What many Lebanese are failing to realize, either because they do not see the whole picture or because it does not suit them to see it, its that Syria cannot tolerate a strong Lebanon.

This has its roots far back in history…
Until the 70s, Syria had a very unstable political setup…there was a coup d’etat every other day (figuratively speaking) and most of these were prepared and cooked back in Lebanon.
Hafez al Assad realized this and saw that the key to his firm grasp of the Syrian arena was through controlling Lebanon…we saw what we saw from 1976 all the way to today even…

The next point is that Syria’s economy is very much dependent on Lebanon…many goods are smuggled through the borders into Lebanon and sold for higher prices than they would fetch back in Syria…Also the drug and weapons trade is a very lucrative one for Syrian merchants…All these bring in a large sum of money that helps the Syrian economy stay stable. A UN force on the borders would put a massive dent in this traffic…

The Third point is that a strong govt. in Lebanon ultimately means there are going to be demands for Syria’s accountability in the actions she did during the 29 years it stayed in Lebanon…every single sect in Lebanon at one point or another, suffered from Syrian occupation…we still have hundreds of prisoners in Syrian jails, regardless of what some unscrupulous, so called Lebanese, politicians may say…

The fourth and equally important point is that a strong govt in a stable Lebanon will carry on with the investigation of the Harriri murder and alongside this, there will be an international court…and Syria, more precisely the Syrian regime, ranks very high in the list of suspects…

All those points should explain to you why Bachar el Assad is so keen on destabilizing the country…UN troops on the border will allow the UN Resolution 1701 to be carried out faster, and therefore speed up Israeli withdrawals, which would ultimately mean a light in the long dark tunnel we, the Lebanese,  have been crossing…
Hearing Bachar el Assad on Dubai TV last night is enough to show you his real motives: “any demarcation of the borders in Shebaa farms will cause HA to become illegal…and we do not want that… let the Israelis withdraw, then we will delimit the border…”  translate this as : “ooops looks like the Lebanese are going to get Shebaa farms after all…lets try and stop this…”

The latest threat to reach us from Damascus, came from their minister of foreign affairs, Mr Moallem, and that was to close the borders between the two countries if ever UN troops were deployed between Lebanon and Syria…
IMO, let them close them…lets see who will loose…we are still at war…so I guess suffering for a couple of weeks is much better than to keep suffering for your lifetime and that of your kids…
 

Lebanon should at last do whatever is in its own interests…for nearly thirty one years, we have been doing whatever suited the others…be it Syria, Iran, Palestine and the list is long… Time now to look into our own interests…