BEIRUT — Lebanon is truly a strange — yet tasty — place. Two hours ago, I had Lebanese sol­diers point­ing guns at me over a traf­fic snafu (my dri­ving or theirs, I’m not sure which and I’ll bet nei­ther do they) and now I’m at Julia’s enjoy­ing a right­eous grilled chicken salad with a sub­tle basil vinai­grette.
But I won­der if “my pre­dic­tions of a loom­ing showdown”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2007/05/showdown_looming.php were pre­ma­ture. It’s true that hun­dreds of Lebanese troops are ring­ing the Pales­tin­ian camp of Nahr el-Bared, where “hun­dreds” of Fatah al-Islam fight­ers are holed up — along with about 18,000 Pales­tin­ian civil­ians. And also it’s true that the U.S. and other Arab coun­tries have sped up the deliv­ery of mil­i­tary aid to Lebanon: more ammo, night vision gog­gles and the like. And it’s true that Defense Min­is­ter Elias Murr has said that death or sur­ren­der are the only options for the fight­ers. Fur­ther­more, the chief of the Inter­nal Secu­rity Forces, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi told me not 30 min­utes ago that he thought the army would have to go in.
But that ras­cally sheikh Has­san Nas­ral­lah has thrown a span­ner in the works, it seems. Yes­ter­day was Lib­er­a­tion Day, a national hol­i­day com­mem­o­rat­ing the retreat of the Israelis from south­ern Lebanon in 2000. Nas­ral­lah took the oppor­tu­nity to warn against going into the camps, say­ing an assault by the army was “a red line” and that the oppo­si­tion wanted no part of it.
“The Nahr al-Bared camp and Pales­tin­ian civil­ians are a red line,” Nas­ral­lah said, accord­ing to Al-Nahar. “We will not accept or pro­vide cover or be part­ners in this.“
“Does it con­cern us that we start a con­flict with Al Qaeda in Lebanon and con­se­quently attract mem­bers and fight­ers of Al Qaeda from all over the world to Lebanon to con­duct their bat­tle with the Lebanese army and the rest of the Lebanese?” he added.
Fair enough, I guess. But more to the point, his address and his oppo­si­tion to a mil­i­tary solu­tion will rever­ber­ate through­out the army, about half of which is Shi’a. A sharp pro­ducer I know up north painted an alter­nate sce­nario than the _al-Götterdämmerung_ sce­nario presently being awaited.
Nasrallah’s address stopped the state in its tracks, said the pro­ducer, because of his influ­ence among Shi’a. Going into the camp now, with half the army Shi’a, risks split­ting the army while at the same time risk­ing a gen­eral upris­ing among the 350,000 to 400,000 Pales­tini­ans in Lebanon. With­out a uni­fied army, there can be no uni­fied Lebanon. The rem­nants of the mil­i­tary would col­lapse into mili­tias. And that’s the end of the ball game. Civil War 2.0. Talk about an ‘80s revival! (Only with­out the music, hair or Molly Ring­wald.)
What’s more likely, he said, is that in the com­ing days or, more likely, weeks, a num­ber of Fatah al-Islam mem­bers will be “caught” try­ing to “escape” the camp. The Army will announce it has caught the “crim­i­nals” who started this whole thing with their attack on army posi­tions last week­end. Shaker al-Abssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam, will evade cap­ture.
And the rest? Well, it will turn out that Fatah al-Islam wasn’t quite as big an orga­ni­za­tion as peo­ple thought it was.
The army would look like it accom­plished some­thing, mas­sive blood­shed would be avoided (a good thing) and, like most issues in Lebanon, this whole ugly episode would be sus­pended but not resolved.
Does it solve the prob­lem? No, but look­ing the other way and see­ing what they want to is a Lebanese tra­di­tion.
Time will tell if the pro­ducer or the doom­say­ers are right.
By the way, the dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.