Beirut once a city of beauty and elegance

[SOO MAAL]

Beirut once a city of beauty and elegance

Chris de Kretser

 

July 19, 2006 12:00am

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L EBANON was once the most stable and sophisticated country in the Arab world, and its capital, Beirut, was acknowledged as the Paris of the Middle East because of its beauty and quality of life.

 

But the elegant, cosmopolitan city of boulevards and beaches descended into civil war in 1974 when the Palestinian resistance movement was forced out of Jordan by the late King Hussein.

The Palestinians took up their fight against Israel from refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut.

 

Ever since, Lebanon has struggled to be an independent entity as guerilla movements, neighbouring states and terrorist organisations have consistently ignored its national government and used it as the base for waging war on Israel.

 

The Lebanese have always been pragmatic.

 

Descendants of Phoenician traders, they were neutral through the Middle East wars until Palestinians were driven there as a last refuge.

 

Even the Lebanese constitution is one of compromise to accommodate its major ethnic groups, giving each an equal share of power.

 

The Lebanese President must be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shiite

 

Muslim and the head of the army or security ministry,

 

a Druze.

 

The formula worked well until outside influences exploited it to bring about civil war, which ruined the country in the 1970s.

 

The country survived after intervention by Syria and the Government soon became a proxy of the Baathist regime in Damascus. Syria's hand was implicit in all matters of state and security.

 

T HAT was until a new regime, led by a strong leader, began to reassert Lebanon's independence.

 

Under Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Lebanon began to shed the yoke of Syria and bring about a new stability.

 

The country regained its economic prosperity in the late 1990s, and had Lebanese rejoicing that the good times were back after decades of war and conflict.

 

Enter the hand of Syria. In 2005, Hariri was assassinated in a car bombing in which, according to a United Nations commission of inquiry, Syria was implicated.

 

Lebanon was again left vulnerable to exploitation. The Palestinian resistance based in Lebanon was a spent force after the civil war and an 18-month long Israeli occupation, and a new, fiercely religious movement reared its head in the south of the country.

 

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God, cultivated the poor and downtrodden Shiites.

 

It takes credit for the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2002.

 

Hezbollah is now a potent terrorist force. With Iranian backing, it presents the most dangerous threat the Jewish state has faced on its northern border.

 

Witness the deadly rockets that have found their way into the heart of Haifa, Israel's third-largest city.

 

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also seems hell-bent on using what has become a favoured weapon in the terrorist group's arsenal, capturing Israeli military personnel.

 

Nasrallah's ability to get the Israelis to deal in an extraordinary prisoner exchange in 2004 is probably behind Hezbollah's playing of the kidnap card.

 

In that exchange, Israel released 30 Lebanese and 420 Palestinian prisoners for a colonel captured in 2001 and the remains of three soldiers killed in combat.

 

It is no surprise that the latest Middle East crisis began with the capture of Israeli soldiers by the Palestinian Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.

 

AND there is little doubt that Hezbollah leaders believe they can take advantage of a perceived weakness in the Israeli Government.

 

The crippling of Ariel Sharon from a stroke has pushed successor Ehud Olmert to the forefront without a breathing space.

 

Hezbollah would have thought twice before launching rockets into Haifa under the feared Sharon regime.

 

Sharon, lying in a coma, has charges against him over the massacre by Lebanese militia of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps after the 1982 Israeli foray into Lebanon.