To Push Past Hezbollah Stonewalling, Leverage the LAF by Hanin Ghaddar
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Lebanon: Managing the Gathering Storm
LEBANON: MANAGING THE GATHERING STORM Middle East Report N°48 – 5 December 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS................................................. i I. A SYSTEM BETWEEN OLD AND NEW.................................................................. 1 A. SETTING THE STAGE: THE ELECTORAL CONTEST..................................................................1 B. THE MEHLIS EFFECT.............................................................................................................5 II. SECTARIANISM AND INTERNATIONALISATION ............................................. 8 A. FROM SYRIAN TUTELAGE TO WESTERN UMBRELLA?............................................................8 B. SHIFTING ALLIANCES..........................................................................................................12 III. THE HIZBOLLAH QUESTION ................................................................................ 16 A. “A NEW PHASE OF CONFRONTATION” ................................................................................17 B. HIZBOLLAH AS THE SHIITE GUARDIAN?..............................................................................19 C. THE PARTY OF GOD TURNS PARTY OF GOVERNMENT.........................................................20 IV. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 22 A. A BROAD INTERNATIONAL COALITION FOR A NARROW AGENDA .......................................22 B. A LEBANESE COURT ON FOREIGN -
Perspectives on the Return of Syrian Refugees Leïla Vignal
Syrians in displacement 69 FMR 57 February 2018 www.fmreview.org/syria2018 Perspectives on the return of Syrian refugees Leïla Vignal There are many reasons why discussions about the imminent return of large numbers of Syrian refugees are premature. Since 2015, the military dynamics of the estimate the number of Syrians outside Syrian conflict have shifted in favour of Syria at seven to eight million, if not more. the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Damascus The adding up of these numbers is has retaken control of many cities and important. If the number of Syrians outside areas that were previously held by armed Syria is added to the 6.3 million Syrians opposition groups, with the battle for currently internally displaced, it means that the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo – almost two thirds of the former 21 million concluded in December 2016 – a significant inhabitants of Syria have been forced to leave turning point in this regard. By late their homes. Previously populated areas 2017, the Islamic State group had been have been largely destroyed and emptied of expelled from the last towns and regions their inhabitants, while other areas, mostly under its control in eastern Syria. in the regions held by the al-Assad regime, These developments, as well as the are now crammed with displaced Syrians. implementation of ‘de-escalation zones’, The magnitude of this displacement and the agreed in May 2017 and guaranteed by transformation of the spatial and political Russia, Iran and Turkey, have given new features of Syria are the result of a specific impetus to discussions about the future type of warfare: tactics that have targeted the of the country, post-war reconstruction civilian population in opposition-held areas and the return of Syrian refugees to Syria. -
Understanding the Dynamics of Lebanon's Protest Movementi
POLICY OUTLOOK POLICY OUTLOOK DISCUSSION PAPER Understanding the Dynamics of Lebanon’s Protest Movementi In the midst of a severe economic crisis, the protests that broke out in Lebanon on October 17th represent a potential monumental rupture in the country’s post-Civil War political and social order. Lebanon’s ruling class has been shaken and traditional political dynamics have been disrupted. Yet, in a state often characterised as weak, the political and social regime premised on sectarian and confessional divisions remains strong. Attempts to re-enforce sectarian divisions by traditional political parties are a clear demonstration of this dynamic. While the protest movement continues to press its demands for the removal of what they see as a corrupted political class, an independent cabinet and new a new electoral law, many challenges remain. Understanding both the dynamics of the protest movement and the lenses through which politics are viewed in the country represents an important piece of the puzzle in understanding where the country may be heading and determining long-term policy solutions to the country’s economic, political and social ills. The opinions expressed in this policy outlook represent the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the TRT World Research Centre. POLICY OUTLOOK Introduction Background: The On October 17th 2019, Lebanon witnessed an outburst of popular anger ostensibly in reaction to the declared Ta’if Accord and intention to institute a ‘WhatsApp’ tax in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis. Widespread and largely the cementing of a unprecedented protests have been taking place across the country ever since. -
It's Official: Aoun and Hezbollah Are Allies
