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Syria Comment
A reader pointed me to Joshua Landis' blog, Syria Comment, which should make for interesting reading during the near future. Let me also recommend the Arabist Network.
February 15, 2005 | Permalink
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Tracked on Feb 15, 2005 10:11:09 PM
Comments
If you're not careful we're gonna start seeing Modern Crusader here again!
Or maybe he got banned. Did you ban him?
I kinda miss him, in a weird way.
Posted by: o | Feb 15, 2005 11:19:48 AM
From the Syria Comment today:
A more likely suspect to Harriri’s murder would be Israel, as stated by Syrian Information Minister Mehdi Dakhlallah. Israel has a great interest in a war-torn Lebanon that it can infiltrate to carry out its covert operations in the Middle East.
Hmmmm. . .blaming Israel so they can continue their "covert operations" under the cover of a war-torn Lebanon. Why am I not surprised?
Posted by: Dperl99 | Feb 15, 2005 12:35:55 PM
In the Arabist Network Post:
Syria has consistently tried to build bridges with the US and offer peace initiatives towards the Israelis since 9/11. All they received in return is insults, misrepresentative, military attacks, sanctions (SALSA) and UN security council resolutions against it.
Harboring and sheilding Mesha'al and Marzook, let alone supplying Hezbollah with arms and a safe haven, must be part of Syria's consistently trying to offer peace initiatives to the Israelis. Damn those intransigent Israelis for only hurling insults and military attacks in return, and refusing to take Syria's overtures seriously.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 2:03:30 PM
Inevitable that a discussion of Lebanese politics on would turn into a Israel thread?
Newsitem: Man stubs toe in Dubai.
Blogresponse: Why is Israel always blamed for toe injuries?
Posted by: Ikram | Feb 15, 2005 2:35:09 PM
Ikram,
The blogs MY linked to bring up Israel right at the top of their discussions. The first one talks about two family members of the author who think the Israelis killed Hariri (because Bashar Asaad would never do such a thing) and the second one speaks to how peacefully pro-active the Syrians have been, only to have their Martin Luther King Jr./Dalai Lama/Gandhi-like committment to peace and non-violence shunned.
It doesn't seem like merely a discussion limited to Lebanese politics to me.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 2:55:50 PM
Be careful, I'm scared Modern Crusader may have that Candyman/Bloody Mary/Beetlejuice attribute of appearing if his name is said enough times.
Posted by: washerdreyer | Feb 15, 2005 3:09:18 PM
Dunno about MC, but SCJ materializes quite predictably.
No offence, just joking.
Posted by: abb1 | Feb 15, 2005 4:27:33 PM
SoCal -- I read the articles too, and did not see them as Israel-o-centric. Articles on those sites speculate that the killers could be Saudis, AlQuaeda, rival Lebanese businessmen, Christian warlords, and, yes, Israel. If this were an Israeli website, it would be natural and appropriate to obssively focus on the Israeli dimension. But an Israel monomania is an odd thing for a non-Israeli to have.
There's an old joke about what dog's hear when their masters speak
blah, blah, blah, cookie, blah, blah, walk, blah, blah, cookie
It's fine for a dog to be cookie/walk obsessed. But when reading articles about mid-east politics, it's best to have a disinterested, non-maniacal approach.
Posted by: Ikram | Feb 15, 2005 4:28:34 PM
Wow, they have a political officer from Hamas (so did Canada until recently) and they allow a group to exist (Syria never armed Hizbollah) that's villiany since 2000 is confined to trying to shoot down Israeli fighters that violate Lebanese airspace for reasons outside of trying to get a reaction completely escape me and would generate a much more lethal response if commited against Israel. Truely the heart of barbarous agression in the region. I can't see how Israel stands it.
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 4:40:51 PM
Ikram,
I read the articles too, and did not see them as Israel-o-centric.
