Trying To 'Wipe Out The Old Iraq'

By Michael Jansen
This comment was published in Jordan Times on 4/11/2010

Two events that took place during last week reveal that Shiite religious politicians and Sunni radicals embroiled in the struggle over Iraq are determined to wipe out the “old Iraq”, the tolerant, nationalist country that once was at the heart of the eastern Arab world.

The first event was the decision by Iraq’s supreme criminal tribunal to inflict the death sentence on Tareq Aziz, the country’s former deputy premier and foreign minister. He was condemned for alleged involvement in the suppression of a 1991 rebellion mounted by Shiite religious parties and Kurds at the instigation of president H.W. George Bush.

The parties targeted at that time by the US-ousted regime of president Saddam Hussein were the exiled factions that returned on the backs of US tanks and installed in power in 2003 by president George W. Bush. These Shiite factions were Dawa, currently headed by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), now led by Ammar Al Hakim, the Kurdish Democratic Party headed by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani.

It must be remembered that Aziz’s boss, Saddam, was executed in 2006 for the murder of 147 Shiites in retaliation for an attempt on his life by Dawa during a visit to the village of Dujail. At the time, the Kurds resented the government’s decision to give priority to his repression of Shiites and argued that the Baathist regime had attacked, killed and displaced masses of Kurds during the Anfal campaign of the 1980s.

While Shiites did not relent over Saddam, Maliki may now be lending an ear to the Kurds who hold the balance of power in parliament as well as Shiite radicals in his Dawa party and the movement loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr - Maliki’s ally of convenience. Maliki, who is determined to secure a second term, has 89 seats and the Sadrists have 40. He needs the Kurdish bloc’s 57 to attain the majority in the 325-seat assembly to form a government. Maliki could be counting on the death sentence and, perhaps, even the execution of a prominent member of the ousted Baathist regime to rally support in the Shiite and Kurdish camps.

By condemning Aziz, Maliki will also remind his supporters that his main rival for the top job, Iyad Allawi, is a former Baathist and that a number of the winning members of his Iraqiya bloc were also Baathists once. Some Shiites and Kurds still consider Baathists servants of the devil.

The death sentence was proclaimed by Judge Mahmoud Saleh Al Hassan, a former Maliki aide and failed candidate for his Dawa-dominated State of Law bloc in the March parliamentary election. Hassan’s campaign posters proclaimed: “Those who wish to see the tyrants humiliated must vote for Judge Mahmoud Saleh Al Hassan.”

For Maliki, his Iraqi associates and his sponsors in Tehran, it is necessary to purge Iraq of Baathists and Baathism. The party and its ideology represent one face of the secular Arab nationalist movement that dominated the politics of the Arab world during the last half of the 20th century. Maliki and Tehran depend for their dominance in Baghdad on the power of Shiite particularism, bolstered by the drive of the Iraqi Kurds for independence.

The second event was the attack on the Chaldean Catholic church in the upscale district of Karada in Baghdad on Sunday evening. The men who carried out this operation, fighters from Al Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), are determined to root out Shiite religious parties, Kurdish secessionists and Baathists. Nearly half the congregation of 120 assembled for mass at Our Lady of Deliveramce died during the militant operation and the assault the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military mounted to end the?seizure of the church.

Christians, Shiites and Kurds are routinely targeted by ISI, the umbrella grouping of militant Sunni factions, including Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. ISI’s ultimate objective is the transformation of Iraq into a conservative Sunni entity where non-Sunnis would have no role in political life and the Kurds would have no autonomy.

The “old Iraq”, which had many problems and shortcomings, was, by contrast, the state of all its citizens - Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Kurds, Shabaks, Yezidis and others. The Baath Party that ruled Iraq for 35 years had members from most of these communities, half being Shiites. Although Westerners and anti-Baathist Shiites argue that Saddam Hussein’s regime was “Sunni”, this is untrue and unfair. His inner circle consisted of trusted relatives, mainly from the Tikrit area, who just happened to be Sunnis?

