Thursday, November 23, 2006

A top March 8 politician recently told Walid Jumblatt, "the Syrians don't
want to hear about the [Hariri] tribunal." Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel
is the latest victim of an effort to ensure that that command is respected.
It would be irresponsible for Hizbullah to carry through on its threat to
take to the streets. A government of national unity cannot be imposed
through measures certain to heighten national discord. But worse, Hizbullah,
through its alliance with Syria and its repeated efforts to neutralize the
Hariri tribunal, is risking its own future as an accepted Lebanese party.
The tribunal is Syria's Achilles heel. Even if a mid-level intelligence
operative is accused, the centralized nature of the Syrian system is such
that prosecutors will soon end up at the peak of the security apparatus,
perhaps reaching into President Bashar Assad's inner sanctum. The fight over
the future of the Syrian regime is taking place now, and the only option
Assad might be left with if the process goes through is to rid himself of
essential pillars of support. This could be as damaging to him as being held
personally responsible for ordering the Hariri hit. Hizbullah's anxieties
are understandable. If Syrians are fingered by United Nations investigator
Serge Brammertz, Assad is unlikely to comply with a request to send them
before the mixed tribunal. The president has said several times that Syrian
suspects would be tried before Syrian courts. If that happens there could be
a showdown between Damascus and the international community, putting
Hizbullah in a tight spot. Not only might the party find that weapons
transfers from Syria and other forms of cooperation would come under greater
international scrutiny, it would be ever more difficult for Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah to play up his support for Assad without risking an angry Lebanese
Sunni backlash. Syrian haste is pushing Nasrallah, but also his chief ally,
Michel Aoun, into a potentially perilous venture. No one doubts that
Hizbullah can mobilize a large number of supporters. The party's clients in
the various ministries might cease working, gumming up the country's
administrative system. There is a possibility that access to the airport
will be cut, as it was last summer when the party faithful protested against
a satirical show that dared poke fun at Nasrallah. Hizbullah doesn't need to
break heads or burn property to make things very difficult for the majority.

However, the party should be careful. First of all, even if the
demonstrations are non-violent, they will be perceived as acts of
intimidation. Intimidation in Lebanon usually has the opposite effect to
what its practitioners intend. On March 8, 2005, Nasrallah hoped to
intimidate those demanding a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; instead he
produced March 14. The confessional system is a fine-tuned Maserati, not a
Trabant. You cannot bludgeon your adversaries into bowing to your priorities
if it means that theirs are disregarded. That's not how this society works.

A second reason is more prosaic: After taking Lebanon into a devastating war
last summer, Hizbullah now threatens to carry it into a domestic crisis with
prohibitively high economic costs. This will eliminate what little
confidence the country managed to salvage after the end of fighting in
August. If the airport is made inaccessible, if ministries are prevented
from functioning, if stores and offices are forced to close down because of
protracted actions by Hizbullah and its comrades, everyone will lose, at a
time when the country is in the delicate process of rebuilding.