Unless you want to ignore facts, you can’t ignore the fact the militant Shiite Muslim party Hezbollah called and produced a huge pro-Syrian demonstration in Lebanon yesterday.
Now this question lingers: was this a pro-Syrian demonstration, or did Hezbollah skillfully use the equivilent of Arab “wedge issues” to motivate a sea of people on the streets who were actually against the U.S. pressuring their country and also against the fact that Israel doesn’t want the Syrian troops there (the enemy of my enemy, etc. etc.)?
It’ll be interesting to follow press and academic writings on this issue in the future to see if we get an answer to that. What we know is that yesterday’s demonstration had the sheer numbers. And even if you strip away differing interpretations you have to conclude one thing: that Lebanon is a divided country — and divided over an issue arousing great passions on both sides.
May we use the phrase “civil war conditions” — or is it too extreme? We do know this:
Shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese poured into central Beirut on Tuesday in a show of strength by the militant Shiite Muslim party Hezbollah, which opposes a withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
The enormous crowd, in which many had been bused in from the Shiite slums of southern Beirut, was far larger than the anti-Syrian demonstrations of recent weeks that have drawn broad international support. It offered a defiant challenge to the Lebanese opposition forces that have insisted on Syrian withdrawal and exposed fault lines of class and ideology.
“Today, you decide the future of your nation and your country; today, you answer the world,” the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in a rare and surprise appearance. Banners held aloft read: “No to American-Zionist intervention. Yes to Lebanese-Syrian brotherhood.”
President Bush, speaking later in Washington, stepped up pressure on Syria to withdraw its 14,000 troops before Lebanon’s elections in May, saying the forces of authoritarianism across the Middle East are facing a fast-moving wave of popular opposition. The emergence of democracy in Lebanon, he said, would amount to a ring on “the doors of every Arab regime.”
The participants at the demonstration here represented, by and large, a very different Lebanon from the educated, better-off Christians, Druse and Sunni Muslims who have captured the world’s attention since Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, was assassinated Feb. 14 by a huge car bomb.
So there you have it. Choose which one represents the “real” Lebanon and “real” power centers: the middle to upper class (who theoretically are better read) or the lower to lower-middle class (who react better to hot button issues and may be in greater numbers if push comes to shove).
The bottom line: this doesn’t make the U.S. position any easier or suggest any future possible U.S. sanctions or even military operation will be easy and not be peppered with risk.
In short, the demonstration made an easy diagnosis of Lebanon more difficult. Any analysis now has to have “on the other hand” in it to be truly complete…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.