Aziz is a Chaldean Catholic, while many senior figures were from the Shiite community, including Muhammad Saeed Sahaf, former information and foreign minister, Saadoun Hammadi, former oil, foreign and prime minister and speaker of parliament, and Amer Al Saadi, former minister of industry and defence industry. These men were competent politicians and technocrats, Iraqi patriots who worked within the regime as best they could for the good of their country rather than for their sect or ethnic group. The ideo?ogy they espoused was inclusive and liberal.

It is significant that the US, which remains the occupying power in Iraq, refrained from comment on the passing of a death sentence on Aziz.

“This is an Iraqi legal process,” stated an unnamed Obama administration official.

“We are staying out of it.”

The administration is “staying out of it” because the US is getting out of Iraq by the end of next year, whatever happens to the country or its people. After Washington pulls out, the US does not care if Iraq is submerged by a deluge of warring sectarian and ethnic factions.

Yemen: A State Of Denial

By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid
This comment was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 3/11/2010
 
There is nothing easier and more comfortable than to throw the blame on the shoulders of others in avoiding our responsibilities and confronting the difficult truth. This normally is what the defeated and the incapable do. This is what has happened to some Yemeni intellectuals who embrace the concept of denial, and who have become convinced that what is being said about the actions of Al-Qaeda in their country is merely fabricated or exaggerated stories whose aim is to occupy or spread hegemony over Yemen!
 
Perhaps there is no one in the world who has not heard of the recent events; however, in the opinion of these Yemeni intellectuals these events are mere lies or machinations, despite the fact that their witnesses are Saudi, Qatari, and UAE Arabs, and also the Yemeni authorities that admitted the truth of the bombs in the airplanes. You can imagine what would have happened had the two bombs exploded aboard the two airplanes, and what the impact and consequences of such an incident would have been on Yemen and on the region!
 
It is no secret to the observers, especially in Yemen, that Al-Qaeda is working openly to strike at the Yemeni state and installations; that latest of the Al-Qaeda crimes was killing one of the senior Yemeni security officials a few days ago. Before that one of Al-Qaeda cells was arrested in Saudi Arabia after it succeeded in infiltrating Saudi territories from Yemen. Before that Al-Qaeda nearly succeeded in assassinating Saudi Assistant Interior Minister Prince Muhammad Bin-Naif. If all this does not convince the doubting intellectual brethren, Al-Qaeda itself has issued enough recordings filmed in Yemen, which are available on the Internet, speaking in precise details about its work, and which accompany Al-Qaeda's warning statements in Yemen.
 
Al-Qaeda has a history swarming with events. Before it took residence in Yemen, it resided in a number of countries along the past ten years. The intellectuals of those countries, before the intellectuals of Yemen, had cast doubt on its presence, but then they discovered the appalling truth that it was a real and dangerous organization, and everything that was said about it ought to be looked at seriously and not with suspicion. Al-Qaeda was in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Algeria, and now it is in Morocco and Mauritania.
 
I have heard one of the Yemeni major intellectuals denounce the "exaggeration" in talking about Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and say that there are those who want to exaggerate the danger in order to control the destiny of his country. However, we cannot compare the destiny of Yemen to the destinies of other rich countries in which Al-Qaeda previously wreaked havoc, and this did not have anything to do with any foreign or regional interests.
 
The truth is shocking. The countries that were burned by the fire of terrorism had tried in the beginning to promote the same talk, namely that there was no terrorism or terrorists; however, ultimately they recognized the reality, and changed their policy from denial to recognition, and searched for numerous solutions.
 
Denial includes some ignorance and some arrogance. Today, Yemen is a hostage to terrorism. Yemen has to choose one of two options; either it confronts terrorism the same as countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt did, or it sticks to stubbornness, blames others, and hence it drowns in more blood, or it can recognize the problem and deal with it.
 
