The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese Minister of Industry,  has focused attention on the land of cedar trees, where tension is once again running very high. When last summer’s fighting ended with the intervention of United Nations forces, the most optimistic of observers believed that the situation was heading for a pacific solution, but as soon as the Israeli bombing stopped and Hezbollah ceased launching rockets all the internal divisions in Lebanon came back to the forefront.
PeaceReporter conducted the following interview on the subject with Lorenzo Trombetta, a journalist and writer who has been living in Beirut for many years.  
 
Did the assassination of Gemayel come out of the blue or were there already signs something was going to happen?
 
People were half expecting some form of provocation, but more on the lines of street violence rather than an attack against the establishment. The assassination of a minister and the fact that the minister was a member of the Gemayel family was a terrible surprise. The name Gemayel has a particular significance in the history of this country and the symbolic value of this assassination is enormous. So even if we were expecting something to happen, nobody ever thought that the target would be so high up. Now there’s a very real risk of chaos.
 
What is the reaction of the people to this latest act of violence which, after the assassination of Rafik Hariri in February 2005, seems to have turned back the clock in Lebanon to the terrible years of the civil war?
 
While I was walking around Beirut on the evening of the assassination I noticed that a series of spontaneous self-defence patrols had been set up, with young people belonging to all the different factions joining together as if they were guarding the various areas of the city. In Lebanon the majority of people are tired of the violence, of the civil war and of this summer’s invasion, but here there are also thousands of young people, even 15-year-olds, who only know about the civil war from the stories told to them by their parents, and there is a lot of social tension among this group. They’re angry and, apart from the assassination, every day there are skirmishes and small clashes between groups of supporters from all the different factions that exist in Lebanon. The spark that could set off a denominational clash, which in reality would only be the pretext for much larger problems, could ignite among these young people.
 
Immediately after the assassination, in Italy and other western countries suspicion fell on Syria. But just when the Bush administration had decided to open diplomatic channels with Damascus and when Syria was involved in the Mesopotamian peace process, what possible interest could Assad have in provoking the international community?

 
The same thing happened when Hariri was assassinated, when everybody immediately blamed Damascus. But even then Syria was in a dialogue phase with France, the United States and others, yet everyone thought that Syria was politically responsible for the assassination. The problem here, given the absence of proof, is to broaden the analysis of the situation to include other players in the region, such as Iran and Israel. Many observers have noted how Teheran has no interest whatsoever in seeing Damascus renounce the protection it receives from Iran. The Hezbollah movement answers to Iran not Damascus, which in recent years has always been subservient to Iran. Therefore the Iranians would be very interested in disrupting any attempt by Syria to establish closer ties with western policies, not least of all because Ahmadinejad is trying to become a leading figure directly involved in the Iraq peace process. And the same thing is true of Israel which, particularly after this summer’s Lebanese campaign, cannot allow a decrease in tension in the region , or at least not until a balance that is acceptable to Tel Aviv has been created.
But for the moment it’s only a small minority in Lebanon who have come up with these interpretations, and in general the debate between those who are anti-Syria (who directly accuse Damascus of being responsible for the assassination) and those who are pro-Syria (who accuse Israel and western powers) is blocked by the opposing radicalism of both sides.
 
Italy and the other countries who support the UNO mission in Lebanon are continuing with their support for the Siniora government. But after the assassination of Gemayel and the resignation of 6 pro-Syria ministers, what real political power has the current executive got? Wouldn’t it be better to support a new figure for the pacification of Lebanon?
 
From the constitutional point of view, the Siniora government is well within its rights. The executive consists of 24 members and before it falls another 2 would have to resign. Having said that, it could be argued that the government is unconstitutional since the Shiite community is no longer represented in the government, as the constitution demands for all the Lebanese communities, but all Siniora has to do to overcome this problem is nominate some new Shiite ministers.
The political aspect is more complex because Siniora no longer represents the practical solution of a balanced technocrat that was adopted after Hariri’s assassination. Personally I’m convinced that no government or country in the world would really back a sincere democratic process, since international politics are always influenced by vested interests. Nobody is interested in the quality of life in Lebanon or Syria, but they are interested in obtaining the government that is closest to their own interests and, at the moment, there is nobody else who represents western interests in Lebanon better than Siniora.