Understanding Lebanon’s complex political system is no easy task. In a relatively small country of about four million, Lebanon has more than 18 religious communities and dozens of active political parties. The sectarian political system divides the 128 seats of parliament between 10 of those religious sects, leaving one for minorities.

Much has happened in Lebanon since the small Middle East country’s last general elections in 2005. Those elections happened in the wake of the February 2005 assassination of then prime minister Rafiq Hariri by a car bomb that shook Beirut’s seaside.

Just a month prior to the 2005 elections, Lebanese politicians including Rafiq Hariri’s son and current March 14 Future Movement leader Saad Hariri led demonstrations known as the “Cedar Revolution” which eventually led to the end of a near 30-year presence of Syrian forces in Lebanon.

It was during the Cedar Revolution that, on Mar. 8 2005, the Shia resistance movement and political party Hizbullah along with the other main Shia party in Lebanon, the Amal Movement, staged a large rally in downtown Beirut to support Syria, who they saw as the force that ended the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war and maintained stability in the country for the years to follow. Hizbullah and Amal, along with smaller groups, would from that point on be known as the March 8 alliance.

Days later on Mar. 14 2005, many of the groups most active in the Cedar Revolution staged their own rally, in which the March 14 alliance was born. In the 2005 elections, March 14 won the majority of the seats in parliament over the two other alliances, March 8 and the Change and Reform bloc led by the mostly Christian Free Patriotic Movement.

Ironically, it was the actions of March 14 and the Cedar Revolution that paved the way for former Lebanese General Michel Aoun to return to Lebanon in May 2005 after 15 years of exile in France. Aoun, who had battled Syria in the final years of the Lebanese civil war before going into exile, has now returned as an important Syrian ally. His party, the Free Patriotic Movement, is a key ally of the March 8 alliance.

After a Memorandum of Understanding between Aoun and Hizbullah in 2006, March 14 considered Aoun and the Change and Reform bloc to be a part of the March 8 opposition.

However, Free Patriotic Movement parliamentary candidate Ghassan Mukheiber feels differently. “If I were to be very polite I would say that it’s a misrepresentation of reality. If I were to be impolite I would say this is stupid,” he told IPS.

“(In the 2009 elections) Hizbullah will actually have less seats in parliament, while Change and Reform could have from 30-35…we are a part of Change and Reform bloc, and are not led by Hizbullah.”

For the March 14 alliance, a win by the opposition would be like a return to times before the Cedar Revolution.

“March 14 is for a democratic Lebanon that is free from outside forces,” March 14 and Future Movement candidate Mustafa Allouch told IPS.

“If Hizbullah wins there will be less freedom, and we expect that March 14 leaders will be persecuted like they were before 2005 under the Syrian regime. Diplomacy will be halted, and there will be not only major Syrian influence in Lebanon, but Iranian influence as well.”

Mukheiber calls such statements an “over-simplification”, and maintains that “the Change and Reform block is pro-western and against any hegemony or foreign groups in Lebanon. We want a free and sovereign Lebanon.”

With only an expected 11 seats it could get out of 128, why is the world focusing on Hizbullah in the run-up to the elections?

Dr. Omar Nashabe, editor at Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar daily says it is not just during election time that Hizbullah receives widespread attention. “Hizbullah is attracting attention because they have proved solid enough to not be defeated by Israel. The objective (in the 2006 war) was to uproot Hizbullah, but it has not been uprooted or weakened.”

Hizbullah, a Shia resistance group that later became a political party, was born at the beginning of Israel’s 22-year occupation of south Lebanon. Many Lebanese celebrate Israel’s withdrawal from the south in 2000 and its failure to weaken the resistance in 2006, as both victories for Hizbullah and the resistance.

The United States considers Hizbullah a terrorist organisation. Former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice offended many Lebanese on a visit to Lebanon during the Israeli war in 2006 when she referred to Israel’s attacks aimed at weakening Hizbullah as the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East.

Nashabe says many countries have an interest in the Lebanese elections. Countries such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are interested in the elections as any country is concerned with the government of their neighbours, he said. But the U.S. has a strong interest too, he said, pointing out that U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden had recently visited Lebanon where he met with March 14 leaders behind closed doors.

“The U.S. does not care about Lebanese democracy, but only about Israel’s security,” Nashabe went on to say. “What if the Iranian President came to Lebanon and had meetings behind closed doors; that would create a lot of noise.”

If the opposition does win more seats in the election Sunday than the governing March 14, the world will consider it a victory for Hizbullah – but Hizbullah will not, Nashabe says.

