Is Lebanon headed towards a denouement?

Forget that clown Hossam for a moment; if you look at the Lebanese scene in the last few days, you can’t avoid the feeling that things are not looking as hopeless as they used to.

The Maronite Patriarch seemed to have abandoned President Lahhoud. The mere fact that the President was not invited to an all-heavyweight-Maronites event in Bkirki is a big Slap to the visibly irritated Baabda resident.

On the Hezbollah front, things seem to be solving themselves slowly. Shebaa will be officially declared Lebanese by the Syrians and The Party of God is bent on explaining to their fellow Lebanese their positions on all matters from Syria to diesel, all through lively TV debates. This is a sign that they care about the Lebanese institutions and have genuine intentions to reach out.

This didn’t pass unnoticed on the March 14 people, who offered an initiative to reconcile with Hezbollah. The initiative seems to be part of a larger wave of rapprochements, from Seniora and Shara’ wanting to open a new page, to Aoun and Geagea deciding to compete democratically, to the expected meeting between Aoun and Jumblat.

Everyone wants to talk to everyone. What happened? Has a deal been reached between the Saudis and the Syrians? Is it about the Syrians accepting to hand in the 5 security chiefs? If not, how can we explain this new and overwhelming positive energy?

I found this Table on The Economist‘s website. It’s part of an interesting article about how the idea of “resistance” is slowly losing grounds among Moslems everywhere. The graph shows the attitude changes in selected countries, but I was particularly impressed by how Lebanon has fared in the last three years.

According to the table, in the Summer of 2002, 73% of the Lebanese thought that it was often/sometimes ok to use violence against civilians. That figure went down to 39% in July 2005. a whopping 34-point shift.

The popularity of Bin Laden has also taken a nose dive: While 14% of Lebanese had a lot/some confidence in Bin Laden in the Summer of 2002, only 2% thought so in July 2005. (still a scary figure but compare that to Jordan’s 60 percent and you get the picture).

What do you think the reasons of such shifts are? do you think that Hariri’s Assassination had anything to do with the Lebanese figures? What other factors can we think of? Are the figures a good indicator of Hezbollah’s declining popularity?