Pierre Gemayel has been assassinated

BEIRUT – Pierre Gemayel, indus­try min­is­ter in the Sin­iora cab­i­net, a major Chris­t­ian leader and an anti-Syrian politi­cian has been shot to death in the street. This comes at an extremely tense time in which the anti-Syrian and pro-Syrian camps are close to com­ing to blows.

I don’t know much right now, but this could be the spark in the can of gaso­line that Lebanon has become.

UPDATE: Here’s the story I filed for the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle:

BEIRUT – With the killing of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon’s indus­try min­is­ter and the scion of one its most influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies, Lebanese pol­i­tics took a dan­ger­ous turn with the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity deeply split and the U.S.–backed gov­ern­ment more under siege than ever.

Gemayel, 34, a mem­ber of Lebanon’s polit­i­cal elite, was killed at approx­i­mately 3:30 p.m. gang­land style Tues­day when his car was rammed by two other cars and gun­men leaped out and sprayed his vehi­cle with assault rife fire.

His body was taken to St. Joseph Hos­pi­tal in a Chris­t­ian neigh­bor­hood on the out­skirts of Beirut. As the news broke, sev­eral hun­dred sup­port­ers of the Pha­langist party, gath­ered as a show of sol­i­dar­ity and an out­let for their rage against their Chris­t­ian rivals, the Free Patri­otic Move­ment, and Shi’ites.

“Fuck Nas­ral­lah!” many chanted, refer­ring to the leader of the Shi’ite mili­tia Hezbol­lah. “Fuck Michel Aoun!”

Aoun is the head of the FPM, and there has been bad blood between the Gemayel fam­ily, Aoun and the Shi’ites in Lebanon for years. Dur­ing the lat­ter days of the Lebanese civil war, forces loyal to Aoun bat­tled Chris­t­ian mem­bers of the Pha­langist and Lebanese Forces mili­tias in some of the blood­i­est bat­tles of that 15-year-long con­flict. Pierre Gemayel him­self infa­mously said last year that Shi’ites may have the num­bers, but the Chris­tians had the “qual­ity” to run the country.

The crowd at the hos­pi­tal veered dan­ger­ously in its moods. One moment, it was a mass of somber griev­ers and the next it came dan­ger­ously close to being a lynch mob for any­one they thought might be friendly to Hezbol­lah or Aoun.

“The ene­mies of Lebanon are known: Aoun, Nas­ral­lah,” said Joseph Ger­manos, a party loy­al­ist. “They want to cre­ate a new war.”

The assas­si­na­tion was roundly denounced, includ­ing by Hezbol­lah, but Aoun gave a press state­ment that was remark­able in its brevity and lack of emo­tion. “This crime is against the unity of the Lebanese and is an attempt to sow dis­cord among the Chris­t­ian ranks,” he said in a flat tone. “I invite all Lebanese to remain calm, and I offer my deep­est sym­pa­thies to Sheikh Amin Gemayel, and to his wife and fam­ily, the Pha­langists and to all Lebanese.”

Today is the 70^th anniver­sary of the found­ing if the Pha­lange Party by Gemayel’s grand­fa­ther, also named Pierre Gemayel.

Last week, Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, warned that a cam­paign of assas­si­na­tions was in the works and would be aimed at the remain­ing mem­bers of the cab­i­net in a bid to force its collapse.

“They are killing our Chris­t­ian lead­ers so the truth won’t show,” Ger­manos said.

There is a wide­spread sen­ti­ment among many Lebanese that Syria is behind a string of 15 car bomb­ings, includ­ing five assas­si­na­tions, that started Feb. 14, 2005 with a mas­sive truck bomb that killed for­mer prime min­is­ter Rafik Hariri and 22 oth­ers. The U.S.–backed gov­ern­ment of Fuad Sin­iora, which is sup­ported by an anti-Syrian bloc in par­lia­ment, recently voted to approve an inter­na­tional tri­bunal that would try sus­pects in the killings. Many in Lebanon expect the court’s find­ings to impli­cate high-level Syr­i­ans in the ter­ror cam­paign against Lebanon.

But the five Shi’ite min­is­ters in the cab­i­net rep­re­sent­ing Hezbol­lah and its allies, along with a pro-Syrian Chris­t­ian min­is­ter, resigned ahead of the vote in protest and said Siniora’s gov­ern­ment was uncon­sti­tu­tional because of the lack of Shi’ite rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Hezbol­lah then ratch­eted up ten­sions in the coun­try with promises of mas­sive protests, expected on Thurs­day, it says are designed to bring about the col­lapse of the Sin­iora gov­ern­ment. Under Lebanon’s polit­i­cal rules, if nine of the Cabinet’s 24 min­is­ters resign or are absent, the gov­ern­ment must resign. With the death of Gemayel, only two min­is­ters stand in the way of this outcome.

Iron­i­cally, how­ever, the mur­der of Gemayel could put Hezbol­lah on the defen­sive because of its close ties to Syria and force the mili­tia into a compromise.

“It puts Hezbol­lah in the embar­rass­ing posi­tion in the sense that they have been so bla­tantly defend­ing Syria’s inter­ests,” said Reinoud Leen­ders, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tional rela­tions at the Uni­ver­sity of Ams­ter­dam and a for­mer ana­lyst for the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group in Beirut. “They have been put in the Syr­ian camp much more than in the past. I just have a sense that peo­ple are skep­ti­cal of Hezbollah’s recent moves.”

With the likely Secu­rity Coun­cil approval of the inter­na­tional tri­bunal on Thurs­day, Syria may be play­ing a dou­ble game, spec­u­lates Leen­ders. Wash­ing­ton has been reach­ing out to Dam­as­cus recently for help in Iraq, and the regime there may be try­ing to make a point to the United States.

“I wouldn’t rule out them being a pain in the neck and at the same time reach­ing out to Wash­ing­ton,” he said. “They might be try­ing to con­vey a mes­sage: ‘You have to talk to us, because oth­er­wise we can be a pain in the neck.’ I wouldn’t rule out them being behind it.”

Already, youths sur­round­ing the Pha­langist head­quar­ters in East Beirut say they plan to stay in the streets as a counter to any demon­stra­tions Hezbol­lah might plan. These demon­stra­tions by the anti-Syrian camp could “pre-empt” the Hezbol­lah one and weaken their effec­tive­ness, said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a vis­it­ing scholar at the Carnegie Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Peace and an expert on Hezbollah.

“March 8 will have a hard time with the demon­stra­tions now,” she said “March 8″ is what Hezbol­lah and its other pro-Syrian allies calls its coali­tion. Chris­t­ian sym­pa­thy for Aoun also may leech away, she said.

But the threat of mas­sive street protests by Hezbol­lah and the Aounists still looms, and the pos­si­bil­ity of renewed civil con­flict between the two camps is very real.

“All the ele­ments are there for clashes, and pretty seri­ous ones,” said Leen­ders. “The polit­i­cal process is bogged down, the talk of war, the creepy signs before the storm atmos­phere. I’m pretty worried.”

When asked if they were pre­pared to fight their ene­mies in the street, one young man in the crowd at the hos­pi­tal, who declined to give his name other than Kataeb — Ara­bic for “Phalangist” — said, “We lost every­thing. We don’t have any­thing to lose again.”

Another young man said he was just wait­ing for the sig­nal from Pierre’s father, Amin Gemayel, a for­mer pres­i­dent of Lebanon.

“What­ever Pres­i­dent Gemayel says,” said David Jaara, 25. “We are pre­pared for 10,000 mar­tyrs, 20,000. We are prepared.”

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