Like I said - it's right at the top of both articles, and rather central to the Landis piece, which is about his Syrian family members and who they blame (note: it's not al-Qaeda, the Saudis, a rival Lebanese businessman or Syria).
But anyway, my comment was not really about Israel, but the Arabist Network gent's comment about the angelic nature of the Ba'athist government post 9-11. It was frankly bizaare.
abb1,
Right back at ya (just joking, too).
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 4:48:31 PM
villiany since 2000 is confined to trying to shoot down Israeli fighters that violate Lebanese airspace for reasons outside of trying to get a reaction.
Or...
12/08/2003 EU condemns deadly Hezbollah attacks on Israel
5/07/2003 Hezbollah attacks Israel town
8/10/2003 Israel Retaliates for Hezbollah Attack Which Killed 16 year old boy
They also routinely shell, and plant roadside bombs near, Israeli Army positions along the border which Syria controls.
Point being, to state that "Syria has consistently tried to build bridges with the US and offer peace initiatives towards the Israelis since 9/11. All they received in return is insults, misrepresentative, military attacks, sanctions (SALSA) and UN security council resolutions against it" is laughably inaccurate, mostly by what the statement omits: support (actual, verbal, etc...) for Hamas and Hezbollah, which sort of doesn't really count as consistently trying to build bridges.
I realize you disagree, because you think that's no big deal. So be it.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 5:34:14 PM
All of your links were instances where the IDF was overflying Lebanon and Hezbollah shot at them.
For the people whom "collatoral damage" is not only a daily watchword to try and spin this as an "attack" makes my eyeballs want to come out on their stalks rolling. The IDF can launch a flechette round and rip apart a crowd if they claim someone in there is maybe shooting at them. Hezbollah are terrorists if shoot at an IDF fighter crossing their airspace. Meanwhile, Israel has in the past shot down not fighter but commercial aircraft that stray into Israeli airspace.
Poor, poor, Israel with their neighbor who shoots at them when they overfly and let's their enemies speak.
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 7:29:48 PM
All of your links were instances where the IDF was overflying Lebanon and Hezbollah shot at them.
Wrong. Only one of them even makes this acknowledgement: Hezbolllah anti-aircraft batteries generally go into action after Israeli fighter jets fly over southern Lebanon, while not reporting that this specific attack was related to an overflight. In fact, it didn't report an overflight at all.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 8:02:22 PM
Ok, well, hizbollah, on all those dates claimed they were shooting at aircraft. Everyone in Lebanon heard aircraft. Everyone in Galilee for that matter heard and saw aircraft headed north. IDF says no aircraft, so it's really some bone of contention?
The IDF has a job to do and telling the truth isn't part of the job description.
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 8:16:25 PM
Everyone?
Wow. Awesome. How convincing.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 8:21:35 PM
Hezbollah are terrorists if shoot at an IDF fighter crossing their airspace.
Last I checked Hizbollah didn't have any airspace since they were, uh, not a government. In any event they've also been rather poorly behaved at Har Dov/Shebaa Farms which the UN agrees with Israel does not belong to Lebanon and should one day, inshallah, be given back to Syria. In 2001 while I lived there they shot and killed a soldier who went to my high school and two others. Gandhi would be proud.
Posted by: Ruth | Feb 15, 2005 8:45:54 PM
Uh, yeah.
You don't miss a sonic boom.
Hizbullah routinely fires antiaircraft shells across the border in a tit-for-tat retaliation to the almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli jets. The rounds from Hizbullah's vintage 57mm cannons explode thousands of feet above Israeli border towns, spattering whatever lies below with light shrapnel.
