Several events converged to bring twenty-nine years of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon to a finale: the string of political assassinations, the withdrawal of the Syrian military from Lebanese soil, and of course the Second Lebanon War. The end of this Syrian hegemony also brought to a close what had been an era of domestic stability. Surrounded by regional crises, and with an ever-present threat of civil conflict looming, Lebanon is struggling to recover from the 2006 war and to stem further disintegration. The future status of Hizbollah, at least in the short term, and its political and military room for maneuver will be largely determined by the way in which Lebanon resolves the current crisis.

Syria has long been a hotbed for pan-Arab ideals in modern times and has been considered the “beating heart” of Arabism. Since the inception of the Arab nationalist movement in the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth century, Syria has hoisted the banner of Arab revival and unity. In 1958 the Syrian government, with strong Ba’thist inducement, initiated the Syrian-Egyptian union, called the United Arab Republic, the first pan-Arab union in modern times. During the past sixty years, the Syrian Ba’th, the most genuine pan-Arab party, has articulated such ideas and established the longest would-be pan-Arab regime (since 1963) in the region.

The recent failure to elect a successor to current President Emile Lahoud and the deepening political fragmentation within Lebanon pose a serious challenge to the already precarious local stability and governability situation. Furthermore, the ongoing escalation of violence only complicates the scenario and worsens the ongoing political crisis.

The U.S. Department of State's International Information Programs (IIP) in Washington D.C., the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, and the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center jointly held an international videoconference seminar focusing on both domestic and foreign affairs in Lebanon. Israeli and U.S. experts examined the balance of and struggle for power in the country, external factors, and future prospects.

An array of bilateral issues continues to affect relations between the United States and Syria: the course of Arab-Israeli talks; questions of arms proliferation; Syrian connections with terrorist activity; Syria’s role in Lebanon; and Syria’s opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq. After Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March 2003, senior U.S. officials warned Syria to stop permitting transit of military supplies and volunteer fighters through Syria to Iraq. Nevertheless, foreign militants have continued to enter Iraq through Syria while an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi refugees have fled Iraq to Syria to escape sectarian violence and general instability.

During its armed conflict with Israel from July 12 until August 14, 2006, Hezbollah claimed at various times that its rockets were aimed primarily at military targets in Israel, or that its attacks on civilians were justifiable as a response to Israel’s indiscriminate fire into southern Lebanon and as a tool to draw Israel into a ground war. In fact, the former claim is refuted by the large number of rockets that hit civilian objects far removed from any military targets, whereas the latter arguments are inadmissible under international humanitarian law.

During the past few months, there have been contradictory signals about the possibility of war between Syria and Israel. These signals include military mobilizations on the borders, veiled threats about an imminent conflict and claims by analysts of the risk of a summer war between the two countries. This rhetoric, however, has also been accompanied by declarations of the willingness of both countries to restart negotiations in order to reach a stable and durable peace. These mixed signals have come from Syria especially.

A year ago Lebanon was on the verge of an economic and political resurgence. Today policy and security analysts assert that an escalation in violence and sectarianism in Lebanon could result in a conflict that rivals what is currently happening in Iraq and mark a return to civil war.

On June 17, 2007, three rockets were fired from the Taybeh-Addayseh region on Kiryat Shmona – the first such incident since the second Lebanon war. There were no casualties; however, some property was damaged. Hezbollah denied any involvement in the attack. It is our assessment that that provocative attack was perpetrated by elements related to Fath al-Islam, the Al-Qaeda offshoot in Lebanon, an organization that for the past month has been under heavy pressure from the Lebanese army in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The Lebanese Prime Minister and the Lebanese army strongly condemned the attack and promised they would take the necessary measures to catch the perpetrators.