It's official: Aoun and Hezbollah are allies Beirut - Last week Ya Libnan reported that general Aoun declared that Hezbollah is his closest ally. Yesterday he made it official. Aoun and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Secretary General met to ink their agreement. MP Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement met Monday afternoon, with the Hezbollah leader. After the meeting the two leaders met with the press in a joint appearance and issued a joint statement of understanding which covered the following issues: 1- Dialogue 2- Democracy by consensus 3- Election law 4- Reforms 5- Missing during war 6- Lebanese in Israel 7- Security 8- Lebanese Syrian relationship 9- Lebanese Palestinian relationship 10- Protection of Lebanese sovereignty and independence They named the agreement "paper of understanding". The agreement was read by Hezbollah politburo member Ghaleb Abu Zeinab and FPM member Gebran Bassil. Aoun and Nasrallah were on opposing ends. Aoun was a main proponent of anti-Syrian protests in the wake of former Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination last February. His organization supported the Cedar Revolution of March 14 while Nasrallah organized the pro-Syrian demonstration of March 8. But Aoun broke with other anti-Syrian groups and charted his own middle-of-the-road course with Syria and with its allies in Lebanon. Nasrallah, meanwhile, broke an old alliance with anti-Syrian politician Walid Jumblatt, and with other partners in the coalition. Aoun, a former army commander was driven into exile in 1991, is aiming for the presidency and needs all the support he can get. Nasrallah, whose guerrillas are under international pressure to disarm, also needs support. -
Lebanon's Unstable Equilibrium
LEBANON'S UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM AUTHOR Mona Yacoubian November 2009 UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE 1200 17th Street NW, Suite 200 Washington, D.C. 20036-3011 www.usip.org USIP Peace Briefing: Lebanon's Unstable Equilibrium INTRODUCTION Lebanon's recently announced national unity government has eased fears that the country would once again be mired in a dangerous political stalemate. Yet, despite the recent breakthrough, Lebanon's unstable equilibrium -- marked by both internal and regional tensions - - could still devolve into serious violence. Deep seated sectarian animosities persist, raising the prospects for political instability and civil strife if unaddressed. Regionally, mounting tensions with Israel raise the worrisome possibility of isolated border incidents spiraling into more serious conflict. Taken together these two underlying challenges to stability -- internal civil unrest and regional conflict with Israel -- could undermine Lebanon’s fragile peace. This paper will examine internal challenges to Lebanon’s stability. Formed five months after the June 2009 parliamentary elections, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri's consensus cabinet, comprised of his March 14th coalition together with members of the opposition March 8th bloc, is an essential step toward ensuring that Lebanon gains more stable footing. 1 The new government follows a compromise formula allotting 15 cabinet seats to the majority, 10 to the opposition, and five to President Michel Suleiman. While power-sharing arrangements are by nature less effective and more prone to stalemate, they are crucial to Lebanon’s delicately balanced confessional system and provide an essential pathway to civil peace. Beyond the new consensus government, two critical developments would help to facilitate peace and stability in Lebanon: . -
View/Print Page As PDF
MENU Policy Analysis / PolicyWatch 3229 Lebanon’s Latest Moves Show the Effectiveness of Targeted International Pressure by Hanin Ghaddar Dec 17, 2019 Also available in Arabic ABOUT THE AUTHORS Hanin Ghaddar Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow at The Washington Institute's Geduld Program on Arab Politics, where she focuses on Shia politics throughout the Levant. Brief Analysis By uniting behind the message that financial aid and punishment will be tied to specific courses of action, the United States, France, and the UN may finally be able to push Beirut into establishing a reform-minded government. ince caretaker prime minister Saad Hariri resigned in October, the process of forming a new Lebanese S government has become more complicated. Street protests continue amid increased violence by security institutions, while the country’s dominant political actor—the widely designated terrorist organization Hezbollah—is still insisting on a government headed by Hariri and favorable to its interests. Yet three important events took place last week that could change that plan and break the deadlock. First, the International Support Group for Lebanon (ISGL), co-chaired by France and the United Nations, met in Paris and explicitly stated that the international community will not help Lebanon financially until a new government is formed—specifically, one “that will have the capacity and credibility to deliver the necessary substantive policy package of economic reforms, and that will be committed to dissociate the country from regional tensions and crisis.” Although there was no mention of who should—or should not—head this government, the consensus on reform was clear. -
Commentaries