Several Israeli civilians have been wounded by falling shrapnel and the UN had warned that it was only a matter of time before someone was killed. Sunday, the UN's worst fears were confirmed when a 16-year-old Israeli died and three other civilians were wounded after three antiaircraft rounds exploded in the western Galilee border town of Shelomi. Israel retaliated four hours later by bombing the antiaircraft battery that carried out the fatal shooting. In the early hours of Monday morning, an Israeli jet flew a low-level supersonic run over Beirut. The thunderclap of the sonic boom rattled windows, set off car alarms, and brought sleepy Beirutis out onto balconies to scan the inky night sky for the invisible planes, which continued to rumble over the city for another hour.
"If the Israelis are afraid of these antiaircraft shells, their leaders should stop their planes from crossing Lebanese skies," says Hassan Ezzieddine, a member of Hizbullah's politburo.
From CSmonitor
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 8:47:07 PM
Last I checked Hizbollah didn't have any airspace since they were, uh, not a government.
So what? They are shooting at planes that have no business being there. You think anyone sane in Lebanon wants to see fighter planes coming from Israel?
In any event they've also been rather poorly behaved at Har Dov/Shebaa Farms which the UN agrees with Israel does not belong to Lebanon and should one day, inshallah, be given back to Syria.
That is so many angels dancing on the head of a pin. Whatever it is it isn't Israel and it's on you to explain why they are there, not a Lebanese nationalist to explain how a bunch of landswaps effect in any way the Lebanese who lived there until '67.
In 2001 while I lived there they shot and killed a soldier who went to my high school and two others. Gandhi would be proud.
He absolutely wouldn't sympathize with anything done there by the Israeli's ever. He didn't sympathize with them when he was alive. He knew what came down the pipe when a bunch of Europeans come to town and lay down The Law (or I guess it's fashionable to call it Democracy these days.
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 8:58:00 PM
Jeebus, can we get off the Israeli thing? If Israel had a reason to target Harriri, let's hear what it was... a real reason, not a "Isreal is just evil and kills everyone" screed.
What puzzles me is that Syria didn't have much reason to, either, on the face of it. Harriri had resigned in protest when the pro-Syrian President's term was extended. Unless he had something else going on behind the scenes, he wasn't a factor. Killing him simply for being anti-Syria just doesn't make sense; it's far more likely to ignite more anti-Syrian feeling than anything else.
So, who does benefit from Harriri's murder?
Posted by: CaseyL | Feb 15, 2005 9:06:51 PM
Whoops, from the article you posted:
The escalation began last Friday with an assault by Hizbullah fighters against Israeli Army outposts in the Shebaa Farms, a 15-square mile mountainous area running along Lebanon's southeast border with the Golan Heights. The attack shattered a seven-month lull.
Even your article says Hezbollah is responsible for the "escalation" and there's no mention that specific attack was a reponse to an overflight. Or CSM - which has no problem fingering Israel - would pin the escalation on the Israelis. But they didn't.
In fact, that Hezbollah attack was on Friday August 8, 2003. The first actual mention of an overflight in the article is the following Monday, August 11 - over Beirut.
The article also states that Israel takes credit for overflights, and the sonic boom referred to in the article (again, over Beirut), took place after the attack on the Israeli town.
The article says that Hizbollah, as you note, "routinely fires antiaircraft shells across the border in a tit-for-tat retaliation to the almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli jets" but it doesn't say that particular attack was in response to a particular overflight.
It's an exceedingly general paragraph which makes inferences but doesn't report specific facts as to that day's occurrences.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 9:08:23 PM
CaseyL: What puzzles me is that Syria didn't have much reason to, either, on the face of it.
Some French Middle Eastern analysts seem to think Syria had a reason:
Hariri murder seen as a 'Syrian message' to France
PARIS, Feb 15 (AFP) - The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was a deliberate blow to France, whose president Jacques Chirac was a personal friend and has sponsored UN moves to end the Syrian occupation, Paris-based commentators said Tuesday.
While the French government refused to point a finger of blame - adhering publicly to Chirac's call for an international investigation into the murder - analysts and Middle East specialists were less circumspect about who they thought was behind it.
