Lebanese Limbo

BEIRUT – Well, Beirut is now in a state of ner­vous wait­ing… Wait­ing for some­thing, any­thing to hap­pen. Lahoud fin­ished out his term last night with all the pomp and cir­cum­stance he could muster. Too bad he couldn’t muster any local politi­cians to see him off, so despised he’s become. But before he left office, he may have put Lebanon under mil­i­tary con­trol after he declared a state of emer­gency. Or did he? Some com­men­ta­tors are not­ing that his lan­guage — “There are con­di­tions and risks on the ground that could lead to a state of emer­gency” — doesn’t actu­ally do any­thing more than reit­er­ate the cur­rent secu­rity sta­tus quo. The Army has already been respon­si­ble for secu­rity in Lebanon since an Inte­rior Min­istry deci­sion about six months ago.
And there’s been no upris­ing by Hezbol­lah, Aoun seems to be keep­ing his head down and Siniora’s gov­ern­ment is still around. Michel Suleiman, com­man­der of the Army, has pledged to fol­low the orders of the cab­i­net. Sure doesn’t sound like a mil­i­tary takeover to me.
What it sounds like is peo­ple wait­ing to see what hap­pens with Syria in Annapo­lis. If the Golan is put on the agenda, and Syria gets some for­ward momen­tum from Israel, then things might very well ease up here. I am work­ing on a col­umn explain­ing this dynamic for Spot-on, which should be up tomor­row. Until then, let’s hope no one does any­thing stu­pid here. The atmos­phere is a tight as a garrote.

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