BEIRUT, 23 November 2006 — The murder of another anti-Syrian figure in Lebanon just as the UN endorsed plans for an international court to try the killing of former premier Rafiq Hariri has left Damascus’s local allies in disarray, analysts said yesterday.
Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies had been preparing to take to the streets to demand the replacement of the pro-Western administration of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora with a national unity government to oversee reconstruction after the devastating summer war with Israel.
But after Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel’s murder, it is the anti-Syrian parties which are calling out their supporters for a mass funeral for the slain Christian politician and the opposition has been left on the back foot.
“If the opposition keeps calling for the fall of the Siniora government, it will appear as if it is covering up a crime meant to deal a blow to the cabinet,” analyst Hareth Sleiman told AFP.
“We have reached a stage where the number of Cabinet ministers is being reduced, including through assassinations, in order to cause the fall of the government,” he said.
The Siniora government, which was brought to power on a wave of revulsion over the February 2005 murder of five-time prime minister Rafiq Hariri, has been left on a knife-edge by Gemayel’s killing.
The departure of Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies 10 days ago after cross-party talks failed to reach agreement on a national unity administration saw six ministers quit in a move the prime minister’s supporters dismissed as a ploy to sabotage the planned Hariri tribunal.
With Gemayel’s murder, it is down to just 17 ministers from its original complement of 24 and it would take the departure, or killing, of just one more Cabinet member for it to lose the statutory quorum required by the constitution.
“Hezbollah and its allies will undoubtedly have to alter their priorities now, because Gemayel’s murder was obviously meant to plant discord and stir confessional disputes,” analyst Walid Sharara said.
“They will have to cancel, or at least postpone, the decision to take to the streets. They will change their priorities for the sake of national unity which has been threatened by Gemayel’s murder,” he told AFP.
The editor of the Al-Balad newspaper, Beshara Sharbel, said today’s mass funeral for Gemayel would be an opportunity for the government to repeat the mass mobilization that followed Hariri’s murder, leading to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the anti-Syrian bloc’s election victory a few months later.
Five prominent anti-Syrian politicians and a journalist have been killed in a wave of attacks in Lebanon over the past two years.
“The majority is preparing to strengthen their position by organizing another March 14,” he told AFP, referring to the massive Beirut street demonstration on that day last year from which Lebanon’s governing anti-Syrian coalition takes its name.
Gemayel’s assassination has dealt a particular blow to popular Christian leader Michel Aoun — a once outspoken opponent of Damascus who broke ranks with the March 14 coalition last year to forge an alliance with Hezbollah.
Aoun warned late Tuesday of disputes in Christian ranks, as young demonstrators in Christian east Beirut, angry at what they saw as a Syrian hand in Gemayel’s murder, tore down his posters and burned his portrait.
“Aoun should return to the March 14 forces because his followers were the pioneers in the movement for the independence of Lebanon,” MP Akram Shuhayyeb, a member of the anti-Syrian camp, told AFP.
