Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

“So, to break the news to you: Hey, Palestinian leaders, no matter how many homemade rockets you fire, the Israelis will retaliate with 100 times more weapons who are 1000 times more effective in killing their targets, so yeah, you are not winning here. And hey, Israeli leaders, No matter how many bombs you drop on Ghaza, the people there will continue to lop homemade rockets at you, because – and you should’ve noticed this the first time one of them stood against one of your tanks with nothing but a rock and a slingshot- they are willing to see 1000 of theirs die for 1 death on your side. You know who gave them that idea? Who set that fabulous exchange rate? You, when you decided that you would trade 1000 of their living for 1 of your dead. And hey, Israeli and Palestinian people, newsflash: Your leaders couldn’t give a rats ass about you or your livelihood or your well-being. THEY DON’T CARE IF YOU LIVE OR YOU DIE, OK?”

[keep reading]

(I received this today from Israel, on day two of the assault on Gaza).

I’ve been driven mad by this whole thing since yesterday, literally in a state of shock, not believing that the so-called “moderate” leadership of Olmert, Livni, and Barak, could actually give the go-ahead to such a bloody operation.  And now, despite the unbelievably disproportionate and unjustified punishment of innocent civilians, Livni and Olmert feel they can’t back down until “Hamas realizes it made a mistake”.  They’ve dug a hole for themselves so deep, and hundreds if not thousands of graves for the Palestinians, that it will take a lot to get out of right now.  I fear many more will lose their lives.  The International Community MUST react immediately, and not wait again 34 days like it did in Lebanon in 2006.

…I don’t think I’ve ever been as ashamed of being an Israeli as I am today.  And it will take me some time to fully understand the twisted logic that lead these criminal-leaders to act as they did.  The absurd of it is, that they (Olmert, Barak, Livni) are pushing us to vote either Meretz, or Likud in the next elections.  I no longer understand what the Left, or Center-Left stand for.  Their behavior is worse than any of the other parties, certainly today.

…I cannot even bring myself to apologize on behalf of my country, because at the moment I cannot fathom affording them this benefit.  Perhaps Israelis truly do not understand what the alternative to peace is, and need to relearn it once more.  Perhaps the only way Israelis will awaken from this self-deception and self-pity, is by feeling the consequences of war.  Perhaps only when thousands of Israelis, civilian and soldier, will die, will we truly consider our actions.  These are horrible words to say about your own people, and your own country, and I pray I’m wrong.

Please continue to believe that there are still many in Israel who are appalled and shocked today, and are ashamed.

Dear friends, apologies for the scattershot postings these days. I’ve just embarked upon my winter holidays and am now looking forward to the perspective (and broadband connection) that comes with leaving Beirut for a few weeks. All this is to say that my inexpert musings over the next month or so will not even be possessed of their solitary virtue, namely proximity to the theatre of operations.

A belated Eid Adha Mubarak to all of you and a merry Christmas.

I woke up this morning to be confronted with a flood of articles about the General’s trip to Damascus. Everywhere one looks, it seems, people are tripping over themselves to either claim or contest Aoun’s status as… er, how does one translate za’im masi7iyii al-sharq? The region’s head Christian? The Eastern-Christian-in-chief? Mr. Christianer-than-Thou?

I don’t know about you, but I find all of this talk of “representing the Christians” to be a little bit distasteful, not because I would rather someone else be Mr. Middle Eastern Christian, but simply because the FPM prides itself on taking a stand against sectarianism. How delighted I was, therefore, to read Khaled Saghieh’s excellent editorial in al-Akhbar this morning. In it, he takes aim at Aoun’s silly claims of presumed regional Christian leadership, saying:

“We do not know what this leadership means, nor how Aoun wove the strands of his relations to the Christians among the peoples of the region. What we do know is that Aoun’s rhetoric has experienced a stupendous retreat from the slogans of the civil state in Lebanon, to Christian leadership within it…”

Saghieh says that while he understands that many Lebanese may identify first and foremost with their sect and secondly with their national identity, he wonders whether “the Copts of Egypt or the Christians of Tanja, whom Minister Gebran Bassil [i.e. Aoun's son-in-law] extols, are really craving for the leadership of General Michel Aoun.” Furthermore, he asks: “Even Syria, which Aoun visits today, would its regime be satisfied with having a leader for its Christians from beyond its borders?”

I can’t help but agree with Saghieh. The last thing the region needs is another sectarian leader. Why not work to dismantle this logic in Lebanon instead of reinforcing it with dubious pretensions?

Something’s going on with March 14th.

I’ve felt for a while that the coalition had begun to come apart at the seams before the events of May 7th, and the Doha Accord only formalized the fact that M14 was totally adrift: aimless, divided, and desperately in need of a raison d’être. It was not clear how the various parties that had once united solidly around the concept of freedom from Syrian domination would find common cause again, at least in time for the 2009 parliamentary elections. The centripetal force exerted on the coalition by the spectre of Syrian hegemony has grown weaker and weaker over the months, yet the rhetoric of M14 politicians seems to be lodged in 2005.

On the other hand, there have been some small signs of a potential shift in orientation, or at least a reconfiguration of the principal elements of the alliance. Recently, Walid Jumblat criticized Amin Gemayel’s speech at the Kataeb memorial, as did Elias Khoury in Sunday’s an-Nahar. More interestingly, al-Akhbar ran a big feature article over the weekend about the Future Movement’s electoral strategy for the 2009 parliamentary elections. The two-page spread – which had “officially-sanctioned leak” written all over it, in my opinion — cited anonymous senior sources in the FM saying that while the party’s decision-makers have been busy at work on the electoral strategy, none of their MPs have yet been notified about whether or not they will be asked to run. This silence is making many people nervous, as is the rumor that Saad al-Hariri has allegedly hired five statistical polling firms to survey the FM’s battleground territories, with the goal of determining which parliamentarians have strong approval ratings (I kid you not) among their constituents.

But wait, it gets better! The sources continue to say that Saad is prepared to scrap his 2005 electoral lists and replace them almost completely with names chosen “by statistics and not by al-Hariri.” In other words, ”the young za’im will rely upon the results of the studies to pick names that impose themselves through a survey of public opinion, so that their victory will be assured”. Could someone please slap me in the face? For a second I thought that all this was happening in Lebanon.

As I said, this story sounds like an official party leak to me, but if that’s case, it signals that there may be some interesting surprises in store during the next few months. Supposedly, as per a U.S. demand, Hariri will not be currying favor with Islamist groups in Tripoli by including any of their leaders on his lists. It also claims that the FM is confident about their chances in the upcoming elections, even in territories where the opposition is hoping to make some inroads.

Who knows what’s going to happen? In my opinion, the elections are more likely to produce a legislative stalemate than a strong mandate for either side. My forecast is somewhere on the order of a 55%-45% spread. A March 14th win — even with all the new parliamentarians that the FM is supposedly fielding — will probably mean that things will remain more or less the same in Lebanon. On the other hand, a March 8th win, at the very least, will compel some shuffling of the political furniture. While I disagree with some of the positions of several March 8th leaders, I think that their election would likely be healthier for Lebanon in the long run than the persistence of the status quo. Changes of the guard compel the creation of new political vocabularies. Competition in the political arena, when it is regulated and kept under control, provides a net benefit to the citizen.

In a way, I want to believe the leak. I’d like to believe that someone is actually taking into consideration the opinions of the Lebanese public in formulating an electoral strategy. Sadly, it really is too far-fetched to believe.

Any thoughts?