Lebanon holds its breath over leaked revelations
Rice-Feltman and Marwan Hmadi on July 24, 2006 in Beirut,2006 While Lebanon under attack
Julian Assange may claim that WikiLeaks' disclosure of US documents is for the good of the world, but in Lebanon they have had an incendiary effect. The Hezbollah party is using the cables as proof of UN involvement with Washington – and thus, by extension, with Israel – and politicians are desperately denying that they gave intelligence information to the Americans about Hezbollah's secret communications system.
For weeks, the Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has been denouncing the UN's tribunal into the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri as an American-Israeli plot. He says that anyone giving security information to the Americans is an Israeli spy.
Beirut newspapers have devoted pages to the unexpurgated US cables, in which Lebanese officials revealed the names of suspected assassins to American diplomats, an act which – in this country – can end in a flowered coffin and crocodile tears from the murderers. Mercifully, opposing sides in Lebanon have chosen to accept the weird and unbelievable denials of those involved.
The UN tribunal's forthcoming accusations – which may be mercifully delayed – have already caused the Beirut government to divide into opposing camps. Now the US cables reveal that the UN has indeed been cooperating with the United States, asking for aerial reconnaissance pictures of the Bekaa Valley and sending DNA samples from Mr Hariri's suspected killer, Ahmad Abu Adass, to FBI headquarters for examination.
Mr Murr has been the target of a failed assassination attempt. (A hint that syria did it)
Yet more dangerous still is a 2008 cable stating that former Lebanese telecommunications minister Marwan Hamadeh provided the US with maps detailing locations of Hezbollah's communications network. The network, according to former US ambassador Michele Sison, "covers the Palestinian camps, and the Hezbollah training ca
mps in the Bekaa, and is penetrating deep into the Christian Metn and Kesrwan areas".
Mr Hamadeh, who denies these details, had also earlier been the target of an attempted assassination in which his bodyguard was killed. (Another reminder)
Only weeks after this conversation, Hezbollah (On May 7th)took over West Beirut, after gun battles with pro-government forces in which more than 100 civilians died, because of the government's demand (On may 5th) to break the Hezbollah's networks. (THE ONLY NETWORK NOT CONTROLLED BY ISRAEL)
There are some details in the cables on Lebanon which are provably wrong. A claim by Samir Geagea, a right-wing Christian politician, that Iran had provided Syria with 15 submarines, was palpably untrue. Mr Geagea has refused to comment on this cable. (WHY?)
Another allegation – that missiles were smuggled into Lebanon on board planes carrying first aid during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war – is provably untrue: Beirut airport was bombed on the first day of the battles and never reopened until the conflict had ended.
Added to this is a cable showing that although the UN no longer believed that four Lebanese security officers imprisoned after the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri were in any way responsible, Mr Feltman wrote that he feared their release might prompt one of them to take "revenge" against the US embassy in Beirut. The generals, released much later, remained in prison.
All of this is causing the Lebanese to hold their breath for more revelations. And for those named in the cables to hold their breath even more fearfully.
"Sister" Syria is known to have taken its own revenge for much less. (Fisk is holding sister Syria, not Wikleaks, not Israel is responsible for the lifes of his friends in March 14)
As for the Hezbollah, their MP for Tyre, Hassan Fadlallah, says the cables prove "that the US is using the court and the investigation committee as a tool to target the [Hezbollah] resistance". (He said as for Hezbollah. only Hezbullah, not the majority of Lebanese)
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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