Sunday, January 27, 2008

"As the Lebanese army celebrated its “victory” over Fatah al Islam, its commander, Michel Suleiman, seemed poised to become the next president. Today posters and banners in Lebanon declare him the “savior.” He would not be the first president to have punished the Palestinians. Between 1958 and 1964, President Fuad Shehab created an elaborate, ruthless secret-service network to monitor the Palestinian camps. During his 1