Quickly, two news items:
French President Chirac has announced that he will be sending 2,000 French troops to Lebanon and claims that they are ready to head the UN peacekeeping force.
The second news item is that Syria has officially decided to cut off its power supply to Lebanon. During the month-long war Syria has helped Lebanon get access to more hours of electricity around the country. Now, many parts of the country will be in the dark.
"Nobody knows how many rebellions, besides political rebellions, ferment in the masses of life which people earth."
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6 comments:
that must be one of the strangest acts i have ever heard of.. you allow refugees in but then you punish their relatives?
assad - you are beyond me buddy
lirun
telaviv
So maybe Lebanon can deploy the UN forces along their border with syria now?
Not strange at all, in fact. Yesterday Assad threatened to close all the borders with Lebanon if UN troops were deployed along the Lebanon-Syria border.
And then he has the GALL to talk about Lebanese sovereignty! He doesn't want Lebanon to exercise its right to police its borders, and then he talks about sovereignty. He calls a deployment of UN troops "hostile", but then he blockades Lebanon..I wonder where he learned the definition of the word "hostile". Certainly not the same definition I'm familiar with.
And now I watch President Lahoud defending Syria's comments....What a putz!
If Israel bombing Lebanese power plants is considered a crime, is Assad's arbitrary shut-off of power to Lebanon also a crime, or is it a matter outside international law because Syria has not yet officially recognized Lebanon as an independent state?
there would certainly be issues here under international law..technically - if lebanon is not treated as a separate state - it would still probably constitute a minority of sorts and this could well be considered a form of collective punishment of this minority for the decisions of its leadership and otherwise a deprivation of human rights - particularly considering the consequential impact..
remember that international law is a body of rules that discusses obligations recognised internationally.. however.. it is not only about cross border issues..
lirun
telaviv
www.emspeace.blogspot.com
Assad's threats should not come as a surprise to anyone who understands the nature of relations between Hezbollah, Syria and Teheran. Hezbollah can pay its way to the people's hearts as long as Syria and Iran give the money and the weaopns. They give the two as long as Hezbollah (and by extension Lebanon) serve their interest of fighting Israel to secure Irab's and Syria's quest for Arab world domination. The formula is clear: sacrifice Lebanese people through supporting Hezbollah so Syria and Iran can claim glory at their expense in the Arab world.
Now as long as the fighting continued, there was no problem accepting the refugees. It helped ease criticism of Hezbollah and allowed Assad to reinsert Syria into the Lebanese conciousness after being kicked out in the Ceder revolution. With the ceasefire, the mounting criticism of Hezbollah over the damage, and the huge costs of reconstruction (12000$ a person is a hefty sum from the Hezbollah war funding and peanuts from the cost of reconstruction), Hezbollah (and again by extension Lebanon) are no longer useful or cost effective for Syria and Iran in the fight against Israel. Time to switch from carrots to sticks. And so Assad did.
An intl. force supported by the ELECTED government of Lebanon would severly limit Hezbollah and people's support is on the decline, so what better way than to punish the families of those he helped, and press Lebanon's government through war. As someone noted either in this blog or Beirutspring, Assad doesn't think an intl. force in his border with Israel is an act of war because such a war would be very costly. With Lebanon, it is cheap.
It is time for Lebanon to consider a new path looking to its southern neighbour just like Jordan, Egypt, Qatar Mauritania and a host of other cuontries in the Arab world who have or have not diplomatic relations with Israel, but certainly have trade ties.
You don't have to like somebody, it's just business... and life.
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