Commentaries Can Lebanon Be Saved? Only if Citizens Reinvent Their Society and Avoid a New Civil War Joseph A. Kéchichian Ugly sectarianism returned to Lebanon in early June after the wounding of dozens of protesters who were demanding basic rights, meaningful political and economic reforms, and full-scale accountability in a country where successive leaders had failed to tackle any problem, no matter how trivial. For at least three decades, if not longer, Lebanese politicians routinely vandalized the land, tolerated the rise of a militia that threatened citizens, and demanded that those who were not satisfied emigrate on a more or less permanent basis. The future was bleak, with few prospects for meaningful political or socioeconomic reform. What was the message that Hizballah and Amal, the two leading Shi‘ah parties, wished to telegraph to the rest of Lebanon’s population after the June 6, 2020, protests? Were the Shi‘ah marchers, who flew Hizballah and Amal Movement flags and chanted “Shi‘ah, Shi‘ah, Shi‘ah” in what was a cry of defiance, anxious to topple the constitution? Why were security forces, whose riot units fired teargas at Martyrs Square in downtown Beirut and in Ayn al-Rimanih, a troubled section of the capital city where the 1975–1990 war had started, selective in their responses to confront demonstrators? Was Lebanon on the verge of a new civil war, and were there peaceful alternatives to either reinventing Lebanese society or, according to a scenario that was not far-fetched, were Sunni Muslims and Christians being invited to emigrate at their earliest opportunity, as various social media outlets invited them to? A New Civil War? Lebanon’s current socioeconomic ordeals, which arose from a combination of poor representation, corruption, and economic stagnation, started long before the October 17, 2019, uprisings that shook the Can Lebanon Be Saved? Commentaries Only if Citizens Reinvent Their Society and Avoid a New Civil War 1 ruling establishment. -
The Taif Accord and Lebanon's Struggle to Regain Its Sovereignty
American University International Law Review Volume 6 | Issue 1 Article 3 1990 The aiT f Accord and Lebanon's Struggle to Regain its Sovereignty Sandra M. Saseen Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/auilr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Saseen, Sandra M. "The aiT f Accord and Lebanon's Struggle to Regain its Sovereignty." American University International Law Review 6, no. 1 (1990): 57-75. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington College of Law Journals & Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in American University International Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE TAIF ACCORD AND LEBANON'S STRUGGLE TO REGAIN ITS SOVEREIGNTY Sandra M. Saseen* INTRODUCTION There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them. Clare Boothe Luce Fifteen years of civil war and foreign military intervention in Leba- non has resulted in a terrible loss of human life, many casualties, and massive physical destruction.' Lebanon is a country occupied by two states, Syria2 and Israel,3 and victimized by two revolutions.' Israel and Syria are antagonists who limit the violence of their confrontation to Lebanon. Meanwhile, the Palestinian and Iranian revolutions have fo- * J.D. Candidate, 1990, Washington College of Law, The American University. The author wishes to express her gratitude to Professors Claudio M. Grossman and Nicholas N. -
Discourse As an Electoral Campaigning Tool: Exploiting the Emotions of Voters
Discourse as an Electoral Campaigning Tool: Exploiting the Policy Report Policy Emotions of Voters DEC 2020 Founded in 1989, the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies is a Beirut-based independent, non-partisan think tank whose mission is to produce and advocate policies that improve good governance in fields such as oil and gas, economic development, public finance, and decentralization. This report is published in partnership with HIVOS through the Women Empowered for Leadership (WE4L) programme, funded by the Netherlands Foreign Ministry FLOW fund. Copyright © 2020. The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies Designed by Polypod Executed by Zéna Khairallah Sadat Tower, Tenth Flour P.O.B 55-215, Leon Street, Ras Beirut, Lebanon T+ +961 1 79 93 01 F: +961 1 79 93 02 [email protected] www.lcps-lebanon.org Discourse as an Electoral Campaigning Tool: Exploiting the Emotions of Voters Sami Atallah Sami Atallah is the director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. He is currently leading several policy studies on youth social identity and political engagement, electoral behavior, political and social sectarianism, and the role of municipalities in dealing with the refugee crisis. He is the co-editor of Democracy, Decentralization, and Service Delivery in the Arab World (with Mona Harb, Beirut, LCPS 2015), co- editor of The Future of Petroleum in Lebanon: Energy, Politics, and Economic Growth (with Bassam Fattouh, I.B. Tauris, 2019), and co-editor of The Lebanese Parliament 2009-2018: From Illegal Extensions to Vacuum (with Nayla Geagea, 2018). Nadim El Kak Nadim El Kak is a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and research associate at Lebanon Support. -
Lebanon: Renewed Instability Following August Blast
