Trust and not math is needed to end Lebanon crises

By Ali Hussein,
Ya Libnan Volunteer
Beirut – Arab League Chief Amr Moussa failed in his mission, not for lack of effort but primarily for lack of trust …

amongst the Lebanese rivals as they worked out various mathematical formulas to resolve the impasse.

Moussa revealed at the airport as he was leaving to Cairo that the math formula he suggested for forming the government is:

10 – 7 – 13
10 ministers for the Hezbollah-led opposition
7 for the president
13 for the ruling majority

According to reports that leaked out from the quartet meeting
General Michel Aoun who represented the Hezbollah-led opposition during
the meeting said he would accept the formula but on one condition. The
condition was: One of the 7 ministers allocated for the president
should be chosen by the opposition. The opposition will give the
president a list of 3 names and he will chose one.

In other words one of the ministers allocated for the president will
be a member of the Hezbollah-led opposition. This will give the
opposition 11 out of 30 ministers. In other words the opposition will
be able to veto any decision of the government. So it is not really
about math, it is mostly about trust.

Aoun also suggested another proposal
10 10 10
10 ministers for each, the Hezbollah-led opposition, the president and
the ruling majority on condition the president guarantees consensus on
major decisions

Aoun also suggested 11 – 6 – 13
11 for the opposition, 6 for the president and 13 for the majority

The majority, represented by former President Amin Gemayel and
Future Movement leader Saad Hariri rejected Aoun’s proposals on the
basis that all amount to a veto power for the opposition. In the case
of 10 each formula they rejected the preconditions for the president as
unconstitutional.

The three point Arab league plan is very clear. It does not want the
opposition to have the power of veto. After all the opposition has been
fighting for the veto power since November 2006 and the Arab league
knows that the majority does not trust the opposition to have the power
of veto because many of the government decisions such as the decision
on International Tribunal could be voided. The other reason also is
that the government could be overthrown if Hezbollah-led opposition
exercises the right of veto.

At the same time the three point Arab league plan is very clear in
not wanting to give the majority absolute power of two third. This is
why they inserted the president there to ensure consensus.

Moussa said before leaving Beirut that all factions agreed to the
first clause of the Arab initiative that calls for the election of Army
Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as president. Suleiman was appointed to
current position by the Syrians during the Syrian occupation of
Lebanon, but the majority has nominated him on the bases that he will
be a compromise candidate. Suleiman was not the first choice for the
majority; they would have preferred either Boutros Harb or Nassib
Lahoud, but Suleiman is well respected by all the Lebanese and this is
why he was nominated.

In nominating Suleiman the majority anticipated that he will be
immediately accept by the opposition without any reservations or
conditions, since he is after all Syria’s man. But this is not what
actually happened. The opposition wanted more than Suleiman. They also
wanted to control the new government, in addition to controlling the
parliament through its speaker. Not only that, but the opposition also
wants to pick the successor of Suleiman in the army and all the key
appointments that the president should make as soon as he is elected.
The majority rejected the demands of the opposition on the bases that
all these demands will bring to the presidential palace a president
that is completely handcuffed, since all decisions will be made for him
by others and this will completely undermine his role.

What is the solution?

There are three solutions to the Lebanese problem:
First: Trust
Second: Trust
Third: Trust

Just like in business we say location, location, location, in
Lebanon we must say trust, trust, trust. The Lebanese are not fools,
they understand math formulas well, but they get suspicious when there
is an obvious agenda behind the math formula.

How to overcome the issue of trust

Confidence building: The rival leaders need to sit down and talk to
build confidence amongst themselves without Moussa or anybody else.
Talk as Lebanese leaders that are concerned about Lebanon, its future,
its citizens, its economy, its survival, its independence, its
sovereignty and freedom. This is all what this is about. They are going
to find a lot in common, if they all think Lebanon first, and they all
should.

The Lebanese should be smart enough to know that no one cares about
Lebanon more than they do. Once they start talking about the issues
that concern all the Lebanese they will be able to realize that the
Lebanese problems concern them all equally and the solution to Lebanon
’s problems are within their reach.

The Lebanese everywhere in the world are known to be leaders in
solving problems. Time to solve our own problems. Time to talk to one
another, before its is too late … before we lose Lebanon.

Source: Yalibnan

Seized Hizbullah Rocket Injures 2 Israelis

Two
Israeli soldiers were injured, one of them seriously, when a Hizbullah
anti-tank rocket they were testing exploded prematurely on Tuesday, the
army and press reported.
The missile, found during Israel’s 2006
summer war with Hizbullah, exploded at a base south of Tel Aviv because
of a fault in the launcher, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported.

Israeli tanks, particularly the Merkava III
and IV, are well protected against anti-tank missiles. However, a
number of them were knocked out by Hizbullah fire during the 34-day
war, and the army is investigating ways to improve their defenses.(AFP) 

Via: Naharnet

UN: South Lebanon is so dangerous, a tiny spark can stat a war

Beirut – The inconclusive results for
Israel of the month-long war it fought in the summer of 2006 against
Lebanon’s militant Shi’ite Hezbollah meant that another confrontation
was probably just a matter of time.

And with the February 12 assassination in Damascus of a senior
Hezbollah commander continuing to roil the waters of the Middle East,
that much-anticipated second round could be drawing nearer.

Hezbollah has vowed revenge for the car bomb killing of Imad
Mughniyah, and Israel is taking the threat seriously. Israel has placed
its army on alert and reinforced its presence along the northern border
with Lebanon. Patriot anti-missile batteries have been deployed near
Haifa, Israel’s second-largest city, 40 kilometers south of the
Lebanese border. Even airlines flying into Israel have been instructed
to ensure that all passengers are seated half an hour before landing to
protect against a 9/11-style hijacking and aerial attack.

