Yesterday, during a Tv show, Minister Fawzi salloukh proposed that the Lebanese abroad register their names so that ‘the Lebanese government can keep records of them”.

The proposal comes amid growing demands for the Lebanese abroad to vote in the upcoming elections and Mr. Salloukh’s suggestion could be seen as a first step in that direction. But before the Lebanese rush to register their names, they should be careful about a potential trap that could deprive them of that very right.

We shouldn’t forget that Mr. Salloukh, after all, is a politician who belongs to a political party. He could well be gathering that information to ‘feel the waters’ for his party’s chances in such an election. If the data wasn’t favorable, Mr. Berri could very well shoot down the diaspora’s voting.

But what if Mr. Salloukh’s intentions were good? Doesn’t the ministry of external affairs and immigrants have the right to collect information before organizing elections outside of the country?

Of course it does, but it should be done in coordination with a bipartisan electoral commission that would emerge from the new electoral law. Anything before that could very much be a scam by politicians to control our votes.

Naharnet called it “controversial” and quoted a Salafist sheikh who characterized it as “bad for Sunnis.” The Future Movement remained silent -Update: Future Movement member Samir Jisr said that Mr. Hariri was not aware of the agreement and that the FM has nothing to do with it. Mr. Jisr said that comprehensive agreements are better than bilateral ones- But today’s M.O.U between Hezbollah and Salafists is a reminder to March 14 that if they want to compete with Hezbollah, they will have to be as pro-active and creative.

One can argue that Hezbollah’s Salafist partners are marginal, but one can’t deny that the M.O.U has achieved many objectives for them:

• It has calmed the nerves of Hezbollah Shiite supporters who were concerned about Iraqi-style terrorist attacks on their mosques and markets
• It has received wide acclaim in Lebanon and among Arabs for seeking to prevent intra-Islamic bloodletting
• It has added a dent to Hezbollah’s reputation (some would say manufactured) as a sectarian Shiite Movement
• It undermines the rationale of many pro-March 14 Sunni extremists who support the Future Movement because they believed Hezbollah’s project is an existential threat to Sunnis in Lebanon

In other words, it was exactly the kind of show Hezbollah needed to put up. In fact, this M.O.U is so politically effective that Hezbollah’s opponents will find it very difficult to portray it as “bad” or “evil”. For now, the best they can do is grumble in private and call it “controversial”

Yesterday, in a televised speech, the leader of Hezbollah put the blame for Georgia’s “defeat” on Gal Hirsch, an Israeli military man “who was defeated in Lebanon [then] went to Georgia [as a military consultant]“.

Perhaps Mr. Nasrallah is right and the Georgian setback was due in fact to an incompetent foreign adviser. But the taunting Mr. Nasrallah is engaged in against Israel reminds us of his 2006 provocation which caused heavy destruction in Lebanon (which, if one is to take Mr. Nassrallah’s standards on Georgia, amounts to a Lebanese defeat)

The taunting and provocation has put Mr. Nasrallah on the same footing with another character in the Caucuses, namely with the Georgian president Michael Saakashvili, an adventurist halfwit who thought he could get away with poking a neighboring foe with the ability to destroy his entire country.

That, Mr. Nasrallah, should be our lesson from Georgia.

Here’s a question: Wasn’t the entire purpose of “demarcating the Lebanese-Syrian border” –an important item on the agenda of the President’s visit to Damascus– to determine the ownership of the contentious Shebaa farms?

What good does it do us to demarcate our borders if we skip over the controversial part, the only part that really matters? Besides, what does it take for the process of demarcation anyway? All it takes is a technical team from each country to work together on a map, sign it and hand it over to the United nations. It’s not like you have to send topographers on the ground to measure occupied territories.

By refusing to demarcate the Shebaa Farms, Syria is proving that it is more interested in keeping this powder keg, a cause célèbre for Hezbollah, than in getting the farms back.

We should all get off our ivory towers of certainty. The reality of the matter is that all of the finger pointing regarding yesterday’s bombing is based on nothing more than speculation. Those who claim with certainty that Islamist fundamentalists are behind the attacks are as mindless as those who blindly and immediately accuse Syria.

