Doaa El-Bey looks at the situation after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel Writers and analysts regarded the assassination of Pierre Gemayel as an outcome of the state of unrest pervading the Middle East. Besides having an adverse effect on the entire region, it shows how the various parties involved in the Lebanese issue are settling their differences inside Lebanon. Fouad Dabbour wrote in the daily Jordanian Al-Dostour that the assassination came at a very critical time, when the Lebanese government was facing a political crisis after the resignation of five of its members and the loss of its legitimacy. It came at a time when Syria was trying to re-establish its relationship with Iraq after a Syrian foreign minister visited Baghdad for the first time since the early 1980s; and when America was trying to use the Lebanese issue as a trump card to pressure Syria and the Lebanese resistance. However, Dabbour said, all the parties concerned used the assassination for their own interests. The decision to establish an international tribunal to investigate the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri was taken hours after Gemayal's assassination. After Al-Hariri's killing Beirut tried for weeks to have a tribunal ceated. The "14th March" group used the assassination to control the Lebanese street and the opposition, stopping all its activities. The US and its ally Israel immediately accused Syria of planning the assassination, ignoring the fact that the Lebanese government and its interior minister should be held responsible for the incident which took place in a densely populated area in broad daylight. "An objective reading of the assassination and similar incidents would clearly show that they all aim to weaken the Lebanese resistance and the national parties that oppose the policies of the US administration. It also targeted Syria and Iran on the pretext that they support the Lebanese opposition," Dabbour wrote. He predicted that the party that killed Gemayel would never achieve its target and that the Lebanese resistance would never stop its fight against America and its ally Israel. In the weekly Lebanese magazine Al-Masira, Anton Gaagaa questioned why they assassinated Gemayel and not any other person and whether his death would lead to resolving the differences between the majority and minority parties in Lebanon or take us to the decisive moment that would shape the future of the regional-international conflict in Lebanon and the Middle East. Gaagaa did not regard the return of assassinations in Lebanon as a surprise, but an outcome of the recent political developments in Lebanon and the Middle East -- mainly Syria's failure to stop the setting up of an international tribunal that would investigate Al-Hariri's assassination and to normalise its relations with the US. He cast light on the resumption of Syrian-Iraqi relations and the escalation of the Lebanese crisis immediately before Gemayel's assassination. Concerning the first step, Gaagaa wrote, Syria aimed at aborting the setting up of the international tribunal that could threaten its present regime. The latter worked towards toppling the Lebanese government. According to Syrian calculations, the two aims would either create a political vacuum or civil war in Lebanon. In both cases the Syrian regime would be saved. "Could the assassination start a civil war that would disband the Lebanese army and isolate UNIFIL in the south and consequently push Israel into another confrontation with Lebanon, making the setting up of an international tribunal a marginal issue?" That was the last in a series of questions Gaagaa raised, emphasising that the answer was still unknown. Ahmed Khalil warned in the Lebanese daily As-Safir that international interference in Lebanon could erode the popularity of the resistance. "We are in need of a political vision that could prepare a national democratic project to meet the ambitions of the Lebanese people in establishing a proper state and resistance. It should spare our state from international intervention that aims to allow the resistance challenge the government. We are with the state and the resistance, and our real unity lies in both of them," he wrote. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat Hassan Haidar questioned whether the recent tension in Lebanon was related to the US presence in Iraq. Would the growing sectarian conflict in Iraq force Washington to withdraw and allow Syria and Iran to have a role in Iraq after being completely isolated since the beginning of the Iraqi war? The Taif agreement, concluded at the end of Lebanon's civil war, stipulated that Syria should help Lebanon rebuild before it gradually withdrew its forces. However, as Haidar wrote, the undeclared agreement with Washington was to allow Syria to stay in Lebanon as long as it controlled its various factions and did not allow it to pose a threat to the region. Haidar believed that Hariri's assassination changed all the calculations. It initiated an internal Lebanese uprising against the Syrian presence. It also proved that Damascus was trying to make use of the American occupation in Iraq to arrange for a permanent presence in Lebanon. "Syria, clearly supported by Iran, exploited its strong ties with some factions in Lebanon to contain all calls for holding it responsible for Hariri's assassination and to put them before one option: either accept a Syrian role in Lebanon or face civil confrontation and a political vacuum."