Hezbollah also is on alert. In south Lebanon, young men normally
living and working in Beirut during the weekdays were back in their
home villages last week, visible indication that Hezbollah has placed
its cadres on standby. “We are ready for another war and it will come,”
says a local Hezbollah unit commander who fought in the 2006 war. On
the walls of his sitting room, “martyr” portraits of his fallen
comrades are plastered alongside pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. In
another room, a walkie-talkie constantly squawked as Hezbollah fighters
kept in contact with one another.

Spooning brown sugar into tiny glasses of tea, the Hezbollah
commander said that the Shi’ite fighters will be on the offensive in
the next war, hinting at taking the battle into Israel itself. “We
weren’t expecting the last war and we fought only to defend our land,
but next time you will see a very different kind of fighting,” he said.

The 13,300-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in south
Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, has been watching developments warily. One
senior UNIFIL officer said that neither side probably wants to go to
war at the moment and that Hezbollah’s alert in the south was
“defensive.” But the officer said the “situation in the region is so
dangerous that the tiniest spark can start a new war.”

The death of Mughniyah may have marked a turning point in the long
conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. After years of ambivalence over
Mughniyah’s connection with the Shi’ite party, Hezbollah leaders have
embraced him as one of its greatest resistance leaders, responsible for
turning the group’s military wing into the heavily armed crack fighting
force it is today. In the West, Mughniyah was better known for his
alleged association with the large-scale suicide bomb attacks and
kidnappings of foreigners in 1980s Beirut. More recently, Mughniyah
reportedly assisted militant groups in the Palestinian territories and
in Iraq, ensuring that the impact of his death reverberates far beyond
Lebanon’s borders. Last week, the Kuwaiti embassy in Beirut was
evacuated following an anonymous telephone threat to rocket the
building. The threat came amid an uproar in Kuwait when Shi’ite
lawmakers held a rally to mourn Mughniyah’s death, drawing anger and a
lawsuit from Sunni legislators. The Kuwaiti authorities blame Mughniyah
for a series of attacks in the Gulf state in the 1980s. Kuwait has now
joined Saudi Arabia in issuing Lebanon travel advisories for its
citizens.

Hezbollah believes that Mughniyah’s assassination is part of an
Israeli plan to decapitate the leadership of militant anti-Israel
groups as a precursor for launching a new war against the Shi’ite
organization. “Mughniyah was killed in the context of an open and
comprehensive war through which Israel is preparing for another war,”
Nasrallah said at a ceremony Friday marking the beginning of the annual
“week of the resistance,” in which dead Hezbollah leaders are honored.

Nasrallah warned that Hezbollah was more than ready to fight another
war and threatened Israel that its army would be destroyed if it
entered Lebanon. “We will kill you in the fields, we will kill you in
the cities, we will fight you like you have never seen before,” he said
speaking via a large television screen before an audience of tens of
thousands of supporters. “Your army will be destroyed in the south and
so will your prestige and you will remain without an army. Israel
cannot last without an army.”

Nasrallah is one of the Arab world’s great orators, but he was
almost matched at the event by Mughniyah’s 18-year-old son, Jihad.
Dressed in crisp camouflage uniform and forage cap, Jihad Mughniyah
marched briskly onto the stage and delivered a confident and
impassioned speech, pledging that “the strugglers of my father and
myself are ready to continue in his footsteps.” The rhetoric even had
hard-nosed Hezbollah security men and top rank party officials dabbing
their eyes with handkerchiefs as the audience burst into applause and
cheers at the end of the speech.

“These guys are very ready for war,” says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a
Hezbollah expert with the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center in
Beirut. But not everyone in south Lebanon is ready for another round
with Israel. Many residents of the battle-scarred south are still
repairing the damage of the 2006 war and the notion of another conflict
striking the region is not welcomed, even among some Hezbollah
supporters. “God bless Nasrallah and the resistance. They have fought
and sacrificed for Lebanon. But we are tired of wars and just want to
raise our children in peace,” said Hassan, a shopkeeper in a mainly
Shi’ite border village. Indeed, a Western diplomat in Beirut predicted
that Israel will turn south Lebanon “into a parking lot” in the next
war, hoping to drive a wedge between Lebanese Shi’ites and Hezbollah.

Yet every time Israel has used a heavy hand in Lebanon in the past,
it resulted in increased support for Hezbollah. Even as Hezbollah girds
for another confrontation with Israel, however, its leaders will have
to factor in the limits of endurance among its war-weary Shi’ite
supporters.

By Nicholas Blanford

Sources: Time
Via: Yalibnan

On, And On

It goes on, and on for the people of Lebanon speaker Nabih Berri again postponed the session to elect the country’s next president. This time they are going to delay until March the announcement came after rival politicians failed to reach an agreement. The next chance will come on March 11th 2007 when again I’ am sure they will postpone it. All of Lebanon’s rival camps agree on army chief General Michel Suleiman, but can not agree about the composition of the next government.

Watchdog: Israel’s cluster bombs argue for ban

Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war makes the case
for banning the weapon worldwide, a human rights watchdog said.

“The human devastation inflicted on Lebanon by Israel’s illegal use of
cluster munitions highlights the urgent need for an international
treaty banning the weapon,” Human Rights Watch said in a 131-page
report it released last week.

The watchdog said bombs that failed to detonate killed and maimed up to
200 people since the end of the war. An Israeli army investigation last
year concluded that the bombs were used in areas away from civilians
and exploited by Hezbollah, the terrorist group that started the war,
to launch missiles on Israel.

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