23
January 2007
When Don Quixote takes to the streets
So today is a "day of change," to quote Suleiman Franjieh. He could be
right. That's because, as of tomorrow, Hizbullah may have much greater latitude to maneuver without considering the interests of its Christian allies
- Michel Aoun and Franjieh himself. Both men
are eager to be the opposition's cannon fodder, and will emerge
from the fracas with their reputation
tarnished further. Not for the first time, Aoun is helping ensure
that Christians will end up marginalized.
The Saudis and the Iranians are in the process of putting together a package deal to end the Lebanese crisis.
Neither wants a Sunni-Shiite war in the streets of Beirut, yet somehow
Aoun has failed to grasp the implications of this. He remains entirely focused on the fact that their
arrangement might undermine
his ambition to become president. The Saudi-Iranian project remains very much
alive, despite Aoun's
warning on Sunday that Lebanon
should not seek a solution from the outside.
As usual, the general is moving
against the grain of regional and international developments; as usual he is gearing
himself up for a fall.
Both Hizbullah and Amal are giving Aoun enough rope to hang himself with.
In his interview with Al-Manar on Friday, Hizbullah's secretary
general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, set as a new opposition condition the holding of early parliamentary elections, before a presidential election. Aoun couldn't have been
foolish enough to believe that Nasrallah
was serious. Or could he? Nasrallah
knows the demand has no chance of being
met, but the condition was apparently added to block something he was
unhappy with in the Saudi-Iranian draft. Indeed, by Saturday unidentified sources, certainly from the opposition, were leaking to Al-Hayat that the
main obstacle to a resolution of the
stalemate was Michel Aoun.
On
top of that, today Aoun's and Franjieh's followers will reportedly be alone in the
trenches. While Shiite
areas will go on strike,
sources in Amal and Hizbullah have said that neither of the parties is committed to blocking roads in and around
beirut - unlike the Christian groups. A Sunni-Shiite
confrontation will thus be averted, while
Aoun and Franjieh march on, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,
two soldiers in pursuit of Christian irrelevance.
Nasrallah will let Aoun fall into the ravine, mainly because the general has become a burden. At the
same time, Hizbullah will prop Aoun up until he reaches
the edge. Nasrallah doesn't want a messy divorce with the Aounists,
who can still
be very useful
against the majority. If Aoun is ridiculed today, if his calls for a strike fail, if his only tactic
is to bully people into not going to work, then soon
Nasrallah might be able to tell the general: "Look, I tried, to the extent that
I was willing to back your demand for early elections. But your influence is limited and I really
must avoid allowing my differences with the Sunnis
to get out of hand."
Most
disappointing has been the
performance of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah
Boutros Sfeir. Now more than ever he
must take a sturdier
position on those Christians
in opposition. Instead, he remains blandly impartial. In his Sunday homily, Sfeir directed condemnation against both the majority
and the opposition, in particular against their "tenacity" at a time when Lebanon was sinking
fast. That was understandable, but also unfair just
before the majority-led government prepared to bring Lebanon billions of dollars in foreign
financing. The patriarch was probably
reluctant to add insult to Aoun's and Franjieh's almost certain injury today. Yet it
is within his mandate, even his duty, to warn
the Maronite community of the dangers ahead. And when two
leaders are taking the lead in a mad adventure
that is sure to bomb, and when
Maronites in general can expect to feel the harmful backlash
of that decision, Sfeir cannot evade
taking a clearer stance.
Aoun's
dream of becoming president lies shattered. This showed in a speech on Sunday, in which
he denounced "Harirism." It was always about Harirism with him,
about his loathing for those who collaborated
with Syria to build up Lebanon on the ruins of Aoun's 1988-1990
fiasco. That same coalition
would later push the Syrians
out. The general cannot stomach that he has been twice deprived: of the merit he
deserved for first fighting the Syrians;
and of the political capital that should have accrued to him once they departed.
You can sympathize,
but not enough to follow a frustrated man down the path to communal and national
perdition.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY
STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=78856#