Yemen's problems are too complicated to be put on the shoulders of others. Yemen has problems of bad administration; silence about the widespread of weapons; weakness of the central authority, and above all this the problem of not believing in the aforementioned problems, and hence not trying to solve them. Definitely when Al-Qaeda succeeds in breaking the Yemeni regime and threatening the world, the international community will hasten to intervene. Therefore, Yemen should not reach that dangerous stage.

The Necessity Of Protecting The Middle East's Christians

By Randa Takieddine

This comment was published by al-Hayat on 3/11/2010

 

The attack on the Saydat Najat church in Baghdad was horrific. It was monstrous terrorism, which felled 52 people, from among the worshippers and guards at the church, in order to frighten the Christians in Iraq and prompt them to leave their country. The phenomenon of terror that targets the Christians of the east began decades ago in this region of the world. We should note the huge anxiety that possessed the late Palestinian official Faisal Husseini. When he visited France, he insisted on meeting the then-bishop of France Lustiger, to tell him that the most dangerous thing taking place in the east, and especially Jerusalem, was the attempt by Israel to expel Christians from that city, so that the Jewish state could justify its control, as the guardian of the west’s security against extremist Islam.

The terror that targeted the church in Baghdad is completely removed from any religion or moral principles. It is an extremist terror that is generated by barbaric Israeli actions in Palestinian cities and in Jerusalem.

The perpetrator of the attack on the church in Baghdad, who blew himself up, in the name of a group claiming to be Islam was a desperate person who was the tool of crime and blind extremism. The statements by Muslim clergymen in Saudi Arabia and in Lebanon, who condemned the hateful crime, were something positive and needed. However, we also need clear and necessary policies to protect the Christians throughout the east. The displacement of Palestinians from east to west is a worrying factor in this region of the world. First, because they are members of the same country, wherever they live, and coexistence among religions, where they are located, is of fundamental importance to the security of the state to which they belong. In addition to forcing them to leave or displacing them is an official Israeli policy, which leads to the displacement because of Israeli actions in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

Iraq, which has been ground down by wars and terror, should be a symbol of religious coexistence. However, a civil and sectarian war threatens the country’s unity and future. The same anxiety exists in Lebanon, where there are profound political disputes and the security incidents that might result are a big danger to the country’s future. The situation also scares Christians, who are members of this country, like all Lebanese. Certainly, eliminating sectarianism in the countries of the Middle East with diverse sects is the best way to build states that are both real and safe.

How long with Lebanese remain under the protection of their sects, instead of a real state, that takes responsibility for guaranteeing a dignified life for all of its sects? How long will the sects in Iraq remain subject to a divided and unstable political situation, and a deteriorating security situation? How long will the Copts in Egypt be oppressed? Sectarianism is fatal to the future of any country, as it is frightening and worrying for its security. There is the more dangerous scenario of opening the door to blind terror for its people, who become human bombs more easily.

Clergymen in the Middle East have a great responsibility to educate the members of these sects to stay away from extremism and murderous chauvinism and coexist with other sects. The determination for Christians to remain in the east should be a priority, and here lies the importance of the King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, to undertake the initiative of a dialogue among religions, which should be strengthened and developed in a Middle East threatened by blind extremism.

Netanyahu Is One Decision Away From A New Mideast

Only one of the Israeli prime minister's potential decisions would fundamentally change Israel's relations with the Palestinians and Syrians: removing the settlements.

By Aluf Benn

This comment was published in Haaretz on 3/11/2010

The Oslo Accords or the Six-Day War? Which better symbolizes the "Rabin legacy" - a peace agreement or a military triumph? The debate is evoked anew every autumn when we commemorate the slain prime minister, with positions generally split along political lines. Leftists like the Rabin of agreements and ceremonies, while rightists prefer to associate the man with the army, the Temple Mount and the Suez Canal.

But the comparison is unfair. In 1967, Yitzhak Rabin was IDF chief of staff, and despite his central role in the lead-up to war, Israel's strategic decisions were made by others. In 1993, as prime minister, the choice between working with or repudiating Yasser Arafat fell on Rabin alone.