Following the exposure of an affiliation between Fath Al-Islam and Syrian intelligence during the interrogation of Fath Al-Islam members, Syrian and pro-Syrian elements and media have been making efforts to deny this affiliation. Fath Al-Islam leaders with connections to Syria have suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by new leaders, claimed to be connected to Al-Qaeda. In addition, one of the organization's new leaders and a pro-Syrian Lebanese source have stated that Fath Al-Islam is under the command of Al-Qaeda, a claim that was firmly denied by the organization's previous leadership.

The Presidency of the European Union condemns in the strongest possible terms the perfidious attack on Spanish UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon on Sunday (24 June), which claimed the lives of six members of the Spanish contingent and injured a number of others. The Presidency expresses its sympathy to the families and friends of the victims, and wishes those injured a speedy and complete recovery.

On May 20, 2007, militants from the Fath Al-Islam organization attacked Lebanese Army outposts at the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Since then, the violence has spread into other areas, including the city of Tripoli, and dozens of Lebanese soldiers, civilians, and Fath Al-Islam militants have been killed. The Lebanese government and the March 14 forces are accusing Syria of training and arming the Fath Al-Islam militants, and of bringing them into Lebanon. They are claiming that Syria ordered the organization to launch a large-scale attack on the Lebanese army at this point in time so as to prevent the U.N. Security Council from approving the establishment of an international tribunal for the Al-Hariri assassination.

In Lebanon today, there is a battle for political primacy between the anti-Syrian, pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the opposition, led by the Hezbollah and former General Michel Aoun. Each camp has its external patrons; the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia support Siniora, while Syria and Iran back the opposition. The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and Hezbollah’s subsequent campaign to obstruct the government through street protests and general strikes have placed enormous strains on the Siniora-led government. In order to prevent Lebanon’s fragile sectarian political system from imploding and to strengthen pro-Western and anti-Syrian elements, the United States has pledged to significantly increase its assistance to Lebanon. For FY2007, the Administration is requesting an estimated $770 million in supplemental aid from Congress. This report analyzes this request, highlighting potential issues of concern for Members. This report will be updated as events warrant. For more information on Lebanon, see CRS Report RL33509, Lebanon, by Alfred Prados.

Stepped-up regional diplomacy initiatives on Iraq have brought new attention to the role Iraq's neighbors might play in easing the conflict. A March 10 conference in Baghdad brought regional powers, including Syria and Iran, together with American and Western diplomats. The Baghdad meeting, the most significant diplomatic gathering in Iraq since 1990, and the first U.S.-Iranian encounter since November 2004, led to the formation of three working groups on security, refugees, and energy. A follow-on foreign minister's meeting is currently slated to take place later this month in Istanbul.

This month, Syria has been in the headlines in Washington. First, there was the ill-fated early April visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Damascus. Then last week, American-Syrian businessman Abe Soleiman traveled to Jerusalem pitching an unauthorized plan -- according to Damascus -- for renewed peace talks between Syria and Israel. And this week, Syrian President Bashar Assad threatened war with Israel if a peace agreement is not reached.

On February 20, the Lebanese cabinet—with a Hizballah-led opposition boycott—extended the term of the UN commission investigating the February 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. While the commission’s work can now continue for as long as one more year, any future decision about organizing an international tribunal to try those indicted for the murder remains hostage to a vote—requiring the opposition’s assent—in the paralyzed Lebanese parliament.

Lebanon has badly lost its balance and is at risk of new collapse, moving ever closer to explosive Sunni-Shiite polarisation with a divided, debilitated Christian community in between. The fragile political and sectarian equilibrium established since the end of its bloody civil war in 1990 was never a panacea and came at heavy cost. It depended on Western and Israeli acquiescence in Syria’s tutelage and a domestic system that hindered urgently needed internal reforms, and change was long overdue. But the upsetting of the old equilibrium, due in no small part to a tug-of-war by outsiders over its future, has been chaotic and deeply divisive, pitting one half of the country against the other. Both Lebanon’s own politicians and outside players need to recognise the enormous risks of a zero-sum struggle and seek compromises before it is too late.

