Crisis in Lebanon

The one thing every Bible student knows about Lebanon is that in Solomon’s time he imported cedar wood from Lebanon for building the Temple in Jerusalem. Cedars of Lebanon provided the tallest straightest timber in the world. The same cedar trees clothe the mountain slopes from which you look down on the northern border of Israel.

 

The name Lebanon meaning pure white comes from the fact that those mountains were perpetually covered in snow. But today rifle practice can be heard in the hills as people prepare for the possibility that the civil war which lasted so destructively till fifteen years ago, may break out again. The lives of Christians in Southern Lebanon and their Muslim neighbours are again under threat. 

 

Last week Emile Lahoud came to the end of his term as president of Lebanon without a successor, leaving a dangerous political vacuum which could de-stabilise the whole Middle-East. The nation is divided between a pro-Western faction led by Prime-Minister Fouad Siniora supported by America, Europe and Saudi Arabia on the one side and a Syria, Iran, Hezbollah faction on the other with enough muscle outside parliament to make up for the fact it lacks a parliamentary majority.

 

Christians are divided between the two sides and even members of the same family in deep disagreement as to the way forward. The Druse community are divided and the Moslems divided between Sunni on the one side and Shia on the other backing Hezbollah. Does it matter? Emphatically, Yes!

 

While parliament searches for a candidate acceptable to both sides, people buy weapons in fear of a return to civil war. If the pro-Western faction nominates a candidate of their own, the Syrian faction threatens to boycott the vote and install their rival candidate. In the resulting conflict the 15,000 United Nations forces who have kept the peace in Southern Lebanon would withdraw leaving Hezbollah rearmed and ready to renew the 2006 war on Israel’s northern border.

 

This week attention is focussed away from Lebanon on to the meeting of foreign ministers of 40 nations at Annapolis in America intended to re-start the Middle East peace process. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority meet with President Bush and Condoleeza Rice in an attempt to get back to the roadmap for peace in the Middle East. It is an achievement to assemble the meeting in the first place but what real progress it can achieve is dubious since the Palestinian Authority barely controls the West Bank let alone Gaza, and Ehud Olmert has limited support at home. The intent is to provide a political horizon, to inject fresh hope into the process and re-start direct negotiations between the parties.  

 

The simmering crisis in Lebanon on Israel’s northern border overshadows the meeting in Annapolis and gives Syria some leverage over this attempt to re-start peace negotiations. In the days after Annapolis the future of Lebanon will continue to be important to Israel as it has been since biblical times when Solomon famously imported its cedars for building the Temple in Jerusalem.