This leaves the door open for making one’s case on who benefits the most from the confrontation between the Lebanese Army and the Islamists. One line of thought, shared by most Tripolitans who support the Future Movement, is advanced by many editorialists, columnists in English and in Arabic, bloggers and commentators on this blog.

The central idea is that Tripoli is being punished for for wholeheartedly supporting the anti-Syrian independence movement, and that is done by playing off artificially inflated Islamists against the army in the hope that the Sunnis will eventually lose faith in the army, and by extension, in an independent state. Michael Young sums up this point of view nicely:

Like the attack against a military intelligence office in Abdeh several weeks ago, the aim of those placing the bombs was to convince you and I that Sunni extremist groups are alive and well in the North, that they have an axe to grind with the army because of Nahr al-Bared
…
The reality, I believe, is different. Recently, colleagues who closely follow events in Tripoli have started hearing of Syrian warnings to the Lebanese that there would be no peace in the city until the Salafists were routed. Who would conduct such an operation but the army, explaining why soldiers have been the victims of recent attacks. Syria’s implication in the bombings is highly probable, its objective being to push the army and the Salafists into a confrontation. This would create a serious rift within the Sunni community, weaken the disoriented pro-Hariri forces in Tripoli, and allow Damascus’ allies to regain the initiative in the city.

The reality is that Salafists in Tripoli are not strong. In the recent fighting between the Sunni quarters of Bab al-Tebbaneh and Qobbeh and the Alawite quarter of Jabal Mohsen, the Salafists, who belong to a variety of small groups, proved to be much less numerous than anyone had imagined. As a neighborhood leader in Bab al-Tebbaneh described it, the confrontations exposed the Salafists’ weaknesses, not their strengths. The brunt of the fighting was borne by the men of Bab al-Tebbaneh, though followers of a leading opposition politician used the hostilities to burnish his legitimacy as a “defender of the Sunnis.” The Alawite official Rifaat Eid admitted that the fighting erupted after a rocket propelled grenade was fired at his men by partisans of this opposition politician.
…
It was no coincidence, either, that the bombing occurred on the day of Michel Sleiman’s visit to Damascus. There were several messages to the president: that Lebanese security will continue to remain vulnerable if he opposes Syrian priorities (and that includes, among other things, Syrian choices for the post of army commander and military intelligence chief); that Sleiman’s priorities, in turn, such as addressing diplomatic relations between Beirut and Damascus and the fate of Lebanese prisoners in Syria, are secondary to the Syrians; that intimidation remains Syria’s modus operandi when it comes to its relationship with Lebanon; and that Sleiman would make a mistake to rely too much on the parliamentary majority, which is buttressed by a Sunni community that can be readily split.
…
The bus bombing yesterday ultimately targeted not the army but the Sunnis. Syria wants them irredeemably divided. Hariri must ensure that such a plan fails.

Thoughts?

(Reuters)

Whenever a terrorist event like the bus explosion in Tripoli this morning takes place, the Lebanese, depending on their biases, immediately look in two different directions.

Two culprits

Those who are inclined to see the destructive hands of Syria at play can’t help but notice that whenever an important event is about to take place (large anti-syrian demo, the first ever sovereign presidential visit to damascus in today’s case), someone somewhere kills a lot of innocent people.

As March 14 M.P. Jawad Boulos put it this morning to the VL radio station: “the explosion of Tripoli is a message to president Sleiman that there are forbidden topics in today’s meeting with the Syrian president”

On the other hand, there are many who believe that all the ills emanating from the north are the doings of Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, monsters who were recently propped-up by the Sunni wing of March 14 (Hariri’s Almustaqbal Movement) in an ill-advised effort to counter Shiaa ascendancy in the form of Hezbollah.

In the eyes of this group, the terrorists are carrying out their revenge against the Lebanese army who put them to their knees and humiliated them during the Naher Al Bared showdown.

So which of the two culprits is really behind the bombing?

The Syrians might have encouraged Monday’s black-draped fundamentalist demonstration to prime the Lebanese into an anti-fundamentalist mood. Moreover, the coincidence of the bombing and the President’s visit to Syria is just too strong to ignore.

