Lebanon appears hell-bent on re starting civil war while donors, including the US which encouraged last year's destruction, pledge billions, writes Lara Marlowe
Or Heller, the Paris correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, deserved a prize for chutzpah at the closing press conference at the summit on Lebanon last week.
Hosted by president Jacques Chirac, dozens of the world's most influential people, including the secretary general of the UN, the president of the World Bank and the US secretary of state, met on January 25th in the hope of saving Lebanon from bankruptcy and civil war. Chirac raised €5.8 billion in pledges.
When Heller asked Chirac why he didn't hold a similar conference for Israel, there was a stunned silence. Journalists and diplomats exchanged glances of disbelief.
The Israeli journalist then addressed Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister who sat alongside Condoleezza Rice, Ban Ki-moon, José Manuel Barroso and Jacques Chirac on the podium: "We are neighbours. We don't have any dispute between us. Why not be like Anwar Sadat, why not be a hero for peace?" Heller asked.
The Bush administration is attempting a policy of "realignment" that would create an alliance between Israel and moderate Sunni Arabs. Aristocratic in his flowing robes and headdress, Prince Saud listened impassively. The audience were left to wonder whether the Saudis fear Iran and Shia Muslims more than they dislike Israel.
Heller addressed his last question to Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister whose government the donors were trying to save: "Don't you think you must make every effort to liberate those two [Israeli] soldiers [whose capture by Hizbullah sparked last summer's 34-day war]?"
At times, Siniora can sound like an economics professor - his profession before he became the late Rafik al-Hariri's banker. But last Thursday, his calm voice and methodical manner were exactly what was needed. "If you go back only as far as July 12th, it is correct that there was an incident across the blue line," he began, referring to the Hizbullah raid that precipitated massive Israeli retaliation.
"But everybody knows that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, and withdrew after 22 years after inflicting all sorts of atrocities, and leaving a part of Lebanon still occupied . . . The problem is the occupation. There cannot be a real solution if we can't address the issue, which is the continuing occupation of the Shebaa Farms, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
Siniora made that point twice on Thursday, but I saw no flicker of comprehension on Condoleezza Rice's face. Egypt and Jordan have concluded a separate peace with Israel, but the rest of the Arabs are holding out for peace with Israel in exchange for withdrawal from all Arab lands, as offered by the Saudi King Abdallah in 2002.
Instead of answering King Abdallah's initiative, Siniora said: "Israel moves from fault to fault, the last one being the disproportionate attack on Lebanon. Don't forget that Israel detains Lebanese in its prisons, that it occupies the Shebaa Farms and violates our airspace. Israel left more than 380,000 landmines on Lebanese soil, and has not provided most of the maps. In the last 36 hours [of the conflict last summer] after resolution 1701 was passed, until the cessation of hostilities, Israel dropped 1.2 million bomblets that are still killing and maiming people."
Siniora's dignified exposé of his country's grievances somehow redeemed the spectacle of the rich and powerful salving their guilty consciences with promises of money.
Rice apparently saw no irony in the fact she was pledging $770 million (€596 million) to alleviate the destruction she encouraged last summer. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war and now the president of the World Bank, dared to quote from the Koran.
Most of the speeches were exercises in thanks and praise: of each other for their generosity; of Fouad Siniora for persevering in adversity; of Chirac for his devotion to Lebanon.
Chirac interrupted effusive thanks from a Lebanese radio journalist, saying "Chère madame, it is not I who must be thanked. If there is someone who must be thanked, it is Rafik al-Hariri . . ."
Al-Hariri was blown up with 21 other people by a massive car bomb on Valentine's Day 2005. I had interviewed him many times, and was moved by Chirac's and Siniora's tributes to his generosity and wisdom. It was heartbreaking to see Gisèle Khoury again at the conference. A well known Lebanese television journalist, Gisèle is the widow of Samir Kassir, a friend and outspoken editorialist who was assassinated on June 2nd, 2005.
Now Lebanon appears hell-bent on restarting the civil war. The clashes last Thursday began with an argument between a Sunni and a Shia student in a university canteen. One spat in the other's face, and by nightfall there were three people dead and dozens wounded. Two features of the 1975-1990 civil war resurfaced: snipers on rooftops, and check-points where militiamen singled out motorists by their religion.
Perhaps Lebanon's civil war never really ended. By organising and financing the Taif peace conference in 1989, then launching an ambitious reconstruction plan, Rafik al-Hariri merely bought a 16-year suspension in hostilities. Some good - the departure of Syrian troops - seemed to have come from his murder. But another 15 assassinations followed, and the country is now at breaking point. One day, the Valentine's Day massacre may be considered the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, part II.
Why has Hariri's dream of a peaceful, prosperous Lebanon faltered? His own pro-Western camp blame Syria and Iran for refusing to relinquish power. The mainly Shia opposition blame the Siniora government, which they see as a stooge of the US and France.
Institutionalised confessionalism and foreign intervention are the twin cancers that undermined the foundations of Hariri's new Lebanon. Measuring out political power by religious affiliation will always be a recipe for civil war, as the Americans have learned in Iraq. Lebanon never shook the system bequeathed to it by France. Nor have its various communities learned to engage with each other, rather than their masters in Tehran, Damascus, Paris and Washington.