With no signs of compromise, Lebanon's future is once again in the balance, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif from Beirut As Lebanon races towards a 23 November deadline to select a new president, little short of a miracle seems capable of ending the stalemate and pulling the country from the brink of the abyss. The paralysis that has afflicted the presidency, the government and the assembly for well over a year now threatens to erode the foundations of an already fragile state. With less than 24 hours to go before the parliamentary session -- delayed from Wednesday -- in which the name of the new president is due to be revealed, the mood in the Lebanese capital is anticipatory, though whether Lebanon will have a new president or not on Saturday, let alone whether it will be veteran politician Michel Eddeh, 14 March defector Robert Ghanim or former head of the Central Bank of Lebanon Michael Khoury, may be academic questions given that the parliamentary session could be delayed yet again. One scenario currently gaining ground posits that should parliament fail to select a president on Friday then an interim caretaker government will be named with a Maronite figure at its head to prepare for fresh parliamentary elections. Other politicians, including Michel Aoun, a presidential candidate and head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), and Mohamed Ra'ad, head of Hizbullah's parliamentarian bloc, argue that the Friday deadline is not carved in stone and the selection process can be extended for a few more days. Meanwhile, the barrage of news reports that different sectarian groups are rushing to acquire arms serve as a grim reminder of the civil war. In their pursuit to achieve what one reporter described as "a balance of terror" with Hizbullah, many groups have been stockpiling arms while their members undertake military training. On 16 November, the daily Al-Akhbar reported that Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt was distributing arms in Tariq Jdeeda, a stronghold of supporters of Saad Al-Hariri, head of Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal and the majority bloc in the assembly. The report alleged that Al-Mustaqbal planned to recruit 14,000 people from the private security firms that have mushroomed in Lebanon in recent years. The war of words between the opposition 8 March and pro-government 14 March groups has reached new levels of vitriol as each accuses the other of preparing for civil war. Al-Akhbar has also carried reports of military training run by Al-Qwat Al-Libnaniya, (Lebanese Forces), the war- time militia led by Samir Geagea. On Tuesday, Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV reported the secret delivery of arms to the Intelligence Branch of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), a pro-Hariri unit within the Interior Ministry, a move described by Ra'ad as "paving the way to chaos". "There are those who are working hard to prepare the ground for a civil war," Ra'ad told Al-Manar, accusing the ISF's Intelligence Branch of setting up "civil groups and arming them under the pretext of defending neighbourhoods in Beirut". Al-Mustaqbal and Jumblatt accuse Hizbullah of providing military training in the Beqaa Valley to various opposition groups including, among others, Aoun's FPM, Druze leader Talal Arslan's supporters and the Islamic Action Front. On 7 November in an online question and answer session published in An-Nahar Youth Minister Ahmed Fatfat said Hizbullah was "arming members of the opposition to be on the frontline," warning it will lead to internal strife for which Hizbullah must bear the responsibility. Hizbullah has not responded to the accusations. Last week saw an escalation in the ongoing war of words between Al-Mustaqbal and Hizbullah. Al-Hariri fired the opening shot when he announced Aoun's only problem was "his alliance with Hizbullah". Tensions between Lebanon's Sunnis and Shias were then fanned by Fatfat, MP Mustafa Aloush and the Mufti Mohamed Rashid Qabbani, all of whom have opted to follow Al-Hariri's lead in fuelling sectarian divisions. The resulting radicalised Sunni street was involved in two separate incidents last week. The first took place in Al-Basta, a mixed middle class neighbourhood where a small feud turned into a battle during which the Hariri-backed ISF shot live ammunition at Hizbullah supporters. Only the intervention of the army prevented mass bloodshed. In Dawhat Bshamoun, Hizbullah and Al-Mustaqbal also clashed, leaving two people injured. Such incidents -- many of them unreported -- expose the fragility of Lebanese society. It could take only a small feud, backed by the right regional conditions, to push the country back into civil war. Lebanese divisions, as one commentator pointed out, are always ready to be invoked and in a flash political differences and grievances can be transformed into calls for wholesale ethnic cleansing. It would be simplistic to reduce the political conflict in Lebanon into who the new president is if, that is, a new president emerges. What the latest crisis reveals is that the sectarian-based political dispensation established by the Taif agreement, and which ended the civil war in 1989, is now imploding. It is unable to resist the stresses placed on it by the prevailing political paralysis, let alone allow for the kind of compromises needed to move beyond the impasse. Consensus is growing that the real danger lies in what MP Ibrahim Kanaan of the FPM describes as a malfunctioning political system that still retains elements from the Syrian mandate period. And at the heart of the polarisation that has divided the nation into a pro-American government and pro-resistance opposition are the ways in which the Lebanese interpret international resolutions concerning the crisis in Lebanon. Until the Lebanese develop a means of dealing with the resistance, agree on how to mange the conflict with Israel and clearly determine the nature of their relationship with Syria, a new president will be in no position to contribute to ending Lebanon's chronic woes. (see Region and Azmi Bishara)
