It’s time for Europe to follow Germany’s lead and ban Hezbollah/Weeks after blast, Lebanon patronage system immune to reform/لقد حان الوقت لتضع الدول الأوروبية حزب الله على قوائم بعد مرور أسابيع على انفجار المرفأ لا تزال الطبقة السياسية عصية على الإصلاح/الإرهاب كما فعلت ألمانيا
Weeks after blast, Lebanon patronage system immune to reform Samya Kullab/AP/August 25/2020 بعد مرور أسابيع على انفجار المرفأ لا تزال الطبقة السياسية عصية على الإصلاح
It’s time for Europe to follow Germany’s lead and ban Hezbollah Jerusalem Post Editorial/August 25/2020 افتتاحية الجيرازلم بوست: لقد حان الوقت لتضع الدول الأوروبية حزب الله على قوائم الإرهاب كما فعلت ألمانيا
Germany justified the decision to ban the terrorist movement because of its call for armed struggle and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
The Jerusalem Post’s Benjamin Weinthal reported Sunday that Switzerland might follow the decision made in April by its neighbor Germany and ban all Hezbollah activities within its territory.
Last week, the Swiss Federal Council agreed to review a “Report on the activities of the Shi’ite Islamist Hezbollah in Switzerland.” The initiative was launched by Marianne Binder of the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland in June.
The proposed anti-Hezbollah legislation notes that Germany justified the decision to ban the terrorist movement because of its call for armed struggle and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
The initiative reads: “The EU previously banned the [military] arm that engaged in terrorist activities. It is not known which activities Hezbollah is developing in Switzerland. In view of the neutrality of Switzerland, however, the activities of Hezbollah cannot be legitimized and a report is also advisable for reasons of security policy.”This highlights the ridiculous European Union approach to the terrorist organization, whose deadly tentacles have reached around the world. In July 2013, EU governments agreed to partially blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but they made an artificial and dangerous distinction. The EU outlawed Hezbollah’s “military arm” but allowed its “political arm” to continue to operate, raise funds and recruit members. This financial pipeline and recruitment system keeps Hezbollah alive. It is absurd to promote the illusion that there is a difference between the “political” and “military” activities of an organization whose terrorists have caused hundreds of deaths and vast suffering globally. The terrorist organization itself does not make a distinction between its political and military operations.
As we noted after the welcome German decision in April, Hezbollah’s record as the perpetrator of major terrorist atrocities around the world has been known for decades. Its deadly acts include the bombings, orchestrated by Imad Mughniyeh, of the US Embassy and the military barracks in Beirut in 1983; the bombing attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the AMIA Jewish center there in 1994; the bombing attack against US military forces stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1996; the murder of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri; the bombing of a tour bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012; not to mention the myriad attacks against, and kidnappings of, Israelis, Europeans and Americans; its role in provoking the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and its part in the Syrian civil war, where it helped Iran – its sponsor – create a corridor of terrorism from Tehran to Beirut.
The devastating explosion that destroyed the Port of Beirut earlier this month – killing at least 180 people and leaving a quarter of a million homeless – can also be pinned on Hezbollah. Although the exact cause is not yet certain, it is clear that Hezbollah is responsible either through negligence, corruption or stockpiling of explosive material with malevolent intent, or a combination of all these factors.
Hezbollah’s efforts to obtain precision-guided missiles and the discovery of the warren of terrorist attack tunnels crossing from Lebanon into Israel are additional indications that it has not given up its deadly goals.
For years, the US and Israel urged Europe to ban Hezbollah, but it was only after Hezbollah carried out the attack in Burgas that the EU moved to partially ban the organization. This newspaper has reported on many Hezbollah activities in Europe and its open support of terrorism. It has also been reported that the Mossad provided intelligence that helped thwart attacks on European soil.
In Europe, apart from Germany, the UK, Lithuania and the Netherlands have also outlawed Hezbollah in its entirety. Elsewhere, the Arab League, Israel, the US, Canada and many Latin American countries have designated Hezbollah’s entire entity a terrorist movement.
We hope that Switzerland follows suit. A full ban on Hezbollah everywhere is long overdue. It is not only Israel that is at risk. Hezbollah’s terrorism – funded by its Iranian sponsors – affects the whole world. This is not just an Israeli concern. Terrorism cannot be tackled in halves, with artificial distinctions between “military” and “political” wings. The only way to stop Hezbollah is to universally recognize that it is a terrorist organization whose heinous acts cannot be tolerated anywhere in the world.
Weeks after blast, Lebanon patronage system immune to reform Samya Kullab/AP/August 25/2020 بعد مرور أسابيع على انفجار المرفأ لا تزال الطبقة السياسية عصية على الإصلاح
FILE – In this Aug. 6, 2020 file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron, second left, meets with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, second right, Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab, right, and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, left, at the presidential palace, in Baabda east of Beirut. Beirut’s massive explosion fueled widespread anger at Lebanon’s ruling elite, whose corruption and negligence many blame for the disaster. Yet, three weeks later, the change many hoped for is nowhere in sight. The same politicians are negotiating among themselves over a new government.