Yet on the other hand, the fundamentalists could have really been behind this, and Monday’s demonstration could have been a warning.

The true answer is: We don’t really know and we’ll unfortunately have to wait for the ever sterile investigations to tell us.

Do you have an opinion about this? Who do YOU think is behind the Tripoli explosions?

(Photo by AP. Mahmood Tawil)

Yesterday, in a sight that brought cold chills down many Lebanese spines, men and women clad in black overalls holding black flags with Islamic scriptures staged a sit-in in front of the military court in Beirut to protest the arrest of their family members.

The relatives in question had been rounded up by the Lebanese army two years ago in Tripoli during the Fateh el Islam insurgency in the North and have been kept in custody without trial since. Do the protesters have a fair case?

In a way, the event was clumsy. Whatever PR they sought by writing slogans in English was immediately overturned by the gloominess of their outfits. Also, some of their demands were downright silly. For example, they want “amnesty” for their “boys” because “many people have done wrong to the country and their sons were not arrested” as written in their statement. In other words what they are saying is “there are other bad guys out there so our bad guys shouldn’t be singled out”. Bogus.

But not all of their demands should be dismissed. A free and fair trial is a human right that everyone deserves including Islamists whose looks we don’t particularly like. Some of the men captured are dangerous terrorists, but some are also held there because of individual soldiers’ discrimination. Habeas corpus was invented to objectively tell the difference between the bad guys and the good guys, and there is no excuse for the courts to drag their feet.

Every Lebanese who likes to criticize Guantanamo Bay and the way the American government illegally treat their “enemy combatants” should look closer to home.

So apparently, the German federal police officials (BKA) have leaked a “secret report” that Hezbollah has the capacity to undertake damaging attacks in Germany. The BKA estimated the number of Hezbollah supporters in Germany to be 900.

I frankly don’t know what they mean by “Hezbollah supporters”. Of the tens of thousands of Arabs living in Germany, it is likely that at least half of them are “Hezbollah supporters”. At the same time, it is unlikely that 900 Hezbollah operatives have created “terrorist Sleeper cells” ready to strike at any time in Germany, for the simple reason that spending so much money to maintain such a large operation in a country that is not particularly “desirable” for Hezbollah doesn’t make any sense.

Many if not most of the Lebanese don’t buy the fact that Hezbollah has operational branches (except money laundering) outside of Lebanon. At the same time it doesn’t make sense that Hezbollah wants to antagonize Germany, the country that worked hard to play the mediator to secure the release of Samir Kuntar and the rest of the Arab prisoners from Israel.

In short, this entire story sounds fishy to me. It could be an attempt by the German security services to secure more funding by brandishing the potential threat of the terrorist-du-jour. But then again, that sounds too much like a conspiracy..

Next week, president Suleiman will be making his first official trip to Syria. Yesterday, the Israelis told us that the Lebanese government will be held responsible for Hezbollah’s actions. Also, M.P. Michel Aoun declared from parliament that the people of Lebanon, its government and its resistance are all one entity.

Is there anything in common between these events?

At the heart of them are the fundamental notions of independence and responsibility. The stakes in Lebanon have become too high and the Lebanese citizens will have to soon make some choices and accept their consequences.

To illustrate my point, let’s talk about Israeli overflights over Lebanese territories. By all measures, they are internationally illegal, and in a sense we have the “right” to shoot them down as Hezbollah had suggested. Yet for some quirks in history and international norms of fairness, Israel happens to be a military power with the capability of destroying Lebanon and getting away with it.

The choice every single Lebanese faces is this: Do we want to be right and keep our dignity at the expense of our lives and that of our children? Or do we want to stay alive and suck up the occasional air violation as a trade off to our prosperity?

To many, this isn’t an easy choice. But it so happens that we have to make it in the next general election. Do we want to vote for leaders who believe that “the people of Lebanon, its government and its resistance are all one entity,” knowing what the consequence of that vote might be? Or do we want to vote for leaders who want to “stay away from trouble” like Mr. Seniora, even at the expense of our national pride and dignity?

