While We Were Otherwise Occupied . . .

Something like 12 out of my last 14 posts have dealt with Tunisia. Over the three day holiday weekend I kept right on blogging. In the meantime, off in the margins:

1. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, whose investigation has been hovering like a Sword of Damocles over the country for months, actually submitted its indictments yesterday.
2. For the first time in the post-colonial era, a major part of an Arab country is about to secede, with unforeseen results.
3. The Labor Party's man in the Israeli coalition, Ehud Barak, is quitting the Labor Party and starting his own.

That's not even all of it. Stay tuned. I'll keep going but actually have to do the day job some on Tuesday now that we're back.

You have read this article About the Blog / Israel / Lebanon / Sudan / Tunisia with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/while-we-were-otherwise-occupied.html. Thanks!

The Flight of Ben Ali

So much is happening so fast, and there's so much to talk about, and it's a holiday here in the US and I need some family time. Let me first note for you this report in Le Monde from yesterday, citing European sources on the flight of Ben Ali. If you read French, read the original; if you don't, here are some key points:

• Madame Ben Ali demanded gold ingots from the Bank of Tunisia; when that was refused she persuaded her husband to intervene, and left for Dubai with what a French source described as 1.5 tonnes (that would be metric tons) of gold, worth 45 million euros. She then joined her husband in Jidda.
  
• Ben Ali did not expect to leave so quickly and had recorded another speech. The Army stepped in and expedited his departure.
• Several European chanceries believe that the "Libyan security services" facilitated the "exfiltration" of Ben Ali from Tunisia. (I know "exfiltration" is now an English word, but now the French seem to be using it as well.) Qadhafi, by the way — the Guide of the Libyan Revolution — has made a speech lecturing the Tunisians on their folly in having a revolution, and urging them to bring Ben Ali back.
• There is confusion about how Ben Ali departed. He either left by plane for Maltese airspace, only then decided to head for France, where he was turned away, and may have refueled in Sardinia without receiving landing permission from Italy; or, he may have flown from Tunis to Malta in a helicopter, and joined his jet there.
• Ben Ali family members who did arrive in France (some reports say two other jets were involved) left subsequently for Doha.

I'll be posting more later. A lot is happening, in Tunis and in Lebanon, today.

You have read this article Lebanon / Tunisia with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/flight-of-ben-ali.html. Thanks!

There Goes the Three-Day Weekend

As if it's not bad enough that we've got an ongoing revolution spinning itself out, with critical developments daily, but now they say the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will issue its indictments on Monday.

This is three day weekend in the US, honoring Martin Luther King. I don't blog on weekends. I was hoping maybe I'd get one day off, but apparently not. (Nobody orders me to do this. I just can't keep quiet when stuff's happening.)

But since they've been poised for so long without indicting, why did they have to pick a holiday weekend? Lebanon could learn something from Doctor King, after all.

You have read this article Hizbullah / Lebanon / Tunisia with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/there-goes-three-day-weekend.html. Thanks!

Which is the Greater Crisis: Lebanon or Tunisia?

Of the two crises engaging the Middle East at the moment, most Middle Eastern media yesterday elevated the Lebanese political crisis above the Tunisian uprising (I'll now accept Brian Whitaker's word because it's clearly become that) in the headlines. But if you have only one Middle East crisis to worry about, which should you concentrate on (assuming you're not too busy with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process collapse or the imminent secession of southern Sudan, or Iraq, or Iran, or Afghanistan)?

Having posed the question, let me note that I don't know the answers (yet). No one does. But the situation in Tunis seems truly out of anyone's control, the government's or the protesters', and therefore much more of a wild card than the Lebanese crisis, in which Hizbullah and its allies are pushing the issue to the edge, but still have the ability to pull things back. Lebanon is engaged in a political game of "chicken," while Tunisia is riding a tiger and can't figure out how to dismount.

