Revolving Door?

The Government should quit playing games with the international community.

Now we can die together

Lebanese pundits are talking about a dangerous vagueness in the Lebanese official position. Take M.P. Samir Geagea and Commentator Charles Ayyoub for instance. One is a proud anti-Syrian, the other is a Syrian megaphone. Yet they both agree that placing the Lebanese army in the middle between Hezbollah and the Israelis is tantamount to suicide.

I argued before that the current Lebanese position is the best possible outcome. But that doesn’t mean that the best possible outcome is good enough.

According to UNR 1701, The Lebanese Army’s job is to disarm Hezbollah. What we got instead was an army that was sent to stand "alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible army after it was defeated"” according to an internal army statement circulating among forces. Doesn't sound like disarming to me.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the international community, notably France, significantly downgraded their promised military backup for the New UNIFIL (the 200 strong symbolic force they decided to send is not the same as the originaly promised 10,000). They feel backstabbed by the government and they don’t want their troops to be endangered by an unclear mandate.

We all know that Israel agreed to resolution 1701 because they believed it would disarm Hezbollah. If the Israelis and the international community start sensing deception from our side, the Israelis might decide to take things back into their own destructive hands.

The signs are beginning to show.

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