Three weeks after a catastrophic explosion ripped through Beirut, killing nearly 200 people and rendering thousands homeless, the change many hoped for is nowhere in sight. Instead, activists said they are back to square one.
The same politicians whose corruption and negligence the public blames for the disaster are negotiating among themselves over forming a new government. Calls for early elections have petered out. To devastated Beirutis, still sweeping shards of glass and fixing broken homes, the blast revealed the extent to which an entrenched system of patronage remains impervious to reform.
In fact, the tools that the ruling elite have used to ensure a lock on power the past 30 years are only more powerful.
Rising poverty amid a severe economic crisis gives them greater leverage, with more people desperate for the income their patronage provides. Their grip on electoral politics was made tighter by an election law they passed in 2017, making it harder for independents to win seats. And there are armed groups affiliated with political parties.
“Basically, we have no way to force them out,” said Nizar Hassan, a civil activist and an organizer with LiHaqqi, a political movement active in the October mass anti-government protests.
Lebanon’s political parties are strictly sectarian, each rooted in one of the country’s multiple religious or ethnic communities. Most are headed by sectarian warlords from Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war — or their families — who stand at the top of powerful local business holdings. The factions pass out positions in government ministries and public institutions to their followers or carve out business sectors for them, ensuring their backing.
Opposition parties that cross sectarian lines with a reform agenda struggle to break that barrier. They are divided and lack grassroots support. They have also increasingly been met with brute force by security agencies.
Street protests have been dramatic. But the array of anti-government movements were not sizable enough to push for sea-change reforms, Hassan said.
“To seize the moment, you need people on grassroots level that are ready to announce they support it, and this doesn’t really exist in Lebanon,” he said.
Civic movements like LiHaqqi are not well-financed, face intimidation and can hardly afford to book airtime on mainstream channels, where elites are regular talking heads.
A sliver of hope is found in growing support from businessmen who once financed elites but have become increasingly frustrated, Hassan and other activists said.
Business owners began having a change of heart around the beginning of the year, as the economy deteriorated, hyperinflation flared and many people fell into poverty, said Paul Abi Nasr, a member of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists.
“The business community used to stay out of this from fear of retribution on their businesses,” he said. “But with the situation so dire already, a lot are now much more forthcoming.”
That has translated into a small stream of money to civil groups, though limited to covering organization and lobbying.
Industrialists and businessmen have helped prop up the patronage system, but most “were forced to play along,” Abi Nasr said. Politicians helped businesses in return for kickbacks and political support when needed.
Those in government who have witnessed the system from the inside maintain it cannot reform itself.
“People like me, after years in the world of government, basically feel that the system is immune to reform,” said Khalil Gebara, who left his job as an adviser to the Interior Ministry.
“But at the same point, the total collapse of the system will unleash a Pandora’s box of all kinds of sectarian conflicts,” said Gebara, now a consultant to the World Bank. “I don’t know what I should hope for.”
The wake-up call for Lebanon’s activists came not during the October uprising, when tens of thousands took to the streets in protest against the corrupt political class, but four years ago when Beirut held municipal elections.
It was the first time that a candidate slate emerging from a protest movement, Beirut Madinati, won in an electoral district. The small victory emboldened activists to look to polls to bring change.
It also spooked elites. The following year, they passed a new electoral law. It created a proportional representation system that ostensibly aimed to address demands of civil society and improve representation for minority sects.
But they “gerrymandered every aspect of the law in order to ensure that all political parties in power will be re-elected and none of the voices in the opposition could be,” said elections expert Amal Hamdan.
Under the law, a special formula determines the minimum threshold of votes for candidates to win seats. The factions worked to ensure those thresholds were high — ranging from 8% to 20% — and difficult for independents to gain, lawmakers and advisers with knowledge of the drafting of the law said.
In the south, for example. Shiite Hezbollah rejected proposals for a 5% threshold and arranged one as high as 20%, said Chantal Sarkis, an expert in political affairs and former adviser to Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces throughout negotiations over the law.
Activists like Hassan said the core problem lies with lack of grassroots support to initiate real political change. “When it comes to actual political dominance over the social fabric — everything is really manifest on local level.”
In his home district in the Chouf, where former warlord and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is dominant, LiHaqqi supporters faced intimidation on the ground during the 2018 general election, Hassan said.
The father of one activist was sacked from his government job; mothers begged their activist children to stop canvassing in case powerful politicians got wind; others said they would vote for establishment parties because they wanted jobs. Not a single village allowed them to hold public events.
In the wake of the Aug. 4 explosion, when nearly 3,000 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate ignited at the Beirut port, political parties have set up field offices offering humanitarian and other assistance to victims.
Now with the falling Lebanese lira, Hassan fears establishment parties have more clout than before.
“It’s even cheaper for them to buy people.”
