More Tension Added to Boiling Lebanese Pot
August 7, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Lebanon took another step closer to civil war if the results of the current elections hold up. A split in the reelection of the two candidates running to replace the offices of two leaders assassinated by Syrian Intelligence, one of which is pro-Hizbullah, has made tension grow even stronger between the two elements in Lebanese society. If a civil does eventually break out, the Hizbullah is likely to be the winner, and a pro-Syrian government will take over Lebanon.
If some sort of compromise is reached to form a government, in which the relatively small Shiite Parliament segment is allowed to have a veto power over certain legislation, then a civil war may be averted, but Hizbullah will eventually take over the government by intimidation and assassination.
Lebanon is in for a rough ride.
Begin Article 1 – BBC
Opposition wins key Lebanese poll
Written by Claire Wania/bbc
August 6, 2007
An opposition candidate has defeated a government-backed rival in a tense by-election near Lebanon’s capital Beirut, the interior ministry says.
The poll is being seen as a key battle for the Christian leadership, ahead of presidential elections next month.
Opposition leader Michel Aoun acclaimed victory for his candidate over rival Amin Gemayel, who has alleged fraud.
On a tense election night supporters of the two sides were separated by tanks and hundreds of troops.
The election was one of two being contested to find replacements for two murdered anti-Syrian MPs.
Christian cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel was shot dead in November, and Sunni Muslim lawmaker Walid Eido was killed in a Beirut car bomb in June.
The vote
to replace Mr Eido in mainly Sunni West Beirut was won easily by pro-government candidate Mohammad Amin Itani, as expected.
The headline contest, however, was in the deeply divided Maronite Christian heartland of Metn.
Officials said Camille Khoury, of Mr Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, had won by just over 400 votes, or about 0.5% of the vote.
He defeated Amin Gemayel, a former president, leader of the Phalange Party, and father of the assassinated MP whose seat was up for grabs.
Before the result was announced, Mr Gemayel alleged voting irregularities and demanded a re-run in one district.
The contest reflects the bitter struggle between the Western-backed government and the opposition alliance, which includes both Mr Aoun and Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim group backed by Syria.
Mr Aoun and Mr Gemayel are seen as frontrunners in next month’s race to succeed pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.
Under Lebanon’s sectarian political system, the presidency is reserved for a Maronite Christian, and is elected by parliament.
The rivalry between the two political veterans has intensified amid a wider conflict between Lebanon’s pro- and anti-Syrian groups.
Mr Gemayel and his allies accuse Syria of orchestrating the shooting of his son last November and other anti-Syrian figures including Mr Eido.
Mr Aoun is a former military leader who was once a vocal critic of Syria and won a vast majority of the Christian vote in polls in 2005.
But support for the FPM slipped after Mr Aoun unexpectedly allied himself to the pro-Syria opposition movement Hezbollah.
Turnout was high in Sunday’s vote.
There were clashes between the rival Christian factions in the run-up to the vote, and reports of some fights after polls closed being broken up by police.
Both leaders called for calm.
“We hope that everything goes quietly tonight,” said Mr Aoun.
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said the largely orderly vote was a civilised response to political assassination.
The two dead politicians are the latest in a growing line of prominent anti-Syrians to be killed on the streets of Beirut.
The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a truck bomb in June 2005 drew widespread international condemnation, after which Syrian troops withdrew, after many years in Lebanon.
Syria has been accused of involvement in the attack – a claim it rejects.
Lebanon is a divided country facing its biggest political crisis in years, and these by-election results will not solve the country’s deeper problems, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Beirut.
In fact they may only raise more questions, he says.
President Lahoud, who is allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition, has not given the polls his blessing, and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri has said he will not recognise the results.
Begin Article 2 – The Independent
Robert Fisk: Mistrust fuels cycle of violence in Lebanon
Published: 06 August 2007
When, oh when, will the Lebanese Christians stop destroying each other? General Michel Aoun’s Free Democratic Party (colour them bright orange) stood yesterday, along with their pro-Syrian allies, against the Phalangist candidate Amin Gemayel, former president and father of the assassinated incumbent MP, Pierre, murdered – by Syrians? By rival Christians? You name it – last year.
For Gemayel, read authority, the power of the democratically elected parliament, the government of Lebanon and, much more to the point, the US-supported government of Lebanon.
For Aoun – who once claimed to be “liberating” Lebanon from Syria in a disastrous 1990 war, but who would now like to be Syria’s president in Lebanon – it was a heady moment. His candidate, Camille Khoury, may not win, but he will reformulate the politics of Lebanon where “pro-Syrian” may become once more a respectable political label. The issues are deadly serious, in every sense of the word.
Pierre Gemayel, son of the putative successful candidate Amin, was shot to death in his car last November, and so a vote in his Christian favour – there are few Muslims in the beautiful Metn hills here – was a vote against his presumed killers, the Syrian security services.Desperate to avoid the language of civil war -which all of the candidates speak in private – Aoun had earlier addressed a rally in the Beirut suburbs from behind a bulletproof shield, and abused his opponents as “windmills of lies,” adding, spitefully: “I will not call them sons of snakes, but sons of rumours, and rumours are like a rootless weed.
The sectarian system of voting (courtesy, originally, of the League of Nations’ French Mandate) meant the Armenian Tashnak party is supporting Aoun, a fact that has outraged the party’s supporters in the state of Armenia. What, on earth, has Aoun ever d
one to acknowledge the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks?
It all goes back to a simple equation; if the Lebanese would trust each other as much as they trust in Washington, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Damascus, London or Paris, they would be safe, but the sectarian system of politics ensures the de-confessionalisation of Lebanon would destroy the country’s identity. Thus it lives, in the constant penumbra of civil war.
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