Lebanon’s latest assassination has underscored how dangerously high the Middle East stakes have risen in the years since 9/11 and the Iraq invasion — and how intricately interconnected are the region’s multiple, ongoing tragedies. But while illustrating the problem, Pierre Gemayel’s death also underscored the persisting, corrosive lack of an agreed solution. Those who hope for peace are grasping at straws. Those who seek only greater destruction are gaining the upper hand.
In Lebanon itself, still struggling to overcome the effects of last summer’s conflict between Israel and Hizbullah, the immediate fear is of a new descent into civil war. The government of Fouad Siniora has already been weakened by the defection of Shia ministers. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, calling for daily anti-government demonstrations, is seeking a sort of “cedar revolution” in reverse. And Tuesday’s vengeful anger among Christian Falangists provided a chilling echo of Lebanon’s 1980s lost decade.
The immediate, inevitable accusations of Syrian culpability, aired from Washington to Brussels to Beirut, raise the crisis to another level. Tony Blair sent his chief policy adviser to Damascus recently. It was a diplomatic opening that supposedly presaged renewed, positive engagement by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in peace-making from Palestine to Iraq.
But if links are established between Assad, or his familiars, and the Gemayel murder, as was the case in the United Nations inquiry into last year’s killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, such bridges as may have been built will collapse like yesterday’s dreams. Far from coming in from the cold, Assad is heading in the opposite direction this weekend, to Tehran for a summit with Iran and Iraq.
The spreading shockwaves from the assassination do not stop in Damascus. As the senior partner in the Iran-Syria alliance, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will certainly be fingered in some quarters along with Assad. And that will only strengthen the case for the neo-con prosecution. Hawks in Washington will say, with renewed vigour, that the time is coming when Iran must be stopped by all means possible.
“Iran threatens Israel, the region, and the whole world,” said Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, during a visit to London this week. Its purpose, she said, was to secure the victory of extremism over moderation throughout the region. For that reason, it was as much an enemy of moderate countries like Egypt and Jordan as it was of Israel.
Tel Aviv’s great concern, she suggested, was that distracted by Iraq and lacking Russian support, Western countries would fail to enforce the UN Security Council sanctions on Iran that were agreed last July. As for Syria, Livni said its “very negative role” in the region meant it also could not be counted a partner for peace.
This latest act of blood in Lebanon will make it just a bit harder today than yesterday to find a peaceful way of resolving what Blair calls the region’s central problem — the Israel-Palestine conflict. Officials say the prime minister is still planning a regional foray with the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, before the end of the year. He badly wants to reboot the peace process. But with the Palestinian factions still split, with daily violence in Gaza, with Syria and Iran doggedly intent on making “wrong choices”, and with Lebanon’s woes now once again poisoning goodwill, his self-imposed task grows gargantuan.
For Blair, the Europeans, Israel, Arab moderates and even the Bush administration, rising stakes necessitate faster footwork. There is a sense of time running out. — Â