[Beirut] The sound of the water is pleasantly soothing. On the first floor of Beirut’s top-end InterContinental Phoenicia Hotel a handful of visitors have gathered around the marble fish fountain spurting out water. The warm light of the autumn sun peeps through the thick curtains covering the windows of the café.
For almost 40 guests of the Phoenicia though, the atmosphere is not as relaxing as it seems at first sight. Over a month ago they moved into a well-shielded annex of the hotel to protect themselves from assassins who have already struck against the anti-Syrian majority in the parliament three times in less than a year.
Just a week before the 128 deputies were supposed to vote for a new president on September 25 the killers attacked again, forcing many of them to seek refuge in the posh Phoenicia at the eastern end of its seaside corniche.
Antoine Ghanem, the latest victim in a series of assassinations that started in October 2004 with an attempt on the life of telecommunications minister Marwan Hamade, was apparently also on his way to the Phoenicia when a huge car bomb killed him and six others.
“Even though we know it’s dangerous, we have to vote for a president. The constitution is very clear in demanding a president and not allowing a power vacuum,” says Masbah Ahdab, a member of the anti-Syrian “March 14” majority in parliament, which is continually shrinking as the assassins keep killing off its members.
Like many of his colleagues Ahdab spent most of the summer abroad, just returning for the abandoned first round of presidential elections at the end of September. Since then, when in Lebanon, he barely leaves the Phoenicia, which is only a kilometer away from the parliament building. As on September 25, the next trip to the assembly hall will only be possible under high security, with police and the army protecting the deputies’ vehicles on their short ride downtown.
“We have learned to live with the danger and have organized our lives around that,” Ahdab says defiantly. “After all, the threat is not new – it has been going on for three years.”
November 12 has been picked as the new date for the crucial election, which is aimed at replacing the pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud, who has been holding onto the post for nine years now. Even though the constitution demands a two-thirds-majority in the first round of voting, Ahdab is willing to pick a March 14 candidate with a simple majority vote.
“The post is too important to let the pro-Syrian minority force a power vacuum on the country,” he says, behind the closed curtains of his apartment in the Phoenicia.
Just across from the building former prime minister Rafiq Hariri was killed on February 14, 2005. The assassination set off a series of demonstrations that led to the retreat of the Syrian armed forces from Lebanon in April of that year.
The struggle between the pro-Syrian political forces and its critics has not stopped, however. The March 14 movement was able to win the parliamentary elections in the summer of 2005 with Fouad Siniora as the prime minister, who has headed the government ever since. But despite calls for his resignation, Lahoud was able to remain in office, supported by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and the strongest Shi’ite force in the country, Hizbullah, led by its secretary general, Hasan Na’srallah.
Thus the country stays on high alert. Green concrete barriers painted with white peace doves have been placed around the entrances of the Phoenicia. Soldiers on tanks have cordoned off the high-rise building on three sides.
The series of assassinations and bomb attacks that followed the Hariri murder has almost shattered the dream envisioned by the young supporters of the “Beirut Spring” of 2005 – a truly sovereign and independent Lebanon, that is free of Syrian as well as Israeli influence, the two neighbors that have dominated the country’s direction in the last decades.
While in recent days there have been signs of a breakthrough in finding a consensus candidate for the presidency, who would satisfy the opposition as well as the governing March 14 alliance, major conflict lines remain.
Thus, November 12 could be the beginning of just another round of internal quarrels between forces such as Hizbullah, which is supported by Iran and Syria, and March 14.
Deputy Ahdab, however, leaves no doubt as to his determination to bring an end to the deadlock:
“We have to end this state of impunity for the murderers, otherwise the security situation will never improve.”