INSIGHTi Lebanon: Renewed Instability Following August Blast August 17, 2020 On August 10, Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his cabinet resigned in the wake of a massive explosion at the port of Beirut that killed at least 178 people and injured thousands. The blast displaced an estimated 300,000 people, and Lebanese President Michel Aoun estimated the damage at the port to be roughly $15 billion. The explosion triggered widespread outrage among citizens, and has generated renewed protests—at times violent—against Lebanon’s political leaders. Diab’s resignation leaves Lebanon’s government in caretaker status with reduced authorities. Observers speculate that the country could become mired in months of government formation at a time of economic and humanitarian crisis, leaving it vulnerable to paralysis and greater social unrest. Policymakers may review U.S. assistance to Lebanon in the wake of growing humanitarian and economic needs, and in the context of potential shifts in the country’s political leadership. Renewed Protest Movement The August 4 blast renewed the momentum of the protest movement that began in October 2019 and led to the resignation that month of Saad Hariri, the previous prime minister. Following the explosion, thousands of protesters returned to the streets, expressing rage with the country’s political leadership, which reportedly knew of the risks posed by ammonium nitrate stored at the port but took no action. Over 700 civilians were wounded in clashes with security forces, according to the Lebanese Red Cross, and some reports have accused security forces of using excessive force. Protesters called for international aid to be channeled directly to local organizations, bypassing Lebanese state institutions that Lebanese describe as corrupt. -
Issue34 V5.Qxd
CONTENTS July 2005 - Issue N° 34 NDU Spirit A periodical about campus life at Notre Dame University - Louaïze. 2 A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT ACADEMIC AFFAIRS 3 French Delegation at NDU 3 Lebanese Emigrants’ Delegation at NDU 4 NDU Activists and Congressman STUDENT AND ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES 5 Admissions in Action! Report by Dr. Elham Hasham WEERC 27 ETE Seminars 10 WEERC Workshop for Chekka area 28 NDU Winner at ESU Competition LERC Conferences 29 NDU Founders’ Day 11 Children of Lebanese in Australia 31 Job Fair 2005 – Dr. Rosemary Suliman 32 NDU Students in Turkey – Nathalie Kobrossi 13 Forum: Residents and Emigrants 33 NDU Student Soars High – Dr. Naji Oueijan 4th Millennial Lecture Series 35 Deputy Pierre Jmeil and Dr. Wadih al-Hajj 15 Universal Reason: Religion and Civil Society – Lebanon of Tomorrow – Dr. William Grassie 35 Dr. Eddy Abillamaa – The Future of the Forces 19 What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem 36 Candidates Farid el-Khazen, I. Kanaan, – Dr. Joseph Bechara G. Abi Zaid and A. Aoun 20 Cross Cultural Symposium with American 36 A Call for Democracy – Deputy Mosbah Ahdab University, Washington 36 Gibran Tueni talks North Campus News 37 Sports Office News 23 Workshop: Lebanese Architecture 37 NDU students united for Independence 24 Workshop on Drug Abuse 25 Shouf Campus Shorts — Events OPINION AND CULTURE 38 Experience never stops – Elias Karout 65 Mechanical Engineering at NDU – Dr. Walid C. Assaf 39 Social - Correction 66 Heating System with Storage – Dr. Walid C. Assaf 40 Why NDU? – Serge Dagher 67 American Society of Mechanical Engineers – Charbel Wehbe 41 Government in Media Developments 68 Solid Mechanics and its Applications – Dr. -
Could Lebanon's New Government Bring Stability to the Country?
Could Lebanon’s new government bring stability to the country? blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2016/12/08/could-lebanons-new-government-bring-stability-to-the-country/ 12/8/2016 by Mariam El Atouabi © Paul Saad, 2016. Source: flickr.com With the election of Michel Aoun as the new President of Lebanon, all the attention now shifts to the forming of the government cabinet, under the care of newly-appointed Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The distribution of the ministries portfolios has already sparked a vivid debate amongst parties, with Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, voicing his support for Michel Aoun, but asserting his fear of marginalising the Druze political representatives. Unequivocally, Lebanon’s geopolitical position has shifted as a result of the ongoing Syrian civil war. For a long period of time Lebanon constituted a regional echo chamber, whether willingly or unwillingly, positioning itself at the centre of regional crises and political challenges. The main result of Lebanon’s singular regional status is the humanitarian and political fallout from the Syrian civil war, being one of the main recipients of Syrian refugees. Hezbollah steadily rose to be one of the main political players in Lebanon, especially following the party’s military involvement in Syria and its support for Bashar al-Assad. As a result, Hezbollah was able to provide concrete quick actions and solutions to the social and political instability at a time of executive leadership vacuum — shifting Lebanon’s position from regional echo chamber to front-row political player. Positive signals have been sent by Saad Hariri – who has not been officially endorsed by the Hezbollah – on 21 November, stating that Michel Aoun and himself have agreed on the majority of the proposed cabinet line-up, despite the recent feuds between top Shiite and Maronite leaders regarding the question of extending the Parliament’s mandate.