18 Comments. Add your own...

• 1. Rodge | March 9th, 2008 at 10:26 am

  Whether they are flanders or walloon, the belgians love their country and their country only, not Holland or France or Gernamy or whatever. Also they have a different culture of democracy, they know what the real democracy is about, and they act accordingly.
  Another point, they don’t allow anyone else to interfer in their own affairs.

  These are the main differences, and that’s why we are not able in Lebanon to find a solution.
  - We have a part of the Lebanese who cares for Syria and Iran in the first place, and some of them don’t even care a bit for Lebanon.
  - We have all kinds of intereference in the details of our own internal affairs, mainly from Syria, but also from Iran, Saudi, Egypt, US and the whole world.
  - Some of us knows Democracy by name only, and they only have the culture of war and fightings and blood, wal mawt li Israil wa Amrica.
  - Many of those don’t know how to work and be productive, so they only knows how to set some tents and curse and threaten the other side.
  - We have blind followers who know nothing about Politics or the country’s history, and yet they defend their leaders by using the exact words said by the latters.

  With this, we’ll not be able to find any solution, because some of us don’t deserve to hold the Lebanese nationality or even can’t be counted as human beings to start with.

• 2. Elie.F. | March 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am

  interesting article N,though i did not read it all but i need to ask some questions.
  1: what will the christians of QOBEYAT do and RAS BAALBECK DO in this situation,should we make them sell their homes and join the christian territory?
  2: u r talking about Belgium which is a 99% christian country in a christian continent, who will beleive in the lebanese christian territory containing 1 million people between 300 million arabs who don’t have any respect to christians in their own country?i mean look at 15 million AQBAT in Egypt,i think they r not allowed to go to church,look at the christians in Syria,they look like the 1920 films,hear no evil see no evil,even if they were in the army they r not allowed to be more than commandant. I am asking this question because i don’t want us to end like Israel and only supported by the USA.
  3: Who will be the president of the christian territory since we have GEAGEA,AOUN,FRANJIEH,HARB…..?
  4: this is a dream N that will never come true, the best thing is to strengthen ourselves as christians and proove that we r still responsible of the country of our ancestors,they gave it to us one peice not to give it back 4 peices.

• 3. N10452 | March 9th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

  Rodge,
  khayye khaleena nekhoud kel wa7ad 3a kelemto … if HA and all the pro-syrian parties re saying they want Lebanon .. 2inssa el cha3eb .. let them send their intellectuals to discuss on the basis of loving Lebanon and wanting it as a finite country …

  Trust me they wont say no .. so l7a2 el kezzeb 3a bayto ..

  Let us be clear on our differences then and who knows maybe come out with a plan to divide the country that all might agree on ??

• 4. N10452 | March 9th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

  Elie F,
  I am saying lets dialogue like Belgs are doing .. i did not say lets divide here ..

• 5. Patriot | March 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

  N

  I salute you man for this post

  that is and will always be the solution.
  in Lebanon it is constitutional to have a new elections…the country is divided, if we are democratic and self respectful, we need to go back to the people and give all the immigrates the right to vote also…democratic majority should rule, not M14 with foreign (US) power nor M8 with (Iranian / Syrian) force…come on people…sorna mahzalet l3alammm

• 6. Rodge | March 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

  N,

  U’re right my friend, but the question is will they let them participate, and if they do, who will ensure the implementation of the agreements?? we have a previous experience with the dialogue table.

  But let’s hope, I agree with you to leave the chance until the end.

• 7. Rodge | March 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

  N,

  It seems the March14 leaders are responding to your appeal in the posting “I’m out of words”, as they are expected to announce next Friday an important “Political Convention” which includes the mechanism of all the Lebanese participation to the movement, as well as the future strategic actions and plans.

  Let’s hope it will be as good as expected, at least a required change in the Lebanese political life

• 8. paul | March 9th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

  I think the Lebanese politicians are not capable to discuss such a topic,we have even problems with the organisation of the infrastructure, and the problem of the border with the neighbouring countries .

  It is very difficult to find qualified people especially if they should also be neutral.

  So we need help from the UN.
  For hezbollah is the UN not neutral and per US.
  therefore,I think that such a discussion is
  currently condemned to fail,it would even increase the religious tensions, this don´t mean that HA refuse the federalism,quite the contrary,they want the whole country for themselves.

• 9. Tarek | March 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

  The situation in Lebanon is totally different. What we are suffering in Lebanon is no political division it’s a Syrian-Iranian occupation. As you all know, occupation cannot be solved by dialog especially when the occupant’s gaol is to occupy not to reach some deal to retreat or so …

• 10. Patriot | March 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

  Tarek

  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

• 11. kezballah | March 9th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

  Give it up, deux negations ne font pas une nation, point a la ligne.

• 12. Patriot | March 9th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

  Kezballah

  (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

• 13. Elie.F. | March 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

  i’m with u N about the dialogue thing,but if it is to happen please try to answer my questions. SALUTE

• 14. Bachir 7ay Fina | March 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

  Elie.F.
  bi baalback 90% men ared el masi7iyé, jabarouhoun el chi3a ybi3ouha.
  Khod example Talya, senit 1974 kenit 100% christians, now ma bi 2at3o el 10% fiya.
  El madrasé el yasou3iyyé fiha, jabarouhoun yfawto cheikh y3almo el tlamiz din eslemé bi madrasé masi7iyeh.
  huh chou ba3ed baddak adrab men heik

• 15. Tarek | March 10th, 2008 at 12:32 am

  Patriot, they can pass the pipe through Jordan.

  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.

• 16. Tijl | March 10th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

  As a Belgian, I find it quite amusing to read this article and the reactions. I don’t know Lebanon well enough to compare Belgium to Lebanon, but I don’t think you will find any solutions in the Belgian model.

  @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

• 17. N10452 | March 10th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

  Tijl,
  Thank you for valuable input … i just want to clear that i am in no way supporting the belgium model here, but only emphasizing that you guys are trying to solve your problems as any civilized country would be .. despite the demoinstrations you mentioned.

  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.

• 18. Gabriel | March 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

  I’m Half Belgian and Half Lebanese.

  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.

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