Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has failed in his attempts to make changing the nature of power in Lebanon “merciful”, after being at first unable to confront it, then to obstruct it, and finally to join it. The implicit significance of standing alongside Syria and the Resistance, and of the fragmented story of the nature of Saudi- Syrian efforts, is that decision-making in Lebanon is exclusively subjected to the interests of that side and that the others, just like Walid Jumblatt, should submit to such exclusivity. It has today become apparent that all Syrian political movement, and with it Hezbollah, has been subjected ever since the Doha Agreement to such exclusivity and to reinforcing it. This is in spite of everything that was said about consensus, compromise, meeting others halfway, committing to state institutions, and keeping the President of the Republic as an arbiter in internal disputes. The process began with clinging to a government structure that allows Hezbollah, whenever it so wishes, to undermine the work of the government cabinet. And that is what happened when matters became heated over the issue of the “false witnesses”, as it could have happened concerning any other issue. This is despite the fact that the Doha Agreement stipulates that no party should resign from the government or resort to using weapons domestically. In parallel to this, the work of the President of the Republic has been besieged, having been placed before the choice of either being silent, powerless and isolated, or siding with Syria's stances, as expressed through Hezbollah and its allies. This is at the level of state institutions. At the political level on the other hand, an escalation-based plan has been adopted to absorb the constitutional significance of parliamentary majority, after having draining the other party with demands, also escalation-based. It is no secret that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is the means used in a process of changing the nature of power in this country. Indeed, it has moved from holding Lebanese consensus when Saad Hariri first took office as Prime Minister, as per the ministerial statement and the cabinet's vote of confidence, to being an Israeli-American instrument. And whatever the assessment of the STL's work and how it is being conducted and its conclusion, there is a reality no one can deny, which is that a Lebanese Sunni leader named Rafic Hariri, who had broad and strong international and regional relations, was assassinated in Beirut, and that his assassination was considered to be targeting the Sunni community, as well as the man himself and the policies he had expressed in the latter part of his life, especially as he had been one of the architects of the Taif Agreement, which had brought new powers to the government cabinet. This is at a time when the excess power held by Hezbollah has come to clash with these powers. In dealing with the tribunal as a means of changing the nature of power in Lebanon, it was at first agreed upon in order to make Saad Hariri feel that justice was a universal demand and that the state, as represented by both the executive and legislative branches of government, sought after such justice. And at a time when the “blood heir” considered that the issue had been settled, he was confronted with renewed escalation by linking justice to stability, with calculated leaks about the nature of the party against whom accusations might be directed – to such an extent that Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah himself announced rejecting it in advance, so that it may not be said that a Sunni leader was killed by Shiite hands. Thus the country entered the long dark tunnel of talk of civil strife. Arab reconciliations then came to reinforce the stance on the necessity of finding a formula that would bring justice and stability into agreement and would quell strife. These reconciliations were thus exploited in order to lay down the document Jumblatt talked about in his press conference two days ago, which includes the Prime Minister's agreement to severing relations between the state and the STL. And as with the Doha Agreement, from which the Syria-Hezbollah camp took what it wanted and refused to commit to its other clauses, the Saudi-Syrian document was dealt with in the same way, taking from it the stance on the tribunal and neglecting its other clauses. Today, with the start of parliamentary consultations to appoint a new Prime Minister, the discussion begins from rejecting the Special Tribunal and refusing to discuss the clauses that were agreed upon during National Dialogue Table sessions and in the Hariri government's ministerial statement. This thus shifts decision-making permanently to the exclusivity of Syrian-Resistance interests, without any consideration for state institutions, the results of consultations, and the stances taken by MPs during these consultations. Their ally Michel Aoun has declared it: no power on earth can bring Saad Hariri back to the position of Prime Minister, with everything the man represents in terms of political and sectarian status. Power has therefore been reformulated in such a way as for one side to hold decision-making while the other side has been removed, after Jumblatt's failure to make such change “merciful”.
