BEIRUT — Syria has announced that it is clos­ing the two remain­ing land cross­ings into Lebanon as of mid­night tonight, includ­ing the main Mas­naa bor­der cross­ing. Accord­ing to LBC, Lebanese cus­toms offi­cials asked their Syr­ian coun­ter­parts at the bor­der why, only to be told “it’s a polit­i­cal deci­sion.” The cross­ing pre­sum­ably will be closed indefinitely.

Mas­naa is the busiest land cross­ing, sit­ting as it does on the road from Beirut to Dam­as­cus. It is one of Lebanon’s main trade routes ship­ping its agri­cul­tural prod­ucts to the rest of the Mid­dle East and tonight’s clo­sures, fol­low­ing Syria’s clo­sure ear­lier this month of the north­ern bor­der cross­ings because of the vio­lence at “Nahr el-Bared”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/2007/06/the_neverending_crisis.php, leaves Lebanon with no land access to the out­side world.

Syria has often used the bor­der cross­ings to apply polit­i­cal pres­sure on Lebanon since the Feb. 14, 2005 assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri and the sub­se­quent with­drawal of Syr­ian troops from Lebanon.

It could be a bit of a Syr­ian snit-fit in response to a del­e­ga­tion from the Arab League that is in town at the request of the anti-Syrian par­lia­men­tary major­ity. The anti-Syrian bloc is demand­ing Arab states inter­vene with Syria to stop its inter­fer­ence in Lebanese affairs and Dam­as­cus’ alleged weapons smug­gling to var­i­ous armed groups.

Syria is feel­ing the heat from the impo­si­tion of the Inter­na­tional tri­bunal under Chap­ter 7 of the UN char­ter ear­lier this month, and this will put the Lebanon pres­sure cooker under more pressure.