading posters of former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and newer posters of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mesha’al, flies the banner of Hezbollah, strung across a narrow alleyway, proclaiming: “Return is our Right, Resistance is our Way.” The fact that Hezbollah, an Iranian-funded and Syrian-backed paramilitary and political force in Lebanon with a history of conflict with Palestinian factions, is now openly assuming the mantle of a right of return for Palestinian refugees speaks volumes about Lebanon today.
The other side of Lebanon is not far away geographically. A couple of miles down the road – but in a parallel universe – begins Beirut’s massive redevelopment. The city’s waterfront is quickly being filed with sparkling glass buildings. New residential properties are being snatched up by wealthy Gulf Arabs and members of Lebanon’s storied diaspora of successful businessmen. Five-star hotels and upscale shopping centers are springing up, lining the corniche. The redevelopment project, known by its French acronym “Solidere,” embodies the aspirations of the country’s elite businessmen, who long for enough stability to grow their riches. This powerful public-private partnership, formed by Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, and situated in the midst of the city center that was utterly decimated after 15 years of civil war, is the ideal vehicle through which to pool their investments and ultimately control development of this luxurious piece of real estate. It is hard not to note the irony that Solidere’s glass towers begin steps from the St. George Hotel, where Prime Minister Hariri, along with 21 others, was assassinated by 2,200 pounds of explosives delivered by a suicide bomber’s car.
In every direction from Solidere, the signs of stability and prosperity abound. To the west sits the campus of American University of Beirut, where the sharply dressed children of Lebanon’s elite stroll from class to class, weaving through pine trees overlooking the water, a scene easily mistakable for France’s Cote d’Azur. To the east is Gemmayze Street, one of the only pieces of Beirut that resembles the colonial city. To the north sits the downtown, a newly constructed web of streets lined with upscale shops and restaurants, spoking out from Martyr’s Square. Casting its shadow over a key traffic artery is the Mohammad al Amin mosque, Hariri’s new Sunni mosque, next to which his body lies interred.
Yet betraying the uneasy tension between Hezbollah’s Beirut and March 14’s Beirut are the lackadaisical Internal Security Forces standing guard at the entrances to downtown, as if there would be any doubt as to the outcome of a showdown with the better-trained Hezbollah. These two Lebanons – the teeming Palestinian refugee camp and Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods and the gleaming glass towers and shopping districts initiated by former Prime Minister Hariri – can perhaps coexist for the time being. But, as history tragically shows, Lebanon will likely again witness conflict within its borders. Regional powers, like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as well as outsiders like the United States and France, have long viewed Lebanon as the canvas onto which to project their geopolitical ambitions. So long as the outside world still longs to control Lebanon through backing various combinations of its many religious groups and factions, this small Mediterranean country will remain on the precipice of conflict.
Copyright © 2010 by Daniel S. Freifeld
You will find that there were many people who would take the yearly trips to Lebanon and they would spread optimism and they would try to share with others new business ideas