I deliberately don't report every wild claim that turns up on Twitter, but over the past day and a half or so there have been wild ones coming out of Tunis that have stayed out of the mainstream media: the head of the Army was fired; the head of the Army was dead; the head of the Army had led a coup and declared himself President. The Presidential Palace was cordoned off, or was it on fire?, or was that the ruling party headquarters? Ben Ali had fled to the French Embassy, Madame Leila was on her way to Argentina, or the UAE, or both, and the rest of the Trabelsi family were in Canada. None of these things were true as far as I know, though the Trabelsis do like to travel. All this may have been prompted by the unusual sight of Army troops in the heart of the city on Avenue Bourguiba, Tunis' elegant but somewhat downmarket variant of the Champs Elysées. (The grim Interior Ministry anchors one end, rather as if the French rebuilt the Bastille on the Champs Elysées.) Such rumors are fueled by the tight control on information the government is enforcing, which means Facebook posts and tweets are often the sole source of information, however imaginary, and videos online may or may not be good guides to the real situation.

On the other hand, when rumor runs rampant, it can fuel the fury in the streets. If you think that victory is near, you fight even harder. By this point, the demonstrators can smell blood in the water: the firing of the Interior Minister, release of some of those arrested, and a promise of investigating "allegations" of corruption. (Of course since the main allegations of corruption cluster around the President's in-laws, I assume few protesters will be impressed by this promise.)

On the whole, I think we're nearing an endgame in Tunisia. Either the government will break, or the uprising will. I don't know which. In Lebanon, on the other hand, we're at the beginning of another kabuki drama which could explode if someone miscalculates, but could also resolve itself, even if it takes months or years to hammer out the compromise.

You have read this article Lebanon / Tunisia with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/which-is-greater-crisis-lebanon-or.html. Thanks!

Lebanon: Walid Bey Explains it All

The collapse of the Lebanese government may have been inevitable once the Syrian-Saudi mediation was declared a failure, and it returns the country to the paralysis it endured in 2006-2007, which led to the Doha Agreement and the creation of a unity Cabinet in which the "opposition" (in quotes since they joined the Cabinet) had a "blocking third" that could block legislsation or, in this case, bring down the government. Once Hizbullah and Amal and their Christian allies quit, only one more resignation was needed to collapse the government, and a Presidential appointee obliged. Qifa Nabki gives his usual clear backgrounder.

But the always entertaining and unpredictable Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who met today with the Maronite Patriarch at the Patriarchate, told reporters that "Yesterday, the dark forces intervened and torpedoed the Saudi-Syrian initiative," Some reports are translating it as "occult forces."

I guess he's saying the devil made them do it.

You have read this article Druze / Lebanon / Walid Jumblatt with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/lebanon-walid-bey-explains-it-all.html. Thanks!

Lebanese Government Falls

Lebanon's union government has collapsed after Hizbullah and Amal, the Shi‘ite parties, resigned over the failure of Prime Minister Sa‘d Hariri to convene a Cabinet meeting to discuss the expected indictments from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This in turn came after Syria and Saudi Arabia indicated their mediation efforts had failed.

I'll have more to say on this as the situation clarifies.

You have read this article Lebanon with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/lebanese-government-falls.html. Thanks!

Weekend Historical Videos: 1958

The year 1958 was a crucial one in what the late Malcolm Kerr called "The Arab Cold War," when Nasserism was sparring with more traditional Western-backed regimes, with the broader Cold War rivalry providing the lens for much Western interpretation of what was going on. The overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (and the deaths of the Royal Family), an incipient civil war in Lebanon, threats of a coup in Jordan, and the dispatch of US Marines to Lebanon and British troops to Jordan, all created a sense of explosive crisis which seemed more coordinated to many at the time than the historical evidence necessarily justifies. A few clips for this week's Weekend Historical Videos.

Two newsreels of the overall situation, clearly focused through a Cold War lens:





US Marines in Lebanon;



Video of the Lebanese crisis with only a musical background, but the presence of Pierre Gemayel in many of the clips makes me assume its a Phalangist video:



Have a good weekend.