Israel has made it clear that we can no longer blame Syria and get away with it. This time, we have to be careful because we are truly responsible for our choices. We can’t whine, we can’t protest the unfairness of it all, we can’t blame anyone else. It is a difficult choice but we have to make it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true meaning of independence.

Will anything interrupt Jbeil’s summer peace? (photo source)

To watch Lebanon today is to see the closest it’s gotten to an oasis of peace since 2005. Tourists are flocking in droves to a rare peaceful summer, business is booming, big plans are being made, parliament will convene after two years of absense and politicians are talking with their bitterest of foes. It would seem almost foolish to believe that a neighboring country is sharpening its knife and making loud threats.

But that is precisely what’s happening. At issue is Hezbollah’s stated aim of shooting down Israeli spy-planes over Lebanese territory. That combined with the perceived “tipping point” in Lebanon (a situation where Hezbollah is now supposedly controlling the Lebanese government) and the brouhaha surrounding Kuntar’s release have sent Israeli politicians and media running around like headless chickens.

Israeli politicians are trying to exert pressure on the UN to enforce resolution 1701 which mandates a curb on the smuggling of weapons to Hezbollah.. They say they’ll do all they can to prevent advanced anti-aircraft missiles from reaching Hezbollah and they don’t have any reason to bluff: Israeli politicians are under immense pressure to prove to their depressed citizens that they’re not weak.

The Israelis seem to be spoiling for another war. Ehud Barak insinuated that Olmert lost the 2006 war because of his “lack of experience”, Tsivi Livni is trying to wear Sharon’s mantle and warmongering Benjamin Natanyahu is leading in the polls.

Unfortunately, if a new war is to take place, the Israelis are trying to make clear that not only Hezbollah will pay the price, but all of Lebanon. A war that will “raze Lebanon to the ground” as one Israeli commentator puts it will be foolish and irrational, but that won’t make it any less of a disaster.

While my wife still has five more months to add a member to my own family, my blog -after a few weeks of fussy tinkering- has now added two.

The reason is simple. Not everyone here likes to hear about Mika or see pictures of the Lebanese President’s daughter’s wedding. Yet at the same time, not everyone likes it when I write about the government’s economic policy or the Lebanese banking sector. In other words, this is when the invisible mouth of Adam smith told me to specialize.

The Beirut Spring Tabloid is just that: A look into the stuff you usually see in the back of a newspaper. Trivial, outrageous, scandalous and sometimes raunchy material that many of us secretly love. The Beirut Spring Business on the other hand takes the other end of the seriousness spectrum; in it we get a chance to discuss important matters without being distracted by politics. The original blog will keep doing what it does best: Politics.

The new blogs are young, and God knows I could use a lot of help with new material. So should any of you channel his or her inner economist or sleazeball, please don’t hesitate to send your contributions or ideas for posts to mustapha [at} beirutspring {dot] com.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your feedback. Is there anything you don’t like? Is there anything I can do better? Any ideas for even more sections (like for example: the environment)? Also please email me for more suggestions…

President Sleiman gives a reserved handshake (AP)

General Petraeus’ visit to Beirut can be just a matter of procedure. The man is set soon to be the head of the US Central Command, the arm of the military that is responsible for U.S. operations and troops in the Middle East and Central Asia, a region to which Lebanon belongs.

Yet the surprise visit is also likely to raise speculations. After all, wasn’t General David Petraeus the man who oversaw the putting down of the Sadr Militia in Iraq? Thanks to Gen. Petraeus, the Iraqi Hezbollah-wannabe finally decided to lay down its weapons and become a purely political movement. Isn’t this the future America sees for Hezbollah too?

Moreover, Does Mr. Petraeus’ visit have anything to do with Mr. Saad Hariri’s surprise visit to Iraq last month, in which he met with high officials?

In a sense, what General Petraeus represents is the anti-Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas’ narrative of an America stumbling goofily in the Middle East. He is anathema to the forces of “rejection” in the region and is likely to provoke a wave of ad-hominem attacks from Hezbollah-friendly media.

