Editor's Note:
The only thing more confusing than the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict is the political situation
in Lebanon. Today is one of the leading Middle East
journalists tries to make sense out of what is going on.
Is the MSM (Main Stream Media) spinning?
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Half a million rally to defy vision of US- by
Robert Fisk
It was a warning. They came in their tens of thousands,
Lebanese Shia Muslim families with babies in arms and
children in front, walking past my Beirut home. They
reminded me of the tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia
Muslims who walked with their families to the polls in
Iraq, despite the gunfire and the suicide bombers.
And now they came from southern Lebanon and the Bekaa to
say they rejected America's plans in Lebanon, and wanted
- so they claimed - to know who killed Rafiq Hariri, the
former prime minister murdered on 14 February, and to
reject UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which demands
a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of
the Hizbollah guerrilla movement, and to express their
"thanks"
to Syria. This was a tall order in Lebanon.
But only 100 yards from the Lebanese opposition
protests, the half-million - for that was an
approachable figure, given Hizbollah's extraordinary
organisational abilities - stood for an hour with
Lebanese flags, and posed a challenge to President
George Bush's project in the Middle East. "America is
the source of terrorism", one poster proclaimed. "All
our disasters come from America".
Many of those tens of thousands were Hizbollah families
who had fought the Israelis during their occupation of
southern Lebanon, been arrested by the Israelis,
imprisoned by the Israelis and feared that American
support for Lebanon meant not "democracy" but an imposed
Israeli-Lebanese peace treaty.
There were Syrians in the crowds - indeed, I saw buses
with Syrian registration plates that had brought
families from Damascus - but almost all the half million
were Lebanese Shias and they wanted to reject 1559
because it called for Hizbollah to be disarmed. They
were perfectly happy to see the Syrians leave (who now
remembers the Syrian massacre of Hizbollah members in
Beirut in 1987?) but, bearing in mind Syria's transit of
weapons from Iran to Lebanon, Hizbollah wanted to be
regarded as a resistance movement, not a "militia" to be
disarmed. What the Shia were saying was that they were a
power, just as they said when they voted in Iraq. In
Lebanon, Shia Muslims are the largest religious
community.
Syria is run by a clique of Alawis - who are Shia - and
Iraq is now dominated by Shia Muslims who voted
themselves into power, and Iran is a Shia nation. So
when President Bush said "the Lebanese people have the
right to determine their future free from domination of
a foreign power", the power the Shias were thinking of
was not Syria but the United States and Israel.
And 100 yards away, the demonstrators who have bravely
protested against the murder of Rafik Hariri have become
factionalised, courtesy of the Syrians. At night, the
opposition protesters are largely Christian. Yesterday's
Hizbollah rally, while it contained the usual pro-Syrian
Christians, was essentially Shia. And their message was
not one of thanks to President Bush.
"The fleets came in the past and were defeated; and they
will be defeated again," Hizbollah's leader, Sayed
Hassan Nasrallah, said in reference to the Americans.
Ironically, President Bush was to refer within hours to
the killing of 241 US Marines in Beirut in October 1982,
as if their deaths were the responsibility of al-Qa'ida.
To the Israelis, Nasrallah said: "Let go of your dreams
for Lebanon. To the enemy entrenched on our border,
occupying our country and imprisoning our people, 'There
is no place for you here and there is no life for you
among us: Death to Israel'."
Nasrallah's take on the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war was
predictable.
The crowds were meeting on the front lines that had
separated the Lebanese during the civil war; indeed, on
the very location of the Christian-Muslim trenches of
that conflict. "We meet today to remind the world and
our partners in the country," Nasrallah said, "that this
arena that joins us, or the other one in Martyrs'
Square, was destroyed by Israel and civil war and was
united by Syria and the blood of its soldiers and
officers."
This was an inventive piece of history. Israel certainly
killed many thousands of Lebanese - more than the
Syrians, although their soldiers took the lives of many
hundreds - but the half million roared their approval.
So what did all this prove? That there was another voice
in Lebanon.
That if the Lebanese "opposition" - pro-Hariri and
increasingly Christian - claim to speak for Lebanon and
enjoy the support of President Bush, there is a
pro-Syrian, nationalist voice which does not go along
with their anti-Syrian demands but which has identified
what it believes is the true reason for Washington's
support for
Lebanon: Israel's plans for the Middle East.
The Beirut demonstration yesterday was handled in the
usual Hizbollah way: maximum security, lots of young men
in black shirts with two-way radios, and frightening
discipline. No one was allowed to carry a gun or a
Hizbollah flag. There was no violence. When one man
brandished a Syrian flag, it was immediately taken from
him. Law and order, not "terrorism", was what Hizbollah
wished. Syria had spoken. President Bashar Assad's
sarcastic remark about the Hariri protesters needing a
"zoom lens" to show their numbers had been answered by a
demonstration of Shia power which needed no "zoom".
And in the mountains above Beirut, still frozen under
their winter snows, few Syrians moved. There were Syrian
military trucks on the international highway to Damascus
but no withdrawal, no retreat, no redeployment. The Taif
agreement of 1989 stipulated that the Syrians should
withdraw to the Mdeirej heights above Beirut, which they
have now agreed to do, 14 years later than they should
have done.
The official document released by the Lebanese-Syrian
military delegation in Damascus suggests this is a new
redeployment and that in April the Syrian forces, along
with their military intelligence personnel, will
withdraw to the Lebanese-Syrian border.
But the question remains: will they retreat to the
Syrian side of the frontier, or sit in the
Lebanese-Armenian town of Aanjar, on the Lebanese side,
where Brigadier General Rustum Gazale, the head of
Syrian military intelligence, still maintains his
white-painted villa?
Either way, Lebanon can no longer be taken for granted.
The "cedar"
revolution now has a larger dimension, one that does not
necessarily favour America's plans. If the Shia of Iraq
can be painted as defenders of democracy, the Shias of
Lebanon cannot be portrayed as the defenders of
"terrorism". So what does Washington make of yesterday's
extraordinary events in Beirut?
**********************************************************
More Selected Readings On The Middle East
Leaked FBI Report On Al Qaida
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=566425&page=1
[Could it be that "fear" was used for political
advantage?]
US Middle East Ally Blocks Democratic Free Press
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C5D79878-A7BB-4F88-BEF0-739DC9D52EB5.htm
[Whitehouse remains silent.]
US to Israel: Leave Outpost Or Else
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/549608.html
[Sign of changing US policy towards Israel?]
Joint US-Israeli Military Exercise Scheduled
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/550129.html
[Change? Not until Iran is taken "care of"]
Israel Expands Settlement Outposts
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050308-094129-1
823r
[Facts on the ground don't change, only rhetoric
changes.]
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