All I can say is that Lebanon won’t ever be able to work together correctly because Muslims (/other countries e.g. Syria) don’t allow it. Lebanon has way more fanatics than Belgium, hence the violence and militias.

To make the image clearer, we have an Opposition in Lebanon who lost the elections and then withdrew from the government and called it illegal even though it is ..

This Opposition is led by the Hezbollah militia and they put tents all over Down Town Beirut and invaded private properties for a year now ..

They organized violent riots which caused in the death of few civilians and supporters ..
They dont pay their bills and block streets and burn tyres on several occasions ..

THey were invited to dialogue tons of times, but they want to simply block every decision the government ( majority) takes and this is inadmissible ..

So what i am suggesting here is that we bring our intellectuals just like your politicians did and let them sit and agree on things .. instead of fighting and keeping stubborn and paralyzing the whole country.

@Rodge: I don’t think “the belgians love their country and their country only”. No one really wanted Belgium in the first place. The French speaking founders of the Belgian state in 1830, actually wanted Belgium to join France. The Dutch speaking people at the time wanted to stay a part of The Netherlands. But nevertheless, Belgium was created and we all learned to live with it, but we don’t “love” it. A small fraction of people heat Belgium. They organise marches in which they burn Belgian flags. An other small fraction does love Belgium, but the overwhelming majority just doesn’t care. They feel fine as a Belgian, but wouldn’t shed a tear if one day Belgium ceases to exist.

We do have some violent demonstrations in Belgium. Until 30 years ago, things got out of hand quite often. Demonstrators clashed with the police and with each other. Those were real large scale battles of demonstrators wearing motor helmets, throwing stones and fighting with sticks. There were some isolated incidents in which demonstrators were shot at. Nowadays there still are clashes, but no longer on such a large scale.

Of course, this is nothing compared to the Lebanese civil war. So overall, I guess you can say that the emancipation of the Flemings in Belgium is a peaceful process (I don’t know if it’s true, but it is often said that the Irish Republican Army once offered to free an important Flemish politician from his prison cell before his execution, but the Flemings turned the offer down and the imprisoned politician was executed. After the execution, the famous Flemish writer Elsschot wrote a poem that ends with the words: “You thought, enduring people, that the cruel times of old tyranny were over, know now that nobody hears your voice, if all you do is praying and begging”) But the Flemings payed a high price for all there political realisations: they had to give up their majority. The result is, that in Belgium 40% of the people still have more political power than the other 60%.

As for the recent political situation: The previous government was very pride of there ability to maintain peace between the communities: “paix communautaire” as they call it. But they did so by ignoring all calls for reforms. As a result, the whole thing exploded during and after the elections. They did that again in December. They said: we’ll form an interim government now, and will discuss the institutional problems in march. Now, they are postponing the real problems again until June. We are nowhere near any solution. A possible solution isn’t even discussed. The discussion keeps getting delayed.

The problem with the Belgian model is that all these compromises between politicians, result in a terrible complex structure, that only specialists can understand (and even they often don’t agree). We’ve got 5 governments. That shouldn’t be a problem, if it was very clear what each of them is responsible for, but that isn’t the case. The Belgian state was deliberately made complex. This complexity makes it possible for all politicians from all sides to claim that they have won during the negotiations. But in reality, all Belgians loose, because such a complex and nontransparent structure can never work efficiently. As a result, every now and then people push for reforms to fix the mess that Belgium is, but because Flemings and Walloons have a completely different view on how the Belgian state should be organised, the result of negotiations is always another complex compromise that only makes things worse. Now we seem to have ended up in a situation where the creation of another complex compromise to keep up appearances, seems to have become impossible.

That’s why I wouldn’t recommend the Belgian model. In the Belgian model, the real problems are not discussed. Politicians just keep circling around them, looking for some other treats to keep their electorate happy. That can’t go on for ever. One day, Belgium will implode. The sooner this happens, the better, because in the mean time, it only costs us a lot of time, money and energy.

By the way, I saw a girl with a Lebanese flag during a demonstration for Belgian unity in Brussels in November. This is a picture of her: http://luna.vrijzijn.be/foto/18november2007/voorbeelden/_foto05829.html

In addition, What ever U.S is doing is not my concern, as long as it isn’t occupying Lebanon. When I say occupation, I mean it literally. We should fight the occupation, it should always be the priority, after fighting the occupation, we will initiate a dialog between all factions.

(the nick name is hilarious…loved your sarcasm)

let us say that we agree with Nakkash’s old famous quote…what is the solution now then? we adopted this saying before and we are we now?
so now you think that a new US/Israel war is the solution that will make hezbollah yenmeho?? can you be so ignorant to think that?
please enlighten us…we need such radical inputs and visions…let us hear

I agree with you on the syrian/iranian influence…but we will be ignorant if we don’t realize the US/Israel geopolitical interest in the region..the petrol of Iraq must reach Haifa…let us unittttt and dialog…they are playing with both parties..they are running are future