To the extent Hezbollah fears facing the destiny of the Sadr militias, the venom in covering the General’s visit will be high. If on the other hands Assafir and Al-Akhbar left the man alone, we will then know for sure that the visit was just one of protocol.

Those who thought the singer who entertained thousands last week in Martyrs Square was Lebanese are mistaken.

Indeed, Mika was born in Beirut to an American father and Lebanese mother: Lebanese law does not allow Lebanese women to pass down nationality to their children.

So the brilliant artist who should be (and would like to be) representing our country abroad, cannot.

Another more tragic consequence of our unfair nationality laws is this account (taken from l’Orient le Jour)-my translation-:

I am 31 years old, I was born and I live in Lebanon. My mother is Lebanese and my father who died, was an achouri Christian from Iraq, moved to Lebanon in the middle of the last century having obtained from the Lebanese authorities provisional papers in the form of a pass which I inherited. I know by heart every corner of Achrafieh, Dekouané, Nabba, Sin el Fil, Dora, Hamra, Jounieh, Zahle, Saida… I found work several times but as soon as my employers were unable to provide me a work permit, I was fired. Since then, my mother decided to borrow money to open a supermarket where I could finally make a living. I began to feel adult, independent, happy. I met a girl whom I fell in love and we decided to marry. Everything was going well until the day when her brothers realized that having a father with a card “taht qayd al dars”, our children may find themselves without a nationality, cursed by birth, because a Lebanese woman cannot give her nationality to her children, whatever the circumstances. My fiancee decided to break her commitment to marriage. I am back to my scourged fate. My life is a series of misfortunes. Some say, “your maternal grandfather should have adopted you.” Thank you, I would answer, it’s too late, my grandfather has died now and nobody had thought of this before. I tried to leave for Europe where an old aunt of mine lives, but it was impossible to obtain a visa with my provisional papers. I advised by some to hide in the hold of a ship and declare myself a “refugee” on a more lenient land. I did not dare, I was afraid that this illegal act would only lead me to jail for God knows how many months or years. My mother feels terrible to be powerless. She recently knocked on all doors, even very senior officials, to try to find a “wasta”. She is ready to do everything she is asked in order to obtain a Lebanese passport for me. She often gets the response: this law has been applied to prevent Palestinian men from marrying Lebanese women and becoming ex officio Lebanese themselves and their children born to this mixed marriage. Is this a convincing argument? I doubt it. Knowing that when a Palestinian woman marries a Lebanese man, their children have the right to Lebanese nationality!

Whatever the reason, the Women’s blood right has been removed! Lebanese wake up, claim your rights to protect you and protect your children. You are 50% of votes in the country. In a few months you will head to the ballot box. Vote for those who publicly promise to defend women’s rights.

Youssef Taht-qayd-Eldar

The time for change is long overdue.

(this article can also be found at the TY’s blog)

President Assad was in Iran when it happened. (Reuters)

According to a Syrian source for Alsharkalawsat, Mr. Suleiman who was assassinated a few days ago belonged to an exclusive set of high-echelon officials in the Syrian regime who actually held a large amount of state and military secrets. The source also said that Mr. Assad had a lot of confidence in Mr. Sleiman and that Mr. Sleiman’s status was even higher than that of the minister of defense.

According to the source, the assassination was carried out in professional precision by a sniper from the sea’s direction while Mr. Suleiman was sunbathing in the coastal city of Tartous. The circumstances remain vague as non of Syria’s state-controlled-media mentioned it.

The yet-to-be confirmed news has sent a whirlwind of speculations buzzing through the Arab and Israeli media, prompting many theories on why Mr. Suleiman was assassinated and on the significance of the Event.

Here are the theories I found most credible:

1- Mr. Suleiman was killed by the Syrian regime because he knows too much about the coordination between Syria, Iran and North Korea on nuclear programs.

6- Mr. Suleiman was killed by the Israeli intelligence as a way to put pressure on Mr. Assad to take action with regards to Hezbollah’s armament.

I’d like to know what you think of this. Which of the above theories do you find the most convincing? Why?

(Photos: Mahmoud Tawil, AP)