We’re all frustrated but partition, as the Saudi FM suggested, is not the answer. Here’s why:
I posted this before and some of the figures are not accurate, but you don’t need very accurate numbers to prove my general point about the unpartitionability (is that even a word?) of Lebanon.
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Mustapha,
enjoy the blog.
Try this on for size:
http://www.lebanonpostcard.com/images/mosaiclb/mosaic.jpg
Excellent! I’ve been looking for that. Thanks..
Umm. wow. I’m confused..I don’t know what to think anymore.. Partition?? When did that become an option?
Wow, that mosaic link is definitely something!
I have to disagree with you on this one (although I usually agree with your analysis on most things!). I think the very fact that you can produce this map demonstrates that Lebanon can be partitioned. Read about it on my blog.
This is wishful thinking Mustapha, not a reasoned response. Why can’t Lebanon be partitioned? And why is partition to be viewed as an abomination?
Even the Catholic Church has come to accept divorce (sure, it’s called “marriage annulment”, but in the end the difference is in semantics and an “annulment” is partition by other means.)
When gangrene is at the brink of consuming a salubrious body, amputation becomes the only solution… Regional autonomy (with all that it entails in terms of minority cultural and linguistic rights) is the only system that has maintained national sanity (and civil peace) for places like Switzerland, Canada, and the Czechoslovak Federative Republic among other places; and in the case of Switzerland, this has been the case for the past 500 years. I don’t see how Switzerland can be partitioned, but not Lebanon. Please explain.
When I hear partition, I think south sudan, I don’t think Switzerland, or for that matter, the United States, which employ federal systems.
I support a federal system with devolved powers..
it seems to me that these maps of Switzerland are much more of a snarl than a potential partitioned Lebanon:
http://www.about.ch/cantons/nidwalden.html
http://swiss-government-politics.all-about-switzerland.info/swiss-federal-states-cantons.html
I lived in Switzerland for more than 10 years. In my experience the Zurichers and the Genevois love each other as much as the people of Tripoli and Dahiye. But they live with each other because the system (Confederation, not a Federation) creates an environment of constructive competition. Lebanon as a unitary state has failed and is faced with one of two options now: Somalia or Switzerland. I hope the choice is clear.