Every leader faces decisions in his or her career that influence reality - either by deed or by default - and everything else is mere maintenance or crisis management. These are the moments that grant a leader freedom of choice, to veer left or right, to act or to stand in place. They are the moments in which a leader can determine the course of history, and Rabin did just that in choosing Oslo.

Another prime minister - or even Rabin himself under different circumstances - would have selected a different path. But Rabin made a decision and stuck to it, and thereby built himself a legacy. All of the other decisions he made - peace with Jordan and spurning a similar agreement with Syria - were ultimately derived from the same fateful decision that would cost him his life.

The careers of other leaders have been similarly characterized by such decisive moments. The great Winston Churchill, Benjamin Netanyahu's idol, made one momentous decision in his life: choosing not to pursue peace with Germany during its 1940 invasion of France, but to continue the fight against Hitler. All of his other actions - the sweeping addresses, the iconic images of his cigars and victory signs - now serve as no more than footnotes to the historic position he took against Nazi Germany. From then on, and until the end of the war, Churchill's influence over the course of events was marginal. His legacy was forged during the five critical days (documented in John Lukacs' book "Five Days in London" ) in which he convinced his cabinet that Britain must stand up to Hitler, even if it did so alone.

Charles de Gaulle - of whom Ehud Barak is an ardent fan - made two decisions that shaped modern France: fleeing in 1940 with retreating British troops to London, from where he issued regular radio broadcasts; and relinquishing France's hold on Algeria in 1962 and granting the country independence. Barak is now exhorting Netanyahu to be a de Gaulle and not a Churchill - because the British leader merely said "no" and refused to budge, while his counterpart in Paris settled on no less than changing the world.

David Ben-Gurion made three critical decisions: declaring Israel's independence in 1948 from Britain, making Jerusalem Israel's capital and building the Dimona nuclear facility. Levi Eshkol was dragged against his will into the Six-Day War, but at its end decided not to withdraw from the territories captured but keep them under Israeli control - a decision that changed the face of the Middle East. Golda Meir made one crucial decision in her career - rejecting Anwar Sadat's feelers for peace - a choice that exacted the heavy toll of the Yom Kippur War. Menachem Begin decided to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, to build 100 settlements in the West Bank and to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Yitzhak Shamir's most significant decision was to maintain the status quo in the territories. Rabin had Oslo, Barak the Lebanon withdrawal, Ariel Sharon the Gaza disengagement, and Ehud Olmert the Second Lebanon War and the strike on the Syrian reactor.

Netanyahu, who left no deep imprimatur during his first term as prime minister, has also yet to change a thing since returning to office. Over the next year, following the U.S. midterm elections, he'll have a last chance to decide whether to strike Iran or wait for Barack Obama to make headway against the Islamic Republic, as well as whether to change the face of the West Bank and Golan Heights or maintain the status quo.

Only one of the prime minister's potential decisions would fundamentally change Israel's relations with the Palestinians and Syrians: removing the settlements. Everything else is empty prattle, things that keep diplomats and envoys looking occupied. Only the evacuation of settlements - or on the contrary, their expansion and development - will change the facts on the ground.

These are the fundamental decisions before Netanyahu: strike Iran or keep the planes grounded, remove settlers from their homes or raise a new generation of Israelis in the territories. These are his Oslo moments, and his choices will shape the future of Israel and the place of the current prime minister in its history.

Middle East's Stagnant "Change"

By Ramzy Baroud

This comment was published in Jordan Times on 3/11/2010

Democracy in the Middle East continues to be a hugely popular topic of discussion. Its virtues are tirelessly praised by rulers and oppositions alike, by intellectuals and ordinary people, by political prisoners and their prison guards. Yet, in actuality, it remains an illusion, if not a front to ensure the demise of any real possibility of public participation in decision making.

Bahrain was the latest Arab country to hold free and fair elections. It managed a reasonable voter turnout of 67 per cent. The opposition also did very well, winning 45 per cent of the seats. In terms of fairness and transparency, the Bahraini elections could serve as an excellent example of how things are changing in the Middle East. Moreover, they might provide Western leaders, such as US President Barack Obama, an opportunity to commend the contribution of American guidance to the progress in the region?