"I have not the shadow of a doubt that Syria is responsible," said Antoine Basbous, president of the Observatory of Arab Countries.
"It was a message to the Lebanese opposition -
but also to France: this is our colony, we are masters here and we intend to stay. So keep out," he told AFP.
Hariri regularly visited France and kept a multi-million euro mansion in central Paris. He was one of the first foreign leaders to be invited to the Elysee palace after Chirac's 1995 election, and the following year was presented by the president with the grand cross of the Legion of Honour.
"I am convinced this attack - the most significant since the end of Lebanon's war - was a message directed at Chirac, who was a personal friend of Rafiq Hariri," said Antoine Sfeir, director of the Cahiers de l'Orient newsletter.
"The evidence suggests that the murder is a response to UN security council resolution 1559 voted in September at the initiative of France and the US. It was Jacques Chirac who was the real architect of the resolution," he said.
Resolution 1559 calls for the withdrawal of Syria's estimated 15,000 troops from Lebanon and the re-establishment of full Lebanese sovereignty.
A month after it was passed, Syria strong-armed a change to Lebanon's constitution to extend the mandate of pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud - the move which prompted Hariri's resignation as prime minister.
According to Basbous, Hariri was personally threatened over the resolution by Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rostom Ghazale. "Hariri told his friends that Ghazale put a pistol to his head and said: 'It's your choice: Syria or resolution 1559,'" Basbous said.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 9:14:51 PM
You can pick any point you want to for what the "escalation" is going back to the beginning of the twentieth century.
The big picture is that Hezbollah certainly has the capability to hit targets in Israel and it doesn't. It fights in Sheeba farms against people who get paid to die to keep Sheeba farms and it runs a hopeless anti-aircraft gun when provoked. I'm sure everyone would be happy if everyone in Lebanon and sat around and sang Kumbya till the IDF left and I'm pretty sure that day would be never. If what they do is "terrorism" then I have to conclude that "terrorism" means fighting against Israel and it's just a worthless word.
Posted by: absynthe | Feb 15, 2005 9:18:12 PM
Thanks for the background, SoCalJustice.
So: are you hinting that Harriri's resignation was a feint? That his resignation was a gesture to Syria, in effect saying "I will not work with your proxy. I am leaving this government. When I run for another post, it will be as part of a coalition against you"?
Does anyone know what Harriri's future plans were?
Posted by: CaseyL | Feb 15, 2005 10:07:52 PM
CaseyL:
I'm not sure, to be honest.
But Michael Young from the Daily Star has a piece today in Slate where he writes:
The bomb (which opposition sources are saying was placed under the road, not in a car) was extremely powerful, breaking windows more than a mile away. However, it was not the first attack in recent months. Last October, after Hariri left office, Marwan Hamadi, a respected Druze opposition figure with whom the former prime minister was close, barely survived a car-bombing. Opposition groups refused to be intimidated and recently escalated their anti-Syrian rhetoric. This prompted Syria's supporters to accuse them of treason on America's and Israel's behalf. Omar Karami, Hariri's pro-Syrian successor as premier, declared only two weeks ago, "We'll show them."
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Feb 15, 2005 10:43:16 PM
SoCal wrote:
"In the Arabist Network Post:
Syria has consistently tried to build bridges with the US and offer peace initiatives towards the Israelis since 9/11. All they received in return is insults, misrepresentative, military attacks, sanctions (SALSA) and UN security council resolutions against it."
"But anyway, my comment was not really about Israel, but the Arabist Network gent's comment about the angelic nature of the Ba'athist government post 9-11. It was frankly bizaare."
SoCal, Since you disagree, and have serious questions about Josh Stacher's analysis at the "Arabist Network", why not post there and ask him to clarify, and justify his comments? They often respond to posters.
Matt's post, far as I could tell, was just a suggestion where one could read about "Syria Comment".
Posted by: sofia | Feb 15, 2005 11:05:28 PM
