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CHRISTIANS DESTROYING EACH OTHER AS SYRIA RE-EMERGES
Canberra Times (Australia)
August 7, 2007 Tuesday
Final Edition
When, oh when, will the Lebanese Christians stop destroying each
other by fighting each other?
General Michel Aoun's Free Democratic Party (colour them bright
orange) stood, along with their pro-Syrian allies, against the
Phalangist candidate Amin Gemayel, former president and father of
the assassinated MP, Pierre, murdered by Syrians? By rival Christians?
You name it last year. For Mr Gemayel, read authority, the power of
the democratically elected parliament, the Government of Lebanon and,
much more to the point, the American-supported Government of Lebanon.
For General Aoun who once claimed to be "liberating" Lebanon from
Syria in a disastrous 1990 war, but who would now like to be Syria's
president in Lebanon it was a heady moment.
His candidate, Camille Khoury, did not win, but he will reformulate
the politics of Lebanon where "pro- Syrian" may become once more a
respectable political label. The issues are deadly serious, in every
sense of the word.
Pierre Gemayel, son of the putative successful candidate Amin,
was shot to death in his car last November, and so a vote in his
Christian favour there are few Muslims in the beautiful, pine-covered
Metn hills here was a vote against his presumed killers, the Syrian
security services.
Desperate to avoid the language of civil war which all of the
candidates speak in private General Aoun had earlier addressed a
rally in the Beirut suburbs from behind a bulletproof shield, and
abused his opponents as "windmills of lies", adding, spitefully, "I
will not call them sons of snakes, but sons of rumours, and rumours
are like a rootless weed.
"Once you pluck it out, it dies."
If that seemed sinister, try Mr Gemayel's warning to his opponents
that "the Metn will never be a suburb of Damascus", adding that
Syria's political allies, especially Ali Qanso, of the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party, supported General Aoun.
The people of these hills where his son lies buried in the family crypt
in Bikfaya knew that the ex-general was "dragging them to a battle
they did not want" and that the electoral battle here was "dancing
over the blood of martyrs". This might seem par for the course in
any other election, but in Lebanon these are incendiary words.
Yet again, the Christians are being divided much, no doubt, to Syria's
delight and the danger of inter- Christian fighting, which last week
took the form of stonings and beatings in the streets of Beirut,
has been increased.
The sectarian system of voting (courtesy, originally, of the League
of Nations' French Mandate) meant that the Armenian Tashnak party
is supporting General Aoun, a fact that has outraged the party's
supporters in the state of Armenia.
What, on Earth, has General Aoun ever done to acknowledge the 1915
genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks?
In the end, alas, it all goes back to a simple equation; if the
Lebanese would trust each other as much as they trust in Washington,
Tehran, Tel Aviv, Damascus, London or Paris, they would be safe,
but the sectarian system of politics here ensures that the
de-confessionalisation of Lebanon would destroy the country's identity.
Thus it lives, in the constant penumbra of civil war.
Canberra Times (Australia)
August 7, 2007 Tuesday
Final Edition
When, oh when, will the Lebanese Christians stop destroying each
other by fighting each other?
General Michel Aoun's Free Democratic Party (colour them bright
orange) stood, along with their pro-Syrian allies, against the
Phalangist candidate Amin Gemayel, former president and father of
the assassinated MP, Pierre, murdered by Syrians? By rival Christians?
You name it last year. For Mr Gemayel, read authority, the power of
the democratically elected parliament, the Government of Lebanon and,
much more to the point, the American-supported Government of Lebanon.
For General Aoun who once claimed to be "liberating" Lebanon from
Syria in a disastrous 1990 war, but who would now like to be Syria's
president in Lebanon it was a heady moment.
His candidate, Camille Khoury, did not win, but he will reformulate
the politics of Lebanon where "pro- Syrian" may become once more a
respectable political label. The issues are deadly serious, in every
sense of the word.
Pierre Gemayel, son of the putative successful candidate Amin,
was shot to death in his car last November, and so a vote in his
Christian favour there are few Muslims in the beautiful, pine-covered
Metn hills here was a vote against his presumed killers, the Syrian
security services.
Desperate to avoid the language of civil war which all of the
candidates speak in private General Aoun had earlier addressed a
rally in the Beirut suburbs from behind a bulletproof shield, and
abused his opponents as "windmills of lies", adding, spitefully, "I
will not call them sons of snakes, but sons of rumours, and rumours
are like a rootless weed.
"Once you pluck it out, it dies."
If that seemed sinister, try Mr Gemayel's warning to his opponents
that "the Metn will never be a suburb of Damascus", adding that
Syria's political allies, especially Ali Qanso, of the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party, supported General Aoun.
The people of these hills where his son lies buried in the family crypt
in Bikfaya knew that the ex-general was "dragging them to a battle
they did not want" and that the electoral battle here was "dancing
over the blood of martyrs". This might seem par for the course in
any other election, but in Lebanon these are incendiary words.
Yet again, the Christians are being divided much, no doubt, to Syria's
delight and the danger of inter- Christian fighting, which last week
took the form of stonings and beatings in the streets of Beirut,
has been increased.
The sectarian system of voting (courtesy, originally, of the League
of Nations' French Mandate) meant that the Armenian Tashnak party
is supporting General Aoun, a fact that has outraged the party's
supporters in the state of Armenia.
What, on Earth, has General Aoun ever done to acknowledge the 1915
genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks?
In the end, alas, it all goes back to a simple equation; if the
Lebanese would trust each other as much as they trust in Washington,
Tehran, Tel Aviv, Damascus, London or Paris, they would be safe,
but the sectarian system of politics here ensures that the
de-confessionalisation of Lebanon would destroy the country's identity.
Thus it lives, in the constant penumbra of civil war.