In actual fact, nothing is changing - except for the insistence by some that it is. Arab governments have made two important discoveries in the last decade. The first is that US interests cannot peacefully coexist with true democracies in the region. Egypt had a rude awaking in 2005, when Muslim Brotherhood candidates won a fifth of the votes, if not more. This was followed by the unmatched democratic revolution in Palestine when Hamas won the majority of the vote. The aftermath of both these events was en?ugh to remind both Arabs and the US of the folly of their so-called democracy project.

The second realisation is that Arabs are not judged by the genuineness of their democracy, rather, the success of their democratic experiences is judged on the basis of how well they can serve and protect US interests. Since the democracy radar is measured by Washington, Arab countries deemed lacking in democratic reforms are often cited as promising and fledgling democracies in congressional reports or White House statements. Countries deemed hostile to US economic and political interests are remorselessl? shunned, as if their experiments with democracy could never yield anything of worth or consideration.

These two realisations led to a superficial change of course, forming a new trend that Shadi Hamid, writing in Foreign Policy, refers to as “free but unfair - and rather meaningless - election”.

Free elections are known to be the cornerstone of true democracy. Thus, by giving the impression of freedom, automatically one tends to conclude fairness. But fairness is nowhere to be found, for if it truly existed, change would become possible and would be likely to follow. Those who have followed the new democratic experiences of some Arab countries will have observed that they have been defined by the same political stagnation of the pre-democracy years.

American journalist, Sydney J. Harris once wrote: “Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”

If Harris is correct, then whatever is under way in the Middle East is anything but democracy. Although new parliamentarians are elected, new faces flash on television and an increasing number of women are paraded along with their male colleagues following each election, the powers that be remain unchanged, unhinged and truly unchallenged.

Most polls, whether conducted by Arab or non-Arab pollsters, indicate that the vast majority of Arab people view democracy in very positive terms. In recent years, democracy has become a household name in much of the Middle East, and not one ruler or government contests its virtues. Yet, no true democracy has in fact actualised in any shape or form.

Have Middle Eastern ruling elites figured out the democracy trick, the great con of our time? Have they realised that democracy in the Middle East is only what the White House says it can be?

Israel has mastered this very trick since the day of its inception. This is what Hasan Afif El Hasan argues in his new and very instructive book, “Is the Two-State Solution Already Dead?”

“The identity of the Israelis in their legal documents and ID cards is expressed in terms of their group religious affiliation as ‘Jewish’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’, ‘Bahai’, ‘Durzi’, etc., where all privileges are conferred by the state on the Jews by virtue of being Jews, thus making Israel an religio-ethnocracy rather than a liberal democracy.”

Israel’s unique democracy is in fact getting more unique, as non-Jewish citizens of Israel are subjected to increasing levels of legal harassment and are constantly asked to jump through all sorts of political hoops to prove their loyalty to the Jewish state. Still, clever and persistent Israel has managed to present itself to the world at large, Arabs included, as being a model democracy.

This was and continues to be the original democracy con in the Middle East.

It took some Arab governments decades to catch up and also present themselves as democratic, whatever the reality on the ground. This is not an everyday democracy scheme. It is particularly devious because it can boast of being free, fair and transparent - and the numbers would actually attest to that - but the political structure would still be construed in such a way that the freely elected parliaments are blocked from legislating effectively to challenge the powers that be. If any legislation is allowed?to pass through, say, unelected upper houses and approved by the ultimate ruler (both usually serving as an insurance system against elected parliaments), it tends to be unimportant and largely decorative.

Since democracy is always a work in progress, for no country can claim to be perfectly democratic, Middle East governments can always use this idea to justify their shortcomings. Expectedly, the US tends to honour that, bestowing praise on its friends and condemning its enemies - the former for courageously taking on democratic initiatives and the latter for failing the democracy test.

