LEBANON has long been considered as the Mideast's great democracy and is widely regarded as a country where people from various ethnic and sectarian backgrounds coexist in peace and where all people are equally represented in power. With its decades-old constitution and a power-sharing unity government wherein all major parties had their representatives, Lebanon was a role model for the entire Mideast. What held this political fabric intact was not the Western-style democracy but, rather, a tolerant and peace-loving nature of the Lebanese people. However, last week's terrible events proved that Lebanese now have come to a point where tolerance has become a thing of the past. During fifties and sixties of the last century, Lebanon was a virtual paradise with a promising democracy where liberal lifestyle flourished. Its capital, Beirut, represented the heart and soul of the Arab progressive movements so much so that cultural, social and art trends originated in Lebanon and exported to the rest of the Arab World. However, that cosmopolitan country was unable to conceal the sharp differences which fueled hatred and made conflict even more inevitable. The whole country slipped into a bloody civil war that claimed the lives of many civilians. Lebanon was to pay a heavy price in the Arab-Israeli conflict, too. As a consequence of battles in Amman in 1970, Jordanian authorities demanded a full withdrawal of Palestinian factions from Jordan. These factions, headed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, agreed to move to Southern Lebanon from where they could carry out attacks against Israel. Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, found that it was good to move to Lebanon and so was the case with nearly all Arab countries which were unaware of Lebanese geopolitics. The move greatly affected the Lebanese fragile coexistence that began to crumple with ease. The accumulating hatred and misunderstanding between several armed groups exploded in 1975. The whole country was dragged into a 15-year-long civil war. With Palestinians flooding Lebanon after heavy fighting with the Jordanian forces, decision to let them move into an already embattled territory was the first nail put in the Lebanese coffin. Israel targeted the whole Lebanon while trying to crush the PLO and its symbols. These attempts reached their nadir when the Israeli forces marched into the Lebanese capital in 1982. Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli defense minister, enabled militant Christians to brutally suppress innocent Palestinian refugees in what is now called Sabra massacres. Also, Lebanon had been the battlefield for regional powers which did not think, even for a while, of the Lebanese sovereignty. Military factions were financially funded, militarily trained and morally supported by other countries so as to fulfill long-term national interests. Taif Accord revived the peace hopes and the agreement succeeded in putting an end to that bloody civil war and all parties committed to halt violence and revive democratic policies. Israeli involvement in Lebanon had been vehemently resisted by all Lebanese people. Hezbollah, the rising star of the resistance movement against the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon, successfully built an unassailable myth that its weapons were legitimately intended to defeat the enemy and protect the country. After the Israeli pullout in 2002, several people from across the Lebanese political spectrum began to question Hezbollah's military might and the resultant ostensible power imbalance between different parties. Pressures mounted on Hezbollah to disband and they peaked with the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri. His death brought into limelight fresh arguments about Hezbollah's military ambitions. Hariri's assassination was a turning point in the checkered history of Lebanon. It marked the pullout of the Syrian forces and changed the political complexion of the country. Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah came under irresistible pressure to disarm itself and cut ties with Syria and Iran. But in order to draw attention to the party's role in the conflict with Israel, Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The whole of Lebanon was dragged into a month-long war with Israel in which Israeli politicians accused the Lebanese government, headed by Fouad Siniora, of allying with Hezbollah since the latter was represented in his government. Since then, Lebanese political life has been in a deep turmoil. Opposition leaders have refused to elect a new president unless power-sharing government system was formed. Despite keen efforts by the international community and the Arab League, Lebanese politicians did not reach a solution and the whole country plunged in the abyss of an unprecedented deep division. Two weeks ago, the Lebanese government took a rare decision: Hezbollah must dismantle its communications network and that the army officer responsible for the Beirut International Airport be replaced. Outraged by the decisions, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah threatened the rival parties with grave consequences unless government withdrew these two controversial decisions. It was nothing but a military coup. Fighters took to the streets and opened fire in the heart of Beirut. News networks and media outlets affiliated with the Future Movement, the majority in government and in the parliament, were silenced. Although Hezbollah promised not to escalate the conflict further, nobody knows exactly how, or when, a Lebanese president would be elected and the whole turmoil would end. Hostilities have not been contained and everyday there are fresh victims onn both sides. Since then, it is the Lebanese civilians who are sadly and inevitably paying the heavy price of having a fragile democracy like that in Lebanon. __
