The scent of Lebanon

Our relations with Lebanon weren’t always bad. By and large our ancestors regarded our northern neighbour favourably. In the Bible alone there are 71 references to Lebanon.

Solomon's relations with Hiram were better than those of the present leaders of Israel and Lebanon, but that was a long time ago and Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician.

Reciprocal relations between the two countries were generally good. The best known exception was the bad deal Ahab got with his Phoenician bride, the infamous Jezebel.

Nowadays some enterprising Israelis import brides from the Ukraine. In biblical times Lebanese girls were in vogue:

"Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Song of Solomon 4:8.

The author, according to tradition Solomon himself, provides an erotic description of the new girl in the harem:

"Your lips distil nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon." Song of Solomon 4:11

Some biblical scholars claim the texts should be interpreted allegorically.

However, most of us accept them literally.

Last Saturday at the time of a visit to Kibbutz Menara we heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer in Majdal Silim across the border in Lebanon.

Our friends, longstanding members of Menara, took us to see the view from a vantage point near the border. With the aid of powerful binoculars provided by our hosts we were able to survey a broad expanse of southern Lebanon stretching from the lower slopes of Mount Hermon westwards as far as Maroun ar-ras.

The sprawl of villages and small towns appeared deceptively tranquil.

The current crisis, predicted by many observers, has placed Lebanon in the limelight again.

Foreign media correspondents invariably add a bit of local colour in their dispatches from Lebanon. The BBC man in Beirut chose to include a remark made by the owner of sidewalk café in the report he sent the day Hezbollah resigned from the Lebanese government. “Every day there’s a crisis and after so many crises we no longer respond emotionally to these events.” remarked the real or conjured up coffee grinder.

Any attempt to describe the situation in Lebanon is a hazardous undertaking.

Lebanon's four million plus citizens are affiliated to one of eighteen officially recognised separate sects. Unless you have written a doctoral dissertation on Lebanese factions you have little chance of really understanding what is happening in that country.

Recently Elliot Abrahams mentioned the convoluted reality of power sharing in Lebanon. In an article he wrote for the Council for Foreign Relations, he said, "Under Lebanon’s constitution, the prime minister must be a Sunni. But Najib Mikati, the Hezbollah designee, is a Sunni who will owe his office not to support in the Sunni community but to Hezbollah's decision to make him prime minister. Hezbollah now has the votes in parliament to put him in, and of course to throw him out should he cross them."

Mikati went to pains to stress that he had no allegiance to Hezbollah, but everyone in Lebanon knows he is Nasrallah’s puppet prime minister.

Soon he will have to deal with the findings of the UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri father of deposed prime minister Saad Hariri..

The Christians, mostly Maronites but also Armenian Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic, Copts, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic have decided to support Hezbollah.

The relatively small Druze faction decided to throw in its lot with the winning side. The Sunni Muslims remain outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outgunned. Hezbollah is holding all the cards. The initial response of the Sunni community was to hold a “day of rage”, namely violent street demonstrations that were quelled mainly by Saad Hariri’s appeal for calm.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah appeared smug and satisfied when he appeared before an audience of his supporters.

So far the take over in Lebanon has been a bloodless coup d’état

Legal expert Owen Alterman reviewed the implications of Hassan Nasrallah’s refusal to cooperate with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in a recent issue of “Insight” published by The Institute for National Security Studies.

“Lebanon's government can impede the Tribunal's work (by refusing to hand over the accused or by denying funding), the Lebanese government may well not be able on its own actually to stop the Tribunal. If Lebanon refuses to hand over an accused, a trial can take place in absentia. If the Lebanese government withholds its contribution to the Tribunal's funding, then other money can be found. Resignation of Lebanese judges from the Tribunal (or their refusal to take office) could wreak havoc, but at least under the founding documents of the STL, those judges themselves would need to initiate their own resignations or refusals. (Assassinations, though, pose a real risk.)

The UN Security Council passed a resolution setting up the Tribunal, and reversing course might well require a Security Council vote. Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Asad, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei face the risk that ultimately they may not control this legal process. That fact provides leverage for supporters of the Tribunal's work. It may be exactly what Nasrallah and his allies so fear about the STL.”

Whatever form the new Lebanese government takes Hassan Nasrallah will obviously prefer to control the country by proxy.

Deborah Jerome, Deputy Editor of the Council on Foreign Relations quotes the English language paper Asharq Alawsat “There are some reports that the United States might withdraw military aid to Lebanon if a Hezbollah-led government emerges from the present crisis.” So far according to Jerome there has been no official comment from Washington on the possible power shift in Lebanon. Ms. Jerome quotes another source, the Israeli daily Haaretz which noted that "U.S. aid is meant to help Lebanon implement UN Resolution 1701, which calls on the Lebanese Army to deploy throughout the country . . . and prevent Hezbollah from acquiring more weapons." Her concluding quote is a report from the Christian Science Monitor. “Israel is concerned both about the ascendance of Hezbollah as well as the possibility of violence spilling over the Israel-Lebanon border."

It has been difficult to assimilate the profusion of events that have occurred in our region recently. Tunisia is still seething and its interim government probably won’t last long.

The riots in Egypt have been controlled by Mubarek’s security forces but his reelection or the succession of his son to the Egyptian presidency is uncertain. It’s too early to predict what will happen there. The prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover is worrying and certainly not fanciful speculation.

Our local news media has been more concerned about the “Al Jazeera leaks.” Internal Palestinian documents relating to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that were leaked to Al Jazeera and are now being published much like the Wikileaks, a page or two at a time.

The fact that the negotiations were conducted at two levels, one public, the other behind closed doors worried some foreign observers. However commentators in Israel showed sympathy and understanding for the need to talk behind closed doors. New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner reporting on the leaks said, “To the world and their own people, each side spoke of sacred, nonnegotiable demands, while in the Jerusalem hotel suites where the officials met those very demands were under negotiation.”

The disclosures have been more embarrassing for the Palestinian leaders.

Once again it’s too early to draw conclusions but some of our politicians were quick to claim that the leaks prove that their assumptions were right. Spokespeople for some of the right wing parties are adamant that the leaked documents prove that we have no Palestinian partner for peace. At the opposite end of the political spectrum other spokespeople claimed that the disclosures showed that the Palestinian leadership was prepared to compromise on some of their most sacrosanct principles.

I’m sure we will hear a lot more about this.

Have a good weekend

Beni 27^th of January, 2011.