“The difference will be small, only five seats, maybe eight. For Hizbullah, the only victory is over the Israeli enemy.”

By Matthew Cassel and Moeali Nayel
BEIRUT, Jun 6 2009 (IPS)

One can be born in Lebanon and live here all one’s life, and still not be a Lebanese citizen. Lebanon is one of few remaining countries in the Middle East where a mother is unable to pass citizenship to her children.

Lina Abou-Habib Credit: Matthew Cassel

Campaigners have succeeded in securing that right in countries such as Egypt, which amended the law in 2004 to allow women to pass citizenship to their children, and in Algeria, which granted women full citizenship rights in 2005. In Lebanon the struggle continues.

“Lebanon is the worst,” says Lina Abou-Habib, director of Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTD-A), a group leading the campaign for women’s right to citizenship. Abou-Habib argues that the position in Lebanon is at variance with the popular belief that women in Lebanon have more rights than in other Arab countries.

“Images of Botox women driving big yellow 4X4s does not mean that these women are enjoying their rights,” Abou-Habib told IPS. People outside Lebanon look at only a “small island of prosperity.”

CRTD-A began its citizenship campaign in 2002 as part of a larger effort to support women who face inequality in the male-dominated Lebanese society. In the last parliamentary election in 2005, only three women were among the 128 members elected. The campaigners are hoping for more after the next election Jun. 7.

“It’s crucial before the parliamentary elections because the only person in the government who finally got to understand the campaign is (Lebanese minister for the interior) Ziad Baroud,” says Abou-Habib. Campaigners fear that Baroud, a lawyer who was a part of the campaign before taking office, and has supported it since, could lose his position in a new government.

They now want to make sure that the issue of citizenship rights for women remains on the table, and can be picked up by the incoming government.

Under the current law, written in 1925 and modified slightly in 1994, Lebanese women cannot pass their citizenship to their spouse or children. In a country of only about four million, but with as many as 400,000 Palestinian refugees and tens of thousands of Syrians and other nationalities, this lack of rights for women is affecting many families.

Non-Lebanese citizens face difficulties receiving equal social services such as healthcare, education and welfare, and in many cases are prevented from working.

For Palestinians, the issue goes back 60 years when most came to Lebanon after being forced from their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. They have never been given Lebanese citizenship or equal rights.

Special laws bar Palestinians from working in more than 70 professions in Lebanon. And without nationality, the children are affected as well.

Sharif Bibi, a 30-year-old graphic designer from Beirut, spoke to IPS about issues he faces as the son of a Palestinian father and Lebanese mother. “I had to quit my job last month because of the discrimination that I faced. I was underpaid, and social security tax was deducted from my pay check even though I don’t benefit from it.

“I was born in Lebanon, my grandfather is Lebanese, my uncles, cousins are all Lebanese, and I know Lebanon better than some of my Lebanese friends. I don’t understand why I’m not eligible to be treated like any other Lebanese person.”

Some lawmakers say these restrictions protect Palestinians’ right to return to Palestine guaranteed to them by UN General Assembly resolution 194 that was passed months after their exile in 1948.

Abou-Habib dismisses this argument. “If they’re so worried about the right of return, why don’t they say anything in situations where Palestinian women are married to Lebanese men?” Abou-Habib says this is an issue about women’s rights, and “not one that should be tied to the Palestinian question.”

The citizenship law means that many feel discriminated against in their own community. Abir, a saleswoman at an upscale clothing store in Beirut who chose not to give her last name, became visibly uncomfortable when asked about her nationality.

“The discrimination I’ve experienced for being who I am has made me depressed over the years when I was growing up,” she told IPS. “I sent many job applications, and it’s either I don’t get any call from the job; or, I have seen the employer throw my job application in the trash bin after finding out what I am.

“The truth is that my mother is from south Lebanon and my father is Syrian, and we live in Beirut,” she says. “It is really difficult sometimes when I meet people and they ask me where I’m from. Now I say I’m from Beirut, to avoid discrimination.”

Many lawmakers say that modifying citizenship laws would greatly alter the fragile demographics of the country. Abou-Habib says the sectarian make- up of Lebanon is one of the leading reasons behind the “racist and discriminatory policies…lawmakers do not understand their job. They don’t know that their job is to secure people’s rights.”

Bibi and his family live without those rights every day. “It’s sad because my mother always feels it’s her fault. She feels that after she married a Palestinian man they stopped treating her like a Lebanese citizen, and it made her feel like a second class citizen, or not even a citizen at all.”

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