BEIRUT — After today’s “funeral for Pierre Gemayel”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/11/mourning_in_beirut.php, Lebanon is ready to blow.
Tonight, about 1,000 Shi’ite youths gath­ered along air­port road and began protest­ing what they said were the insults made against Hezbol­lah secretary-general Has­san Nas­ral­lah at the funeral this after­noon. (Saad Hariri more or less said the major­ity claimed by Hezbol­lah and oth­ers in the March 8 move­ment was a mirage.)
Soon, a crowd of Sunni youths gath­ered nearby, prompt­ing a large response from the Lebanese secu­rity forces. Local Hezbol­lah offi­cials told the Shi’ite crowd to go home, but they were ignored, prompt­ing Nas­ral­lah to call Manar TV, the group’s tele­vi­sion chan­nel, and issue a call for the crowd to dis­perse. That, too, ini­tially seemed to be ignored, and it is only after sev­eral hours that the pro­tes­tors drifted home.
In another wor­ri­some devel­op­ment, in a Pales­tin­ian camp in the north of the coun­try (I haven’t pinned down the name yet), camp res­i­dents clashed with Sunni extrem­ists loyal to Jund al-Sham, a group with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the slain leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
And finally, for­mer Inte­rior Min­is­ter Has­san Sabaa has with­drawn his res­ig­na­tion, mean­ing Ahmad Fat­fat is no longer _acting_ inte­rior min­is­ter. This is impor­tant because it increases the numbr of peo­ple in the Sin­iora cab­i­net who are full-fledged min­is­ters. The cab­i­net is nor­mally made up of 24 min­is­ters, with 16 needed for a quo­rum. Last week­end, five Shi’ite min­is­ters and a pro-Syrian Chris­t­ian min­is­ter resigned, threat­en­ing the sta­bil­ity of the gov­ern­ment. Then Pierre Gemayel was killed, bring­ing the num­ber of absent min­is­ters to seven. If two more min­is­te­r­ial seats became vacant, Siniora’s gov­ern­ment would be auto­mat­i­cally dis­solved.
Since Fat­fat was only an act­ing min­is­ter, there might be some legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to dis­solve the gov­ern­ment if only one more min­is­ter was removed. So by bring­ing Sabaa back, the March 14 forces are solid­fy­ing their posi­tion and hun­ker­ing down for a long fight.