Don’t hold your breath
Monday saw Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem arrive in Beirut appearing to make all the right noises and giving all the right reassurances. He not only spoke of a new start between Lebanon and Syria but also “the beginning of a full reassessment of what existed before.”
Sadly, this new era of supposed rapprochement got off to a shameful start. Not only were family members of Lebanese still languishing in Syrian jails beaten up by the Lebanese army, Mouallem added genuine insult to equally genuine injury: “I say to the families of those missing and those detained that he who has been patient for 30 years can wait a bit longer.” Hardly the stuff of brotherly relations.
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea rightly called for credible diplomatic relations and an “apology” to the Lebanese people. It is unlikely that this is what Mouallem had in mind when he spoke of “reassessment.”
In fact, one shudders to think what he did have in mind; Syria’s 29-year occupation of Lebanon was not only characterized by human rights abuses, corruption and violence, it was predicated on the cast-iron belief that Lebanon can never exist as a sovereign nation. Not much wiggle room there.
In light of these historical precedents, Syria’s sincerity must be taken with several pinches of salt, while Mouallem’s mission is in all probability what might turn out to be a sting of catastrophic – for Lebanon that is – proportions. It is entirely likely that in being seen to please its new best European friend, Damascus will feint and fudge, making conditions for diplomatic relations as difficult and as humiliating as possible for Lebanon, with the prime purpose of delaying, and perhaps even quashing entirely, a process it simply does not want. In the meantime, the Bush administration will have disappeared and Bashar can try his luck with the new crowd, all the time protected by his new-found French cover.
The sad reality is that, unless Syria actually treats Lebanon with the respect a sovereign state deserves and makes good on oft requested commitments to demarcate its borders, stop the illegal supply of men and weapons into Lebanon and free Lebanese detainees, any embassy will likely become nothing more than a convenient, not to mention sinister base for its Lebanese proxies to receive their orders.
Elsewhere, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem has urged the Lebanese to not get in a lather about the resistance and its weapons but to instead – through national dialogue – concentrate on the best ways to defend their nation, preferably alongside the stout men of the moqawama.
But it appears that what defines national dialogue is a moveable feast. Only two days earlier, Israeli anxieties were further fuelled by reports by DEBKAfile, an Israeli intelligence website, that Hezbollah had established anti-aircraft batteries on Mount Sanine and could now shoot down Israeli jets. While reports of a further missile system capable of sinking Israeli warships plying their trade off the Lebanese coast are probably fanciful, Hezbollah has a military presence on Sanine and intelligence analysts believe it is entirely likely that it has, or soon will have, effective ground-to-air missiles. (In fact, a few were even surprised they were not unveiled in the 2006 war).
While Hezbollah might be proud of its latest acquisition, the fact remains that the existence of such a set-up, rather than shoring up national defenses, will actually put Lebanon in greater danger. The Israeli government is not going to take kindly to anti-aircraft batteries in the hands of what it has deemed, and what the vast majority of Israelis have deemed, a terrorist organization, and as long as Hezbollah operates outside the state and conducts unilateral operations to pursue its own parochial ends, Lebanon will always pay the price.
If Hezbollah wants a national dialogue on defense, we must expect it to be a dialogue with few concessions. Similarly, we should not expect too much from a Syria that is keen to bury the international tribunal, seek economic aid and restore its prestige on the international stage at the expense of French vanity.
We should not hold our breath.