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Oui to a Chapter 7 Mandate
April 4, 2007
NEAL endorses the idea of a Chapter 7 mandate
to establish the International Tribunal for Lebanon. The reasons are
many, but they all center on the single most obvious fact now in
evidence two years after the withdrawal of the Syrian occupation
from Lebanon:
The Lebanese political leadership – loyalist
and opposition alike – is either incompetent or untrustworthy. There
are no statesmen in Lebanon these days, only corrupt politicians.
Months and months of dialogue. Months and
months of haggling over ministerial posts in future governments.
Street riots and people killed in the streets. The risk of descent
into civil anarchy. Paralyzed economy and sit-ins in downtown
Beirut. A war between Israel and Hezbollah. Greater emigration and
fleeing of financial and intellectual capital now than under the
Syrian occupation. The affiliation of the opposition with the
Syrian-Iranian axis, and the loyalists with the Saudi-American axis.
The return to government of the feudal warlords and criminals who
caused much of the war and destruction over the past few decades,
who were the collaborators with the Syrian occupation, and who
pilfered the Treasury while the Lebanese were being displaced and
killed.
All the above is not what the Lebanese people
had in mind in their push for a free, independent and sovereign
Lebanon. If the above litany is what a “free, sovereign, and
independent Lebanon” means, then I, as an ordinary Lebanese citizen,
will support the encroachment of the UN over my country’s
sovereignty under a chapter 7 mandate only to ensure that the plight
of the Lebanese people under the occupation by their own corrupt
political rulers is brought to an end.
Neither the opposition nor the loyalist camp
is right now the solution to the chronic problems of Lebanon. On one
hand, the opposition is sold out to Syria and Iran, it includes a
heavily armed militia that rejects the sovereignty of the State and
is considered a terrorist organization by most of the world, and is
made up of a hodge-podge of organizations and political parties
whose only common objective is to prevent the International Tribunal
from seeing the light of day, and thus protect Syria from
prosecution. This is why Nabih Berri, the chameleon Speaker of
Parliament, refuses to call Parliament to session and vote on the
international tribunal. A victory by the opposition over the
loyalist camp will certainly bring Lebanon to the brink of disaster
since Hezbollah will have a greater say in the affairs of the
country, including inching it closer to an Islamic Republic with
demands for Sharia Law to become integrated into the Lebanese
Constitution, and a possible long-term state of war with Israel
since Hezbollah says it wants to liberate Jerusalem more so than the
Shebaa Farms. This is why Hezbollah considers a Chapter 7 mandate
“an act of war” because that will be the end of its blackmail of the
country.
On the other hand, the loyalist camp is merely
clinging to power on the basis of a very flimsy parliamentary
majority, (which is the only reason they have befriended the Bush
government), and is itself a hodge-podge of former criminal warlords,
political money, and the traditionalists who led the country down
into war since the 1970s. A victory by the loyalist camp over the
opposition will ensure the return of corruption, a renewed grip by
the traditional feudal and religious elites on power and the
perpetuation of the structural problems that plague Lebanon’s
political life. No wonder then that the Maronite Patriarch, who has
watched with staggering impotence his own Christian community be
reduced to nothing by war and emigration over 35 years, is also
against a Chapter 7 mandate. In other words, neither side really
wants Chapter 7 because it threatens to actually solve Lebanon’s
decades-old problem and it also threatens the power base on which
both sides rely to maintain their grip on power at the expense of
the real needs and wants of the Lebanese people.
Given this state of affairs, the Lebanese
people should understand that only an international intervention
will save the country from its external foes and from its internal
sickness. The focus should be on the Lebanese people themselves and
not on their leaders or their government. Political bickering over
power and seats in government does nothing to lift the country out
of its sickness. Lebanon’s history is replete with episodes of
troubles (triggered externally but maintained internally) punctuated
by peaceful periods that were ushered when the West intervened. The
1830-1860 period was such a period, World Wars I and II saw a
similar recurrence, and now is another episode in the making.
We endorse further intervention by the UN and
the international community under Chapter 7 in Lebanon: Additional
troops to patrol and stabilize the borders with Syria and Israel and
deter any further deterioration caused by external enemies; an
International Tribunal to prosecute the killers and hopefully also
the corrupt, the kidnappers and other war criminals; and to
stabilize the country internally sufficiently enough to allow the
Lebanese people to elect people they trust and people who will
actually do what governments in civilized countries should do: Fix
and maintain a decent infrastructure – roads, electricity, telephone,
water, schools, police, fight crime, promote employment and the
economy. Those are the things that people care about, and not
whether Aoun becomes president or whether Hariri becomes prime
minister or whether Nasrallah talked to God last night to confirm
that his rockets and gonads are bigger the Israelis’.
Joseph Hitti
April 4, 2007 |