You have read this article Egypt / Iraq / Jordan / Lebanon / Nasser / Weekend Historical Videos with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2011/01/weekend-historical-videos-1958.html. Thanks!

Lebanon Dodges a Bullet, for Now

Word that although indictments may be submitted shortly to the pretrial judge of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), no details are likely to be made public for several months while a decision on whether to proceed to trial is considered, has led to sighs of relief in Lebanon, which was bracing for potential conflict if, as reported, senior Hizbullah figures were indicted.

This may just be postponing the inevitable, but it also gives the Lebanese factions time to prepare for the inevitable if it comes, or to lobby for some sort of compromise. It at least delays the confrontation.

You have read this article Hariri / Hizbullah / Lebanon / United Nations with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/12/lebanon-dodges-bullet-for-now.html. Thanks!

Israel on Alert about Lebanon

You can feel the temperature risin' in Lebanon, but Elvis has nothing to do with it. Israel's security cabinet is meeting today over concerns, in the wake of the CBC report leaking parts of the Special Tribunal on Lebanon's findings, Hizbullah might, as Ha'aretz puts it, "try to take over Lebanon."

This is probably just posturing but, combined with worries about a new Lebanese civil war, it reminds us that the STL is playing with fire. It's seeking justice, but even Rafiq Sa‘d Hariri, who would seem to have as much interest as anyone in solving his father's murder, is trying to dial back on the tensions.

Lebanon being Lebanon, he could ask Walid Jumblatt how he coped with his father's murder.

You have read this article Hariri / Lebanon / Walid Jumblatt with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/11/israel-on-alert-about-lebanon.html. Thanks!

The STL, the CBC, and the Hariri Investigation

By now we've all been primed for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)'s expected indictment of senior Hizbullah figures in the Hariri assassination. Though that hasn't happened yet, an apparent leak of details of the investigation has now provoked a lot of debate and armchair analysis. I'm not even going to try to summarize the story here, since the report, by CBC News, is lengthy, detailed, and includes charts. (The fact that the current chief of the STL, Daniel Bellemare, is Canadian comes to mind, but the CBC report by Neil Macdonald goes out of its way to note that Bellemare refused to be interviewed by the CBC.) Read the report first, so you'll know what the various blogosphere commenters are talking about.

Qifa Nabki has, of course, been on the case. A first posting here; a longer post raising various questions here; and a post in which reporter Macdonald responds to some of the questions raised.

Qifa also quotes commenter T_DESCO, who has posted analysis quoting earlier reports from the STL to raise questions about Macdonald's report over at Josh Landis' Syria Comment blog.

Of course this kind of point by point criticism of a leaked story suggests the leak itself was planted by someone. All of which reminds us that in a region where every event produces a related conspiracy theory, this one clearly was a conspiracy that involved a lot of people, reached into the Lebanese security services, and perhaps involved some deliberate false flags.

Read both the CBC report and the commentaries. They'll likely preoccupy Lebanese coffeehouse debates until the STL really does unveil its conclusions.

You have read this article Hariri / Lebanon with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/11/stl-cbc-and-hariri-investigation.html. Thanks!

Israel to Withdraw from Ghajar, Partially at Least

The town of Ghajar, an ‘Alawite town in the Golan Heights on the Lebanese border, has been a thorny issue for years. You'll find this blog has revisited it many times, and that link in te previous sentence will also link you to YouTube video and podcasts of an MEI presentation by Asher Kaufman of Notre Dame, not to mention his article in the Middle East Journal (only free to subscribers; sorry). Well, it looks like after a lot of discussion, Israel is finally going to withdraw from the northern half of the town, which it acknowledges as Lebanese. The southern half, which was Syrian before 1967 (some argue the northern half was, too) remains under Israeli occupation like the rest of the Golan.

This being the Middle East, of course, it's not as simple as it sounds, or as immediate as it might be. Although the Security Cabinet has authorized the withdrawal, the details are being negotiated between Israel and the United Nations (emphatically not between Israel and Lebanon), since Israel wants UNIFIL to take over security, fearing the alternative will be Hizbullah.

