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Now
Commentators and columnists are agreed.
Pierre Gemayel's assassination must have been the handiwork of
Syria because his Christian Phalangists have been long-time allies
of Israel and because, as industry minister, he was one of the
leading figures in the Lebanese government's anti-Syria faction.
President Bush thinks so too. Case, apparently, settled.
Unlike my colleagues, I do
not claim to know who killed Gemayel. Maybe Syria was behind
the shooting. Maybe, in Lebanon's notoriously intrigue-ridden
and fractious political system, someone with a grudge against
Gemayel -- even from within his own party -- pulled the trigger.
Or maybe, Israel once again flexed the muscles of its long arm
in Lebanon.
It seems, however, as if the
last possibility cannot be entertained in polite society. So
let me offer a few impolite thoughts.
As anyone who watches TV crimes
series knows, when there is insufficient physical evidence in
a murder investigation for a conviction, detectives examine the
motives of the parties who stood to benefit from the crime. Better
detectives also consider whether the prime suspect -- the person
who looks at first sight to be the guilt party -- is not, in
fact, being turned into a fallguy by one of the other parties.
The murderer may be the person who benefits most clearly from
the crime, or the murderer may be the person who benefits from
the prime suspect being fingered for the murder.
As most of our politicians
and the media's commentators have deduced, suspicion falls automatically
on Syria because the Christian Phalangists are one of Syria's
main enemies in Lebanon. Partly as a result, they have opposed
recent attempts by Syria's main ally in Lebanon, the Shiite group
Hizbullah, to win a greater share of political power.
They are also -- and this seems
to clinch it for most observers -- part of the majority in the
pro-American government of Fuad Siniora that supports a United
Nations tribunal to try the killers of Rafik Hariri, an anti-Syria
politician and leader of the Sunni Muslim community, who was
blown up by a car bomb more than a year and a half ago.
After all six Shiite ministers
walked out of the Siniora cabinet two weeks ago, and now with
Gemayel's assassination, the government is close to collapse,
and with it the tribunal that everyone expects to implicate Syria
in Hariri's murder. If Syria can "bump off" another
two cabinet ministers and the government loses its quorum, Syria
will be off the hook -- or so runs the logic of Western observers.
But does this "evidence"
make Syria the prime suspect or the fallguy? How will Syria's
wider interests be affected by the killing, and what about Israel's
interests in Gemayel's death -- or rather, its interests in Hizbullah
or Syria being
blamed for Gemayel's death?
In truth, Israel will benefit
in numerous ways from the tensions provoked by the assassination,
as the popular and angry rallies in Beirut against Syria and
Hizbullah are proving.
First, and most obviously,
Hizbullah -- as Syria's main political and military friend in
Lebanon -- has been forced suddenly on to the back foot. Hizbullah
had been riding high after its triumph over the summer of withstanding
the Israeli assault on Lebanon and routing an invasion force
that tried to occupy the country's south.
Hizbullah's popularity and
credibility rose so sharply that the leaders of the Shiite community
had been hoping to cash in on that success domestically by demanding
more power. That is one of the reasons why the six Shiite ministers
walked out of Siniora's cabinet.
Despite the way the Shiite
parties' political position has been presented in the West, there
is considerable justification for their demands. The system of
political representation in Lebanon was rigged decades ago by
the former colonial power, France, to ensure that power is shared
between the Christian and Sunni Muslim communities. The Shiite
Muslims, the country's largest religious sect, have been kept
on the margins of the system ever since, effectively disenfranchised.
With their recent military
victory, this was the moment Hizbullah hoped to make a breakthrough
and force political concessions from the Sunnis and Christians,
concessions that indirectly would have benefited Syria. With
Gemayel's death, the chances of that now look slim indeed. Hizbullah,
and by extension Syria, are the losers; Israel, which wants Hizbullah
weakened, is the winner.
Second, the assassination has
pushed Lebanon to the brink of another civil war. With a political
system barely able to contain sectarian differences, and with
the various factions in no mood to compromise after the spate
of recent assassinations, there is a real danger that fighting
will return to Lebanon's streets.
This will most certainly not
be to the benefit of Lebanon or any of its religious communities,
who will be dragged into another round of bloodletting. Hizbullah's
underground cadres who took on the Israeli war machine will doubtless
have to come out of hiding and will pay a price against other
well-armed militias.
The benefits for Syria are
at best mixed. A possible benefit is that a bloody civil war
may increase the pressure on the United States to talk to Syria,
and possibly to invite it to take a leading role again in stabilising
Lebanon, as it did during the last civil war.