The great democracy con would not succeed were it not for the fact that many players, including the US, are so invested in its success. As for the ordinary people who are eager to see their rights respected, freedoms honoured and political horizons expanded, well, they can always vote - even if only their vote actually counts for nothing but only further validates the very system they are trying to change.

The Middle East Peace Process Should Quit Smoking

By karam Dana 
This comment was published in Daily Star on 3/11/ 2010

 

Nothing makes a person more uncomfortable than visiting their home country and feeling very helpless.

As a Palestinian-American, visiting the West Bank, where I was born, forces me to taste the burdens of daily life, as well as feel the despair of an entire population. No matter how long the Palestinians walk, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. When I visit Palestine, I become more and more determined to support a just end to this Palestine/Israel debacle. Countless attempts and rhetorical speeches over policy solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have been made for decades, but yet, one thing is for sure: so far, none of these attempts (whether genuine or not) result in a plausible solution to the conflict. If anything, this shows that the traditional formula for a solution is futile. I sadly offer you no working formula, but I can show you that the current one-once again-will not offer solution.

In recent years, the policies of the Salaam Fayyad-led government have been attracting a lot of attention. The policies focus primarily on economic development in Palestinian cities, with less emphasis on providing solutions to the political questions. As much as I have been skeptical, I cannot help but be honest: people seem to like the lack of confrontation with the Israeli Army; they seem to like the relatively easier checkpoint crossings; they seem to take the Palestinian Authority more seriously – to the point that people in my own town of Al-Khalil (Hebron) willfully comply with the mandatory seatbelt law, though the stereotype about Hebronites is that they are hard-headed, and never like to change.

Needless to say, the core political questions of Palestine are still untouched. In fact, Palestinians seem to be in deeper trouble than they have ever been. The Gaza Strip is more than geographically separated from the West Bank. Not only do I fear that the animosity between Hamas and Fatah has grown so large that any prospect for reconciliation between the two Palestinian factions is in doubt, but what I fear the most is that the cleavages have taken root in the societies of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Thus making reunification (regardless of who controls the state) not without serious social divisions.

Aside from the Hamas-Fatah divide, new political players seem to emerge in Palestinian politics in recent years. The business elite, who have been very supportive of Salaam Fayyad’s policies, are willing to become part of the institutional structure of a future state. This is rather unique in post-1948 Palestinian politics, where the business elite is taking an active role in formulating policy to enhance their economic opportunity and interests. Interestingly enough, these influential individuals claim to be apolitical, but as a group, support a political climate that would ensure the tranquility of their business affairs.

How do Palestinian business interests interact with shaping the political future of Palestine, especially when business-minded individuals consciously make decisions to support the pro-business Salaam Fayyad government?

The most problematic issue of all, however, has not changed in the West Bank. The devastating policies of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank are well and alive. If the economic burden is lifted, checkpoints still remind Palestinians that Israel calls the shots. If Palestinians pass checkpoints without much hassle, they will be reminded by the settlers-only bypass roads of illegal Israeli settlement – leaving Palestinians to feel as if they are the colonizers in their own land. If a just solution is to ever be implemented, the true predicaments to a just solution need to be dealt with first.

No one should expect that a two-state solution would be achieved in the traditional formula. Even more importantly, economic recovery that is not connected (both in theory and practice) to a political process would lead Palestinian society to nowhere, with just a few extra Israeli shekels in their pockets.

As far as we know, the first Intifada was a product of lack of political rights for Palestinians. Economic development does not replace the simple, universally accepted right to self-determination. Palestinians, instead, rejected the Israeli occupation and wanted solutions. My worry is that the Fayyad policies, though providing some economic recovery and possibly building some of the necessary institutions for a future Palestinian state, would bring us back to the political picture of 1987, right before the first Intifada.