And of course no one asked the residents of Ghajar. Israeli reports suggest they want Israel to remain, and are protesting the withdrawal.

Most Ghajar residents consider themselves Syrian, and say they were never considered a part of Lebanon; the town expanded northward during Israel's long occupation of South Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, and has been reunited since 2006. They fear partition will separate families, and owners from their farmland. Many accepted Israeli citizenship during the long years of occupation, and may fear retribution, especially if Hizbullah moves in. So while the end of occupation is a step forward, absent a solution to the Golan Heights as well, it may have unfortunate personal impact on those involved.

Also, stand by: Israel still has to negotiate the details with UNIFIL, and Israeli negotiations with the UN (unless they've worked it out behind closed doors already) may not be automatic.

You have read this article Ghajar / Israel / Lebanon / Syria / Territorial disputes / United Nations with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/11/israel-to-withdraw-from-ghajar.html. Thanks!

The STL Nears its Indictments

Once again, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon seems on the verge of issuing its indictments, expected to include several senior Hizbullah figures. I last discussed the issue a couple of weeks ago, and am not sure I have much new to say.

Marc Lynch, on the other hand, does. He wonders if the STL has any credibility today, or if it's just a "zombie" panel from an earlier reality. And he asks:

What are we to make of its really quite shocking reversal? Why should we consider the evidence now pointing to Hezbollah credible given the seeming collapse of the supposedly iron-clad case against Syria? Most discussion of this fairly obvious point that I've seen in the Western media has been framed around Hezbollah's "efforts to discredit the STL." But the STL's credibility problems seem a bit more real than that. If Hezbollah were really responsible than a strong case could be made for pursuing justice regardless of the consequences. But from the outside, it really does look an awful lot like the STL is being used as a political weapon against Hezbollah at a time of mounting fears of its power and of allegedly rising Iranian influence in Lebanon.

That's the problem. Caesar's wife is no longer above suspicion, and the STL shifted suspects in mid-investigation. One can hardly blame former security chief Jamil al-Sayyed, unpleasant a person though he may be, for demanding that those "false witnesses" who kept him in detention for years without charge, be punished. It's not just an explosive situation because of Hizbullah's activities: many Arab observers have seen the STL's dramatic shift of course and see it as politicized, and that undercuts both its credibility and that of the UN.

You have read this article Hizbullah / Lebanon with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/11/stl-nears-its-indictments.html. Thanks!

Waiting for the STL

Though no one is certain when, precisely, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will issue its long anticipated indictments of Hizbullah members for the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, everyone expects it to be very soon, perhaps imminent. The STL's Outreach Section has been holding a three day media event in The Hague, to explain to the media the context and how to report on international criminal tribunals, which suggests the coin may be about to drop. (Somehow I don't think Nuremberg did media spin [or needed to], but I could be wrong.)

Obviously this was a major subtext of Ahmadinejad's Lebanon excursion, and is a potential grenade in Lebanon's precarious political situation.

The fact of the matter is the STL's investigation has moved dramatically from Syria (everyone's prime suspect originally) to Hizbullah, and thus has become a major issue for Lebanon's largest communal group, the Shi‘a. The "false witnesses" (in quotes because it'd become a cliche now in Lebanon) who pointed the finger at Syria are seen as discrediting the whole STL process.

We're still not 100% sure who killed Kamal Jumblatt, Rashid Karami, Bashir Gemayel or Danny Chamoun, or what happened to Musa al-Sadr (to cover as broad a spectrum of Lebanese as possible politically). Will a clearer answer — assuming they get it right this time, unlike last time — on Rafiq Hariri be for the good, or will it provoke new conflict? Justice is essential (if all too rare in Lebanon: see list just above), but in the present circumstances, I'm not sure it won't carry a high cost. Is anyone?

You have read this article Hariri / Lebanon with the title Lebanon. You can bookmark this page URL https://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/waiting-for-stl.html. Thanks!