For decades, U.S. policy toward Syria has been single-mindedly focused on Syria’s president, Hafiz al-Asad, from 1970 to 2000, followed by his son Bashar. Because they perceived the Syrian opposition to be too weak and anti-American, U.S. officials preferred to work with the Asad regime. Washington thus had no relations with the Syrian opposition until its invasion of Iraq in 2003. Even then, the Bush administration reached out only to Washington-based opponents of the Syrian regime. They were looking for a Syrian counterpart to Ahmad Chalabi, the pro-U.S. Iraqi opposition leader who helped build the case for invading Iraq.

Tension has continued among the different political factions in Lebanon. In the coming weeks, the Fuad Siniora-led government will face several important challenges to its stability. Political conflict between the two political poles in Lebanon remains powerful. Hezbollah and its allies -- the Shiite movement Amal, the party of the Christian general Michel Aoun, prominent Christian leader Suleiman Franjieh, and a small part of the Druze community -- are searching for new methods to place more pressure on the Siniora cabinet.

While there is much talk of continued Syrian machinations in Lebanon, little attention is paid to an Iranian plan to remodel Syria into a Khomeinist state. The Teheran-Damascus axis that challenges the United States in the Middle East was first formed in 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the hope of destroying the newly created Islamic Republic.

According to captured documents, they are indoctrinated with the principles of radical Iranian Islam. That indoctrination includes the personality cult of Iranian leader ‘Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah’s “battle legacy;” national Lebanese symbols are minimized.

Notre consultant militaire est officier de carrière dans l’armée française, ex-attaché militaire au Liban, chef de corps du 1er régiment d’infanterie de marine. Il a aussi poursuivi des activités de recherche: études de crises internationales, rédacteur en chef de la revue Défense… et auteur de livres de référence sur le sujet dont La guerre au XXe siècle, Hachette 2003; Les crises internationales, de Pékin à Bagdad, Editions Complexe 2004.

Israel is being vilified by opportunistic politicians and the international media over the air strike that killed 56 persons early yesterday in the Lebanese village of Qana. In the rush to blame Israel, a number of relevant facts are ignored.

Near the end of the siege of West Beirut, Secretary of State Shultz said: "The symbol of this war is a baby with its arms shot off." Israel and its supporters came to agree. The baby in question had appeared swathed in bandages in a UPI wirephoto captioned: Nurse feeds a seven-month-old baby who lost both arms and was severely burned late yesterday afternoon when an Israeli jet accidentally hit a Christian residential area in East Beirut during a raid on Palestinian positions to the west. The baby was being cared for in a hospital hallway, which is considered an area safer from shelling than the room normally assigned.

En medio de los ardores del verano, cuando las gentes descansan en las playas de un año de trabajo y la opinión pública está desmovilizada, nos ha sorprendido el brutal ataque de Israel contra un Líbano que apenas empezaba a levantar cabeza, tras años de una historia infernal que le asoló. El pretexto para el ataque era todavía más banal que el utilizado por Bush para invadir Irak: dos soldados israelíes habían sido secuestrados por Hezbolá. En un contexto en el que Israel secuestra a diario no ya a soldados, sino a ministros del Gobierno palestino y los mantiene en prisión, el argumento resultaba un desatino cruel y grotesco a la vez.

Question: What’s the difference between the Arab League and the academic Left that despises Israel? Answer: Only the Arab League is willing to condemn Hezbollah. The surreal politics of this war finds Saudi Arabia attributing “full responsibility” to Hezbollah and calling on the terrorists to “alone shoulder the crisis they have created;” it finds Kuwaiti journalists lauding the “operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon [that] are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community,” even as hundreds of American professors rush to denounce Israel for firing back at genocidal killers sworn to her destruction.

Syria, under the Assad reign (both father and son), has been involved in all the wars and tensions of the Middle East since 1970 when Air Force chief Gen. Hafez Assad launched his country's 22nd coup d'etat since World War II. When Insight magazine launched its inaugural issue in 1985, Assad was on the cover as "The World's No. 1 Terror Broker."