Every time I visit Palestine, I pick up my smoking habit again. As I find myself stuck at a checkpoint, I feel the urge to smoke. I have finally given up smoking, because the situation is not getting any better. If I find my comfort to the terrifying reality of Palestinian life in a cigarette, then I will always continue to smoke. Instead, I thought I should explore new avenues to alleviate my stress. Giving up the traditional formula for a solution to the debacle, I thought, is like giving up cigarettes that have been proven to cause cancer. New thoughts are crucially needed. “Peace needs no cigarettes” should be the new slogan.

A Late Awakening to... Sovereignty!

By Elias Harfoush

This comment was published in al-Hayat on 2/11/2010

 

The international investigation into the assassination of former Premier Rafiq Hariri and subsequent crimes certainly violates Lebanese sovereignty, there is no doubt of that. This is not just in terms of the investigators’ violation of “morals” in the neighborhood of Ouzai and of people’s sanctity. It is a foregone conclusion, and a natural result of how the tasks of these investigators are carried out, in implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1757, which is related to the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the Lebanese cooperation that is required under this resolution, at all levels.

The work of UN peacekeepers in the south also violates many aspects of Lebanese sovereignty, in the recognized sense of the sovereignty of states over their territory, where the legitimate forces of any state are the only party that should be present and implement the laws on the land of a given state. However, the commitment to UNSCR 1701 allows international troops in Lebanon to carry out the missions entrusted to them, in cooperation with the Lebanese army, which in turn cannot prevent it from carrying out its missions even if it wanted to. Instead, it must help UNIFIL, according to this resolution. The proof of this lies in the uprising by the so-called “families” of south Lebanon, to protest maneuvers that UNIFIL troops were carrying out. The result was that the “people” returned home after their guardians read the text of the resolution and the prerogatives that it grants. UNIFIL troops continued to carry out the tasks entrusted to them, after receiving assurances from the Lebanese authorities and the army leadership that they wished to facilitate UNIFIL’s work in the south. This will guarantee the security of residents in this region, in the first place, in the face of Israeli aspirations and aggressions.

Things saw a repeat with the Adaisseh tree incident, which almost sparked a regional, and perhaps a world war. This was after all of the “pro-sovereignty” forces were massed from near-by; the grace of God permitted the tree to be uprooted on the same day. Happy ever after!
The recent incident at the gynecological clinic might have even wider repercussions that the tree in Adaisseh. It is an occasion to remind those who are very late in becoming concerned with morals, and with sovereignty, about why all of these external security and judicial forces are being summoned. They are the ones we accuse of spying on our women and our villages, and on “our army, our people and our resistance.” Doesn’t the matter deserve a pondering of these reasons? Wasn’t it the July War of 2006 that summoned the expansion of UNIFIL’s work in the south, after the parties harmed by an Israeli aggression made efforts with the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to see the Lebanese government receive international approval for the deployment of these forces and their receiving much wider latitude to operate? Aren’t the conditions in which the war erupted, which led to the deployment of UNIFIL, interesting in terms of the questions they raise? They prompted Hezbollah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to acknowledge himself that he would not have given the order to capture the Israeli soldiers, if he had known the way things would go, the martyrs who would be lost, and the wide-scale destruction incurred by the country.

Once again… what about the reasons why international investigators are present in Lebanon, and their enjoying wide prerogatives to investigate, about which we complain today? Isn’t the major reason for this that the assassination of Hariri and the many who followed? And after that, the blocking of legislative, judicial and government institutions, to prevent them from playing their authorized role in the investigation of these assassinations and the capture prosecution of those involved. Also, there were conditions that led to resorting to the Security Council to pass a resolution taking over this task, after Lebanon was unable to do so.

These are only examples, so that we can see that the acts we commit have international repercussions that should be taken into account. As for waking up late to the notion of sovereignty, this will not help, especially if the “pro-sovereignty” groups define the term according to their own standards, in order to serve their interests.

These are only examples, so that we can say we hope what is coming will not be worse. Recently, we have heard about overcoming international law and being hostile to those who carry it out. Our country will become one of those in which the laws should be applied by force, because they are in revolt against the world’s laws and resolutions.