But, given the continuing ascendancy
of the hawks in Washington, it may have the opposite effect,
encouraging the US to isolate Syria further.
Conversely, civil war may pose
serious threats to Syrian interests -- and offer significant
benefits to Israel. If Hizbullah's energies are seriously depleted
in a civil war, Israel may be in a much better position to attack
Lebanon again. Almost everyone in Israel is agreed that the Israeli
army is itching to settle the score with Hizbullah in another
round of fighting. This way it may get the next war it wants
on much better terms; or Israel may be able to fight a proxy
war against Hizbullah by aiding the Shiite group's opponents.
Certainly one of the main goals
of Israel's bombing campaign over the summer, when much of Lebanon's
infrastructure was destroyed, appeared to be to provoke such
a civil war. It was widely reported at the time that Israel's
generals hoped that the devastation would provoke the Christian,
Sunni and Druze communities to rise up against Hizbullah.
Third, Syria is already the
prime suspect in Hariri's murder and in the assasination of three
other Lebanese politicians and journalists, all seen as anti-Syrian,
over the past 21 months.
The US exploited Hariri's death,
and the widespread protests that followed, to evict Syria from
Lebanon. Syria's removal from the scene also paved the way, whether
intentionally or not, for Israel's assault this summer, which
would have been far more dangerous to the region had Syria still
been in Lebanon.
Despite the looming threat
of the UN tribunal into Hariri's death, from Syria's point of
view the accusations have grown stale with time and threatened
to prove only what everyone in the West already believed. With
the walk-out by the Shiite ministers from the Lebanese government,
the investigations were looking all but redundant in any case.
Gemayel's assassination, however,
has dramatically revived interest in the question of who killed
Hariri and brings Syria firmly back into the spotlight. None
of this benefits Syria, but no doubt Israel will be able to take
some considerable pleasure in Damascus's discomfort.
Fourth, the Israeli government
has been under international and domestic pressure to engage
with Syria and negotiate a return of the Golan Heights, an area
of Syrian territory it has been occupying since 1967.
With it would be resolved the
fraught question of the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel
but which Hizbullah and Syria claim as Lebanese territory that
should have been returned in Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon
in 2000. The status of the Shebaa Farms has been one of the main
outstanding areas of dispute between Israel and Hizbullah.
President Assad of Syria has
been hinting openly that he is ready to discuss Israel's return
of the Golan Heights on better terms for Israel than it has ever
before been offered.
According to reports in the
Israeli media, Assad is prepared to demilitarise the Golan and
turn it into a national park that would be open to Israelis.
He would probably also not insist on a precise return to the
1967 border, which includes the northern shoreline of the Sea
of Galilee. Traditionally Israel's leaders balked at this idea,
and provoked popular fears by conjuring up the vision of Assad's
father, Hafez, dipping his feet in the lake.
But if negotations on the Golan
are desperately sought by the young Assad, Israel shows no interest
in exploring the option. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert,
has repeatedly ruled out talking to Damascus. That is for several
reasons:
* Israel, as might be expected
on past form, is not in the mood for making territorial concessions;
* it does not want to end Syria's
pariah's status and isolation by making a peace deal with it;
* and it fears that such a
deal might suggest that negotiations with the Palestinians are
feasible too.
Peace with Syria, in Israeli
eyes, would inexorably lead to pressure to make peace with the
Palestinians. That is most certainly not part of Israel's agenda.
Gemayel's death, and Syria
being blamed for it, forces Damascus back into the fold of the
"Axis of Evil", and forestalls any threat of talks
on the Golan.
Fifth, pressure has been growing
in the US Administration to start talking to Syria, if only to
try to recruit it to Washington's "war on terror".
The US could desperately do with local local help in managing
its occupation of Iraq. It is unclear whether Bush is ready to
make such an about-turn, but it remains a possibility.
Key allies such as Britain's
Tony Blair are pushing strongly for engagement with Syria, both
to further isolate Iran -- the possible target of either a US
or Israeli strike against its presumed ambitions for nuclear
weapons -- and to clear the path to negotiations with the Palestinians.
Gemayel's death, and Syria's
blame for it, strengthens the case of the neoconservatives in
Washington -- Israel's allies in the Administration -- whose
star had begun to wane. They can now argue convincingly that
Syria is unreformed and unreformable. Such an outcome helps to
avert the danger, from Israel's point of view, that White House
doves might win the argument for befriending Syria.
For all these reasons, we should
be wary of assuming that Syria is the party behind Gemayel's
death -- or the only regional actor meddling in Lebanon.