The issue of political reform in Syria straddles the line between reform of political institutions and removal from power of a particular regime and entails both domestic and external actors. The regime of Bashar al-Asad is under pressure from Syrian citizens who want a different political system and different leadership. He is also under pressure from the United States, which wants Syria to change its regional policy: stop intruding in Lebanese affairs, reduce support of Palestinian groups, and make a bigger effort to prevent infiltration of radical Islamists into Iraq. As a result, it is impossible to separate completely a domestic process of political reform from the external pressures. The two are entangled to a much greater extent than in any other country in the region except Iraq, and the analysis that follows reflects this entanglement.

The United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Lebanon currently being negotiated in New York mentions the deployment of an international force, to be included in a follow-up resolution. Once the resolution is passed, and presuming it will avoid a widening of the conflict, the composition of the force, its area of deployment, and its mandate will be the next pressing item on the international agenda. We Lebanese must have a say in the shaping of this force.

While the world's attention is focused on westerners fleeing to Cyprus and the many Hezbollah civilians fleeing to Syria, another group of Lebanese people worldwide are counting the days until they will be going back to their homes in Lebanon and reunite with their families. These are the thousands of Lebanese Christian refugees who fled Lebanon before, during and after the civil war.

Sunday was a day of great triumph for Hezbollah. Its tactics had worked. By launching rockets at Israeli civilians within yards of a building filled with refugees, Hezbollah had induced Israel to make a terrible mistake. Its defensive rocket had missed the Hezbollah launchers and hit the civilian building. That was Hezbollah’s plan all along. As Israelis wept in grief over the deaths of the Lebanese children, Hezbollah leaders celebrated its propaganda victory.

As diplomacy to halt the violence in Lebanon slowly gathers momentum, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has endorsed the idea of an international “stabilization force” to keep the peace, seconding proposals previously put forward by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, British prime minister Tony Blair, and European Union foreign policy envoy Javier Solana. Such a force, however, is liable to face major obstacles and incur substantial risks that could jeopardize its prospects for success. For this reason it is essential to consider what past experiences in Lebanon, the Middle East, and elsewhere teach about peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, the sort of challenges such a force could encounter, and the kind of mandate and capabilities required to meet these challenges.

The Lebanese are holding their breath. Will the cease-fire, which started this morning at 8 am, hold ? No one dares imagine what happens if it doesn't, but an extraordinary phenomenon developed this morning as thousands of southern residents took to the road back to their villages, voting literally with their feet for a return to peace and normalcy. Another encouraging dimension was the announced withdrawal of Israeli troops, signaling that there is no Israeli desire to stay in Lebanon should the cease-fire hold under the terms of UNSCR 1701.

“The Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana early Sunday morning did more than kill 57 civilians,” says Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post. “According to a wide range of commentary in the international media, it inflamed already boiling public opinion in the Arab world against Israel, undermined what little support the United States has among the Lebanese people, and illuminated the continuing inability of Israel and the United States to achieve their goal of decisively weakening Hezbollah.” The Hindustan Times editorialized that “with Qana, one senses that the Israelis’ definition of ‘collateral damage’ has started to bear a striking resemblance to that of the very terrorist organisation that they are keen to destroy.” At a rally outside the State Department building protesting the Qana “massacre” on Monday, Leftist protestors chanted, “Hey, Rice! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?”; “Israel Out of Lebanon! Ceasefire, Now”; and “Shame! Shame! Shame, on you!” An Australian Muslim in Qana told Australia’s Herald Sun: “I would say a few hundred have died. This isn’t war, it’s genocide.”

"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," a U.S. official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the Israeli government embraced the plan, announcing it "would agree to consider stationing a battle-tested force composed of soldiers from European Union member states." The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84.

