Serene Assir looks into the implications of a reported foiled assassination attempt against Nasrallah Lebanese broadsheet As-Safir reported on Monday that the Lebanese authorities successfully foiled a plan to assassinate Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah. On Tuesday the Lebanese army and government sources cited by the Associated Press news agency confirmed that the authorities had arrested 10 suspected members of a previously network of 15, composed of Lebanese and Palestinians, who had planned to kill Nasrallah on 28 April, when National Dialogue talks were set to re-open in Beirut. As-Safir 's report, whose details are being challenged by various authorities, read that the plotters had planned to fire rockets at Nasrallah's car on the day. According to Al-Manar TV, which openly supports the Shia Muslim Party, army officials described the matter as serious, but emphasised that the matter should not be politicised. Later, reports citing anonymous Lebanese government sources emerged saying that the plot was in fact intended to attack "the authority of the state", as opposed to Nasrallah himself, thus denying conspiracies to take out the Hizbullah leader. In light of such heightened, though by no means undeserved, politicisation of the various assassinations of anti-Syrian figures over the past year, it remains to be seen just how debate on the foiled attack on political and anti-Israeli resistance heavyweight Nasrallah can remain neutral. For if reports of an attempt on Nasrallah's life are in fact true, the consequences on political life in Lebanon of a successful assassination would have been catastrophic. It would also have shaken a plethora of factors at play that have been taken for granted ever since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri, key among them the end of the assumption among anti-Syrian forces, both local and foreign, that Damascus is the only real threat to Lebanese sovereignty today. All the while, ever since Al-Hariri was killed, Hizbullah has argued that in fact Israel poses the greater threat. Pending the completion of a water-tight investigation into the killing, the question of who was really behind it -- much to the disillusionment of his many supporters -- remains technically unclear. Hizbullah have been unwilling to blame Syria. Instead, they blame Israel and the United States for seeking to cause unrest in Lebanon. Pending further revelations, the Nasrallah case has already ignited debate on both sides of Lebanon's increasingly divided political spectrum. For Hizbullah and its sympathisers, the news is indicative of a continued need for preparedness against potential Israeli aggression. The group has called for investigations to find out who was behind the plotters. For them, reports of the disclosure of the foiled attack recalled the Israeli assassination in 1992 of Nasrallah's predecessor as party chief, Sayed Abbas Moussawi, along with his wife and child. Through the 1990s, the Shia group foiled various assassination attempts on its current leader, one of which was reportedly planned by a Mossad-trained Palestinian, according to Al-Manar. On the other side, Al-Nahar, whose staunchly anti-Syrian Editor-in-Chief Gibran Tueni was assassinated in December 2005, reported measures by the authorities in Lebanon to calm tensions and suspicions, lest the news develop into an even more serious political crisis than that which the country is already suffering. There are, meanwhile, cracks appearing under the surface of the unity of the 14 March Coalition, headed by parliamentary bloc leader Saad Al-Hariri, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea. Amidst a stalled National Dialogue and reports to assassinate Nasrallah -- whom the anti-Syrian coalition have been describing as too pro-Damascus for Lebanon's health -- it remains to be seen just who is working more callously for a slowly but surely developing disintegration of Lebanese sovereignty, unity and political process as a whole, whether Damascus and Teheran on the one hand, or Tel Aviv and Washington on the other.
