Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 23rd, 2006
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Thanks to information I read first on the Beirut Daily Star, I found myself perusing the rich material on www.CarnegieEndowment.org and
I found the attached - an excellent, very recent evaluation “Crisis in the Middle East” and the January 2006 article - “LEBANON: Finding a Path from Deadlock to Democracy” -
as well as a list of additional papers that highlight the Arab Problematique. Reading these papers I also realized the paucity of bright stars in our regular press. The Carnegie studies
provide indispensable information for the understanding of the complicated systems that the Arab societies have created in order to establish the various government hierarchies.
Because of the high importance we attribute to our finding this trove of research material, we bring here, in an unusual way, the actual links to those papers and we hope that our readers will take the time to review this original material.
In our own present paper we wish only to make the point, based on the Julia Choucair paper on LEBANON, that the parliamentary system based on religious and ethnic affiliations has given birth to an unmanageable situation and to the present non-government that governs Lebanon.
The Lebanese parliament has been defined as a structured collection of 11 “Confessions” and defined so that it has to include among its 128 members -
exactly 64 Christians and 64 Muslims as per:
Christians: 34 Maronites, 14 Greek Orthodox, 8 Greek Catholics, 5 Armenians Orthodox, 1 Armenian Catholic, 1 Protestant and 1 “other Christian minority.
Muslims: 27 Sunni, 27 Shiia, 8 Druze, 2 Alawite.
What about those that do not give a hoot about religion? Can we say that this arrangement is the epitome of democracy? Does it make any sense to consider Lebanon, in its best ideal condition, a democracy in the accepted meaning of the word?
Now, the 27 Shiia members are obviously from one the two militant factions - Hezballah or Amal - and they are part of the government. From different material I learned that 14 of the Members of Parliament are active Hezballah members, and two of them are Ministers in the Lebanese government.
Being in the government is important because that allows you to rule in the areas where your group has its stronghold such as South Lebanon for the Shiia - but also because the government is handling a privatization program of state-owned industries without having prior instituted a regulatory body to oversee this privatization. The field is thus wide open to patronage and corruption and these Confessional Fiefdoms lead themselves beautifully for such purpose. In effect, on July 16, 2006, in a CSPAN2 TV program, I watched Marwan Iskander’s June 23, 2006, presentation before the Washington National Press Club. He is the man whose book “Rafiq Hariri and The Fate of Lebanon,” published February 2005 and available through www.Saqibooks.com is probably the best description of the destruction of the Lebanese political structure. On the program he also spoke about the present corruption, and told the audience of journalists about a case under the present Prime Minister’s leadership of Mr. Fouad Seniora, about a scandal that involves one of his associate’s company that never registered and declared any income for tax purpose, but was there in line to receive compensation for lost business because of destruction caused in the Civil War.
The bottom line of all of this is, as the paper puts it: “Most Lebanese consider Hezbollah a legitimate organization. as they credit it with pushing Israel out of Lebanon. Also, most political groups have publicly rejected the implementation of the stipulation of UN Resolution 1599 regarding the disarmament of Hezbollah and other militias. While respecting Lebanese sensitivity on this issue, the US must also make clear that Hezbollah is not purely a Lebanese question and that its disarmament can only occur in the context of progress toward Israeli-Lebanese and Israeli-Syrian peace agreements. The fate of Hezbollah is also tied to that of armed Palestinian groups in refugee camps and bases in Lebanon. Like Hezbollah, Palestinian groups were spared from the Tai’f disarmament requirement. With the Lebanese government lacking the power to disarm these groups, the issue has to be part of a comprehensive regional agreement.” This is an extremely dour evaluation of the future of Lebanon. A real democracy is put in question, the effective government is non-existing and the country is still run by “Armed Confessional Fiefdoms” with a call to settle international problems before the country itself can stand on its own feet. Is Israel supposed to remain silent when it is made the target of Hezballah rocket practice? Should Israel, against its will, take over again the role of an occupying power south of the Litany River while the world tries again to arrange for Lebanese-Syrian-Israeli tripartite peace talks. Let us not forget here that the Lebanon-Syria border was also not settled yet, and the question of the Shabaa farms is totally open because they never belonged to Lebanon for whom the Hezbollah claims their ownership, but to Syria who never really released its claim. And what about the millennia-honored right over spoils of war? How do we expect a UN involvement when its resolutions are being rejected anyway? Not so easy and not so fast!
Crisis in the Middle East
By Marina S. Ottaway, Nathan Brown, Julia Choucair, Michele Dunne, Amr Hamzawy, George Perkovich, Paul Salem
Web Commentary, July 20, 2006This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East, because the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could easily escalate to involve the broader region. Indeed, there are voices in the United States and Israel calling for a deliberate broadening of the conflict to Syria and Iran in an attempt to solve all the contentious issues of the region at once.
We believe that this is an illusion. Any strategy to address the present crisis must deal with the realities of the Middle East as they are now, not try to leapfrog over them by seeking to impose a grand new vision. Such a vision would be bound to fail as it did in the case of Iraq.
The following commentaries by members of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Program highlight realities the administration should not ignore. They reflect the different and sometimes conflicting views of the individual authors, rather than an overall position of the Program. One common point emerges clearly from all the analyses, however: the crisis cannot be solved by a single grand strategy that would broaden the conflict to Syria or even Iran and would change the face of the Middle East forever. As in all other crises in the Middle East, at the heart of the problem is the difficult task of negotiating coexistence in a small, overpopulated, and resource-poor part of the world among population groups that have strong identities, different cultures, conflicting interests, and seemingly irreconcilable goals. No grand strategy will alter this most fundamental of Middle East realities.
- Marina Ottaway-Syria
- Nathan J. Brown-Hamas
- Julia Choucair-Hizbollah
- Michele Dunne-Moving Beyond the Limitations of U.S. Policy
- Amr Hamzawy-Understanding Regional Reactions: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan
- George Perkovich-Iran
- Paul Salem-The Predicament of the Lebanese Government
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