Political differences are temporarily set aside, with Lebanon's shocked anticipation of a possible spate of sectarian kidnappings and killings, reports Lucy Fielder from Beirut Lebanon was once synonymous with kidnapping, but the abduction of a young man and a young boy in Beirut last week and the subsequent discovery of their bodies in a field shocked the country. Despite fears of a possible spiral into sectarian violence, the murders created a fleeting sense of political unity. But whether Lebanon's squabbling leaders will use this lull to break months of political deadlock is another matter. Twelve-year-old Ziad Al-Ghandour and Ziad Qabalan, 25, disappeared last Monday from Wata Al-Musaitbeh, a Beirut stronghold of Walid Jumblatt's pro-government Progressive Socialist Party (PSP). Although the PSP is overwhelmingly Druze, Qabalan was a Sunni member of the party, as was Al-Ghandour's father. Their corpses, bearing several bullet wounds, were found on Thursday. Media speculation immediately focussed on the large Shia Shamas clan from the eastern Bekaa Valley, who lost a young man, Adnan Shamas, to sectarian riots at the Beirut Arab University in January. Although the family issued a statement saying Shamas's death had no connection to the disappearance of the two, a security source said that media speculation appeared to be true. "It has all the appearances of a vendetta killing," he said. Between six and ten arrests have been made, the source said, and four Shamas brothers have fled into hiding. At the funeral on Friday, mourners threw rice from balconies onto the two coffins as they were carried through the streets from Wata Al-Museitbeh to Qasqas, on the edge of the Sunni and Shia southern areas of the capital. About 2,000 people joined the procession, and afterwards hundreds of young men milled around, outside the mosque where prayers were held. Despite the predominance of slogans claiming that Sunni blood was boiling and that Hizbullah was a terrorist organisation, the funeral never spiralled into the flashpoint that it could have, considering the tinderbox atmosphere in Lebanon. But fear and anxiety have prevailed this week. "Now that we've started with kidnapping and killing, who knows what will happen next?" asked government employee Mohamed Safieddine as he stood outside, watching the prayers that spilled into the mosque gardens and into the street. "Maybe another Iraq. We don't want any more killing, or war, or blood; we don't want any more tears." Ziad Mazboudi, a hairdresser from the predominantly Druze eastern Chouf mountains, said the young supporters of Jumblatt's party were staying calm because their leader had asked them to. "This action is fitna (civil strife) itself. The street is agitated, so Jumblatt asked us to help calm things down on the ground as much as we can. If we start to disintegrate, this will serve those who don't want a state." Jumblatt said the crime resulted from the "general mobilisation in the country", perhaps a sign that a leader known for his inflammatory statements saw a need to tone down the rhetoric. Apparently with an eye on the Sharm El-Sheikh conference on Iraq due to convene in Egypt today, Jumblatt said, "it is not right for negotiations to start in the region while there is no dialogue between the Lebanese." According to the pro-opposition daily Al-Akhbar, this could mean that he wants to keep the initiative in Lebanese hands, so that no settlement was imposed upon the country in the event of the conference in Sharm El-Sheikh launching a dialogue between the US, Iran and Syria, or the EU and Iran. Jumblatt is known as a political weathervane, who senses shifts in fortunes, and changes his stance accordingly, confident of his standing among his Druze followers as well as nationwide. Once one of Syria's closest allies in Lebanon, he became its staunchest critic after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri in 2005. Leaders on both sides of the political divide united in condemning the killings, but it was Jumblatt's address at the funeral that captured the headlines. The Druze chieftain, vilified by the opposition for his outspoken condemnation of the Shia Hizbullah, went beyond extending an olive branch and praised the Islamic Resistance. He said there was no difference between the mainly Shia southern suburbs and Sunni- dominated neighbourhoods, in a possible attempt to defuse tensions that have risen between the two sects because Sunnis dominate the government and Shia, the opposition. "From the heroic resistance to the Israeli invasion in 1982, to the Israeli aggression of 2006 and what befell Dahiyeh (the southern suburbs), today what unites us is a common struggle and resistance and that is so much greater than political disagreements," he said, urging the Lebanese not to politicise the crime. And there were other signs of a thaw, to the relief of a population worn out by months of political tension and sickened that a child had fallen prey to them. A Hizbullah delegation's visit to pay condolences to the families of Al-Ghandour and Qabalan coincided with that of a "14 March" government loyalist delegation. Each side praised the other's positions, and the pro- government daily An-Nahar reported that Jumblatt and Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah held their first telephone conversation in some time. Sami Baroudi, an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, said that politicians similarly stepped back from the brink following the January riots, leading to a brief period of serenity because no one wanted a civil war. "My fear is that this is just because nobody wants to be seen as taking the country in a dangerous direction, but once people start forgetting this incident, we'll go back to the escalatory rhetoric. I don't think there is any better appreciation of either side to the other side's position." The government and opposition have locked horns over power-sharing, with the Hizbullah-led opposition demanding the blocking of a third of cabinet seats and Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora's government refusing. A dispute over a planned international tribunal to try suspects in Al-Hariri's killing is the other main bone of contention. Baroudi expected no "Titanic shifts". Jumblatt's alliance with Saad Al-Hariri and his coalition is too valuable for him to make a 180-degree turn in his position, he said. "He's a fashion-setter rather than a follower of trends, and I think he realises that if the moment of truth comes, then the people he represents are going to be hurt, so he understands the stakes are very high." Good intentions are likely to evaporate in the run-up to the presidential elections to replace the pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud in September, he said. "The presidency is going to heat up the debate."
