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Lebanon on the brink

Each time Tripoli’s residents cheered Lebanese army tank-fire on the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, they rubbed salt in debilitating historical wounds that even time struggles to keep under wraps, such is the intensity of the bitterness that half-a-century or so of Palestinian-refugee interaction with Lebanese civil society has brought about.

When Israel’s merciless bombardment last summer broke the very painfully consolidated calm after the horrible civil war years, the subsequent Hezbollah-government standoff with all its unsettling political connotations all but invited further destabilisation typical of any society with a weak centre, a strong politico-militant force, a discontent 400,000 strong refugee force, and numerous splinter elements forever on the lookout for just such conditions to leverage for perverted gains.

Even though the Siniora government finds rare public support for the offensive against the Fatah al-Islam, it continues to grow weak within, because the long notable rising wave of hard-line Islamist tendencies in the refugee camps is now coming out in open rebellion against it. That, at a time when it is already almost constantly wriggling to avoid the Hezbollah axe. And as the Lebanese Press is near unanimously pointing out, if there is indeed a Syrian hand in the refugee-camp incident, the immediate course ahead will see accusations and cross-accusations that typified the region’s politics until very recently. That the turbulence occurred just as the Security Council had taken up Harriri-murder-specific resolutions, indeed, does make Syria’s case weaker, if the region’s politics is anything to go by.

Constant bickering in certain parts of the region is a crippling blow to renewed efforts at unity and peace-brokering in other camps. Since most of the fighting is needless, and is holding back peace efforts, which are imperative, does not reflect too well on political maturity of some important Arab leaders.