Because of the difficulties and political foot-dragging involved in setting up an international force that is supposed to operate in Lebanon after the fighting is over, the Americans and Europeans proposed that the monitoring mission be placed for now on UNIFIL, whose troops are already deployed in southern Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is considered a force that has failed in a majority of its tasks, that has never managed to prevent hostilities and whose reports have been mostly opposed to Israel.

An Israeli artillery shell crashed into a U.N. observation post in the Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday last week, killing four international monitors and bringing an ignominious end to the organization's latest, failed attempt at Arab-Israeli peacekeeping. That mission, known as the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), achieved painfully little in its 28 years of operation. Yet before the smoke had even cleared at Khiyam, world leaders -- including Lebanon's Fuad Siniora, most European Union heads of government, and even some Israelis -- began calling for a new U.N. force to intervene. George W. Bush joined this chorus last Friday.

Three weeks into the war between Israel and Hezbollah, some patterns have emerged. In the first week, Israeli security officials declared that they wanted to bomb Lebanon back 50 years, and indeed destroyed over 40 bridges across the country in the first few days, as well as a large number of factories, over 30 according to the Association of Lebanese Industrialists. Then the targets changed radically.

When Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, the international understanding was that the Lebanese government would re-assert its authority in the evacuated area. Hezbollah, which led the armed struggle against Israeli occupation, was to disarm and re-invent itself as a political force, representing the Shiite community that was historically marginalized by Lebanon’s ruling Maronite, Sunni, and Druze elites.

Pity Lebanon: In a world of states, it has not had a state of its own. A garden without fences, was the way Beirut, its capital city, was once described. A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the "gift" of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah's latest deed.

Depuis quelques semaines, les politiciens libanais appartenant à des groupes aussi divers que le Hezbollah et les Forces libanaises chrétiennes se rencontrent périodiquement dans le cadre d'un «Dialogue national». Après le retrait de l'armée syrienne qui a eu lieu l'année dernière, leur objectif est de forger un consensus sur l'avenir du Liban. Mais ce dialogue a surtout montré que la politique libanaise continue à se jouer hors du Liban.

The former U.S. proconsul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, is in the news this week for claiming in his new book that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored his requests for more troops. Mr. Bremer played down that point in a visit to our offices this week, insisting that Mr. Rumsfeld had immediately relayed those requests to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who ultimately turned them down. But Mr. Bremer also called our attention to one very underplayed revelation that deserves wide notice.

As the Security Council continued to weigh its response to the United Nations probe into the assassination on 14 February of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, it heard a further briefing today by Detlev Mehlis, the head of the independent investigation, in which Mr. Mehlis asserted, “it remains to be seen whether Syrian cooperation would be full and without conditions”.

El Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU adoptó hoy por unanimidad una resolución en la que urge a Siria a colaborar en la investigación que realiza la Comisión Independiente sobre el asesinato al ex primer ministro libanés Rafic Hariri, ocurrido el 14 de febrero.

According to the Mehlis Report, senior Syrian figures, led by Bashar’s brother, Maher, and his brother-in-law, Asaf Shawkat, organized the killing of Hariri. Shawkat is head of Military Security, the more important internal security organ in the state, and he acts as Bashar’s right-hand man in all matters connected with the security and survival of the regime.

On March 2, 2005, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) arrested Osama Matar, a Hamas operative from the Gaza Strip, who had undergone military training in a camp near Damascus while studying in Syria. The training was aimed at improving Hamas’ capability to launch major attacks, particularly the detonation of explosive-packed tunnels.

Former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri's tragic assassination capped a series of events that carry the potential of fundamentally altering not only Lebanon's future, but also Syria's and the broader regional landscape as well.

The report reveals Syrian threats on Hariri's life and implies is it the prime suspect. It increases pressure on Syria and calls for the formation of an international committee to investigate the assassination.

For the killing of Hariri provoked unprecedented reaction, both in Lebanon and abroad. Rather than hunker down, the Lebanese opposition stepped up its denunciations of Syria and its local Lebanese allies.