The most important thing that can be deduced from the demands and behavior of the opposition in Lebanon vis-à-vis the process of forming a new government is that it is difficult for the opposition to acknowledge the results of the parliamentary elections, held in June, or at the least, act based on what its leaders have said is an acknowledgement of these results. The opposition's behavior is at odds with this acknowledgment; its demands signal that the opposition would like to do away with these results, via the formation of a Cabinet, and prevent these results from having an impact inside the executive branch of government. Even if we adopt the utmost objectivity in evaluating the domestic political situation, the least that can be said is that what is happening now is a suspension of the election results, i.e., the tilt to the majority in drafting executive branch decisions, while awaiting the regional political picture to become clearer. But whether this means doing away with the results, or merely suspending them for a certain period of time, this only means linking a political settlement, imposed by Lebanon's complicated religious and sectarian situation, to the regional and international situation. Thus, the source of the suspension or elimination of the election results lies outside the country, through the opposition's regional allies, Syria and Iran. This is a certainty, even though the conditions that are impeding the reflection of these results on the formation of a government are being generated by parties belonging to the local opposition. Meanwhile, other parties are being forced to humor their allies in this obstruction, and for reasons that are beyond their capacities, as they are regional ones. This is also the case with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has continued to entreat a Saudi Arabian-Syrian accord so that the task of forming a Cabinet can be completed successfully. In the first place, it is not logical that the minority should be able to suspend the election results, even if we are talking about a minority + Syria and Iran, and should derive its strength and ability to do what it has done up to this point from something other than the Lebanese voter that goes beyond the country's borders. One might say that Lebanon's history has always been thus. But the events of recent weeks have indicated that what has been taking place goes beyond this history, due to the interplay between local and foreign factors. The prime minister-designate had already recognized these foreign factors, and the equation of the opposition + Iran and Syria, prior to the polls, which he was confident of winning, accepting the idea that Hizbullah's weapons would remain outside discussions, since the solution involved external players. Hariri agreed that decisions related to the resistance and other key issues would not be put to a vote in the Cabinet before reaching an agreement on them. The excess regional weight enjoyed by the minority was translated into Hariri's acceptance of a limited role for the majority – it would not receive half-plus-one of the Cabinet seats, while the opposition would pick up one-third of them, allowing it to bring down the government by merely resigning from the Cabinet. Hariri accepted the groundwork for the drafting of political understandings between the two sides, based on the decisive vote going to the president of the Republic, who can be affected by the stance of the opposition, along with Syria and Iran, equal to the impact of the majority on him... Hariri has demonstrated considerable wisdom by staking out a position that is in harmony with the requirements of regional political understandings – these brought him to the post of premier-designate in order to bring about a reconciliation with Damascus, as part of Syrian-Saudi accord; the wisdom in question here goes beyond his own personal position. Meanwhile, the minority's conditions, which cancel the June election results, appear to be a form of eliminating the domestic political scene in favor of the outside world as a whole. However, the move to do away with the election results is in fact a rejection of all political events that have appeared in the last five years and that have produced these results. It is a rejection that eliminates the accumulated events and reactions to them, ever since Syria decided to extend the term of President Emile Lahoud, and moving through the assassination of Rafik Hariri and Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, and all subsequent events in which blood became mixed with politics and security, both domestically and abroad. While awaiting the crystallization of Hariri's intention to step down from his position as prime minister-designate and its impact on the Syrian-Saudi understanding (events have proven that Damascus was waiting to see this come about), things have gone beyond an agreement on Hariri's heading the next Cabinet, and asking it to move farther in the facilitation of forming a government, so that it regains its old role, prior to the assassination of Hariri and its withdrawal from Lebanon. There is a build-up of feelings of hatred once again among a large part of the Lebanese, while the minority, and the majority groups, are working hard to dispel sensitivities at the popular level. The events of the last few years cannot be eliminated. There is a similarity between the younger Hariri's comment earlier this week that “May God be my witness,” is close to the expression that the older Hariri used when he declined the invitation to form a government in 2004 (“May dear Lebanon be entrusted to God”), even though the conditions in each case are different.
