Now for the rest
Let’s not fool ourselves. Hezbollah’s Wednesday jamboree for Samir Kantar and the four POWs was as much about restoring the image of the undaunted and virile moqawama and trying to banish the memory of May’s attempted coup, than it was about bringing its boys home. Like all Hezbollah extravaganzas, it was excessive, sparing not one iota of pomp and circumstance to trumpet what was a very expensive result: One convicted criminal and 180 dead bodies weighed up against 1,200 dead, 400,000 wounded, 1 million displaced and $15 billion in long-term economic damage. As their capture was a result of the war, the four Hezbollah fighters cannot be considered a net gain.
The celebrations were the latest imposition of Hezbollah’s agenda on a Lebanese people who have had to endure the party”s insistence on holding onto its weapons; the 18-month downtown sit-in, and of course the small matter of the armed insurrection over two months ago, a moment of supreme madness that threatened to hurl the country into civil conflict.
But if those Lebanese who supported and took to the streets for the Cedar Revolution scratched their heads in bewilderment as they watched the demonstration of national drooling on the tarmac at Beirut Airport – especially by those politicians who vehemently opposed the reckless border action that started the summer 2006 war – they should be aware that there was method to this apparent madness.
Their presence was more than just to bear witness to the fruit of that futile, unwarranted and achingly tragic conflict. It was to remind Hezbollah that the exchange had in fact fulfilled one of the stipulations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and that, now that the momentum has gathered, Lebanon – all Lebanon and all Lebanese – should urgently follow through on all the other sovereign issues, especially those pertaining to Hezbollah’s weapons, the liberation of the Shebaa Farms, the return of all remaining detainees in Syrian jails and the thrashing out of a defense strategy.
If a degree of national pride has been restored, then let this restoration be the cornerstone of a genuine national commitment to fulfilling all outstanding obligations (although it remains to be seen how the opposition will use or abuse its blocking third in the new cabinet).
Those who took to the streets on March 14, 2005 did so to send a message to the international community: Enough was enough; the violence had to stop, Syria had to leave Lebanon, and the Lebanese deserved the right to self-determination in a sovereign and democratic country.
Therefore, in the wake of yesterday’s hysteria, it is worth re-asking the question: What country we want to live in; A country that celebrates life, prosperity, international acceptance and tolerance, or one that seeks to put, before all else, conflict, obstructionism and the glorification of death?
Let the pathetic wooden coffins unloaded at the border on Wednesday be the last reminders of a chapter in Lebanese history that should remain just that.