Dangerous Rifts in the Lebanon

Danny Reshef 7.9.00

The latest elections in the Lebanon were a milestone in the developments towards democracy, in the Arab world in general and in the Lebanon in particular. For the first time, a government in office has lost an election. A national consensus has evolved around the long-term goal to push the Syrians out of Lebanon and the short-term goal to slowly progress towards economic and political independence.

Ethnic rivalries, which have split Lebanese society and spilled rivers of blood, have made way for the slow crystallization of a Pan-Lebanese and supra-ethnic identity.The Christian Jumayel family joined forces with the Druze leader Walid Jumblat to support the Sunni Moslem leader, Rafik Hariri, in his campaign to lead and cement the new national consensus.

This was the same Jumayel family which had led the Christian community into the civil war of 1975, a bloody confrontation against the Druze community led by the same Walid Jumblat.

While the various communities of Lebanon are celebrating a new-found strength in unity, the Shi'ite community has been weakened and left behind. Out of a total of 128 seats in the Parliament, only 27 are allotted to the Shi'ite community. In effect, the Shi'ites are represented by only 21 percent of the seats in Parliament, whereas even by the most conservative estimate they constitute 45 percent of the total Lebanese population. In comparison, all the numerous Christian sects together are represented by 50 percent of the seats in Parliament, whereas they constitute at most only 25 percent of the total Lebanese population.

A simple calculation reveals that the votes of the Christian deputies are four times more powerful than the votes of the Shi'ite deputies.

Among the 27 Shi'ite members of Parliament, an unusually large number of 23 were elected on a common platform of Amal-Hizbollah. They were all elected in locations that had been allotted to the Shi'ites in the Bek'aa Valley and in South Lebanon, which are the social, political and economic backwaters of the country. These regions of poverty and backwardness are the traditional reservoir of power for Amal and the Hizbollah.

They have spawned movements and organizations such as "The Movement of the Deprived" in 1970, which was the basis for the Amal of today, Another outgrowth was "The Depressed of the Earth", which specialized in international terrorism in the mid-80's, as well as "The Revolution of the Hungry" under Subchi Tufeili. This is the same Tufeili who was the previous general secretary of the Hizbollah and had shaken the stability of the regime in Lebanon in early 1998.

All the same names, slogans and feelings are correct today exactly as they were twenty years ago, because the latest elections have preserved the same poverty, geographical backwater, Shi'ite community and political discrimination. The Shi'ites have not gained the gratitude of the Lebanese public for their struggle against Israel and for the liberation of all Lebanese territory.

Furthermore, they have not succeeded to integrate into the new consensus which is consolidating the rest of Lebanon. This is going on just when the present general secretary of the Hizbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has been trying for years to integrate his movement with the renewed Lebanese nationalism. Indeed, only yesterday did Nebih Berri, the head of Amal and speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, hurry to warn at a press conference that was held to sum up the election campaign, "No one is referring to the depth of the socio-economic crisis.

we are facing a catastrophe the danger is greater than the Israeli occupation." He called for the establishment of a unity government and the integration of efforts for, in his words, economic salvation.

Thus it is not the Syrian presence in the Lebanon, which in any case is slowly fading, which poses a question mark over the continuation of democratic development in Lebanon. It is rather the extent of the integration of the Shi'ite movements into the fabric of the life and the regime in Lebanon.

Since the Shi'ites hold the key to the future and stability of Lebanon, it follows that they also hold the key to our relations with Lebanon as neighbors. One must hope that the government of Lebanon would also view the Shi'ites as a basis for the stability and future of Lebanon.

I would like to insert a passing remark. Despite what some analysts have said, the elections in the Lebanon did not reflect the weakness of Bashar el-Assad as the President of Syria, but rather the fact that he is different and his ways are not the same.