By Jonathan Spyer
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman is to visit Syria next week, to discuss the opening of diplomatic relations between the countries, a Lebanese official told reporters this week.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy last month hailed President Bashar Assad’s expression of willingness in principle to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon as “historic progress.”
By Jonathan Spyer
A fourth round of indirect talks between Syrian and Israeli representatives was concluded in Istanbul this week and as the Turkish mediators kept themselves in shape conveying messages between the hotel rooms of the two countries’ delegations, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was keen to stress the urgency of the hour.
The time was approaching, the prime minister said, when gestures would no longer be enough. Rather, it would soon be time for the Syrians to make their choice between the “Iranian grip” and their partnership in the “axis of evil,” and rejoining the “family of nations” in pursuit of peace and “economic development.”
By Jonathan Spyer
The release of Samir Kuntar and his four colleagues, and the national jubilation that greeted their return to Lebanon, bring to a close a week of achievement for the regional bloc of which Hizbullah is a member. The events of the week, however, do not resolve any of the issues of which they form a part. Rather, they plant the seeds of further confrontation.
After six weeks of disputation, the formation of a new government was announced in Beirut on July 11, with Hizbullah gaining veto power in the new cabinet. The pro-Western parliamentary majority holds 16 cabinet seats, against 11 for the opposition (including Hizbullah) and three named directly by President Michel Suleiman.
by Daniel Pipes*
Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.
Its highs – the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in 1948, history’s most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 – have been triumphs of will and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows have been self-imposed humiliations: unilateral retreat from Lebanon and evacuation of Joseph’s Tomb, both in 2000; retreat from Gaza in 2005; defeat by Hizbullah in 2006; and the corpses-for-prisoners exchange with Hizbullah last week.
By Jonathan Spyer
The deal for the return of convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hizbullah men captured in the 2006 Second Lebanon War and a number of corpses in return for the remains of kidnapped IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser comes at an opportune moment for the Hizbullah leadership.
Indeed, some analysts have suggested that group leader Hassan Nasrallah accepted a less favourable deal than he had originally held out for, in order to conclude the negotiations as speedily as possible. What is clear is that the prisoner swap is having the desired effect for Hizbullah - rebuilding its legitimacy. Most (though not all) of the leaders of the pro-western and pro-Saudi March 14 movement appear to be accepting the portrayal of the swap as a victory for Lebanon, and the consequent depiction of the infanticidal Kuntar as a Lebanese national hero.
By Barry Rubin
The Israeli prisoner exchange with Hizballah is a psychological victory for both sides. Nevertheless, I don’t like the decision, I understand both ends of the debate over it, and my job is to analyze them. So rather than make some simple conclusion, I want to think out loud with you about all the factors involved.
For Israelis, the prime consideration–something a world which so often demonizes them fails to understand–is to feel that they have acted in a proper humane manner. Everyone can put themselves in the place of the two families who want their son’s bodies to come home rather than to be in the hands of their murderers.
By Jonathan Spyer
Israel’s announcement of a willingness for peace talks with Lebanon is one of the early fruits of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit to the region and her unexpected visit to Lebanon. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent visit to Lebanon and upcoming visit to Israel is also crucial here.
In the wake of the recent Doha agreement, the US is keen to bolster the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and the March 14 movement of which he is a part.
By Barry Rubin
Why is Israel negotiating with Syria and what happened in Lebanon? One of these events may be the Middle East’s most important development for 2008. Hint: it isn’t the first of them.
Let’s consider why the two sides are “negotiating” including the fact that they aren’t negotiating.
There isn’t going to be a deal. Both sides know it, yet have good reason to be seen talking, indirectly that is.
Start with six factors that account for Israeli government policy:
By Barry Rubin
“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…
Oh, what a fall was there…
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.”
–William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1.
May 21, 2008, is a date–like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)–that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?
On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.
By Barry Rubin
While America’s secretary of state devotes her time to doomed Israel-Palestinian talks and America goes ga-ga over a candidate whose main foreign policy strategy is to talk to dictators, still another crisis strengthens radical Islamists and endangers Western friends and interests.
William Butler Yeats said it best: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.”
by Jonathan Spyer
The recent events in Beirut pose a simple, fundamental question: Who rules in Lebanon?
The answer proposed by Hizbullah last week is that the government of Fuad Saniora and Saad Hariri is to be permitted to hold the formal reins of administration - on condition that they well understand the inherent limits of their position. Most important, any attempt to interfere with the Iranian-created and Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored military infrastructure in the country will result in a swift, disproportionate and bloody response.
A briefing by David Wurmser, Summary account by Mimi Stillman*
Mr. Wurmser calls Lebanon a “key battleground between the West as a whole and the forces that seek to drag the Middle East down.” The situation in Lebanon must be viewed in the context of the larger conflict in the region, which is becoming far more dangerous. Two years after the Cedar Revolution in March 2005, which was brought on by the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese are still living through a tragedy. The inability to install a new president today is indicative of the situation. It is because of the size and success of the popular demonstrations by the Lebanese, however, that Lebanon has become the focal point of the enemies of the West, namely Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
By Barry Rubin
One of the things least understood by people in the West is the framework–or should I say straitjacket?–of the dominant ideology in the Arabic-speaking world in shaping thought, speech, and political alternatives. This shows up in the smallest of exchanges. But atoms, too, are very tiny yet make up all the wide variety of things in the world.
Call it AIDS (Arab Ideological Doctrine Syndrome), a disease that doesn’t just threaten the Middle East, it’s been a plague since the 1950s with few signs of a let-up. Here’s a little example that illustrates the big picture. On February 25, Lebanese cabinet minister Marwan Hamada gave an interview to Press TV. It is a commonplace for supporters of Lebanon’s government to be accused of being Western agents, an implication often repeated in the Western media referring to it as “pro-U.S.”
By Barry Rubin
A funny thing happened at the funeral of Imad Mugniyah. Those who had for years been denying any connection with him and his international terrorist activities–Iran, Syria, and Hizballah–suddenly admitted that he was one of their favorite people.
At the same time, other critical points came out. Mugniyah’s critical position as the link between those three allies, in their conduct of terrorism and subversion, stood out clearly. In addition, Mugniyah’s career as an international terrorist, who often operated against Western targets, showed how Hizballah–along with its backers in Tehran and Damascus–were second only to al-Qaida in their global operations of violence.
by Jonathan Spyer
In a speech last week broadcast at the Sayed al-Shohada Mosque in south Beirut, Hizbullah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah promised his supporters that Israel’s ‘disappearance’ was an ‘established fact.’
The Hizbullah leader railed from his unknown hiding place against the ‘robbing and murdering Zionists’, whom he accused of killing prominent Hizbullah official Imad Mughniyeh. Behind the Hizbullah leader’s customary defiant rhetoric, however, his movement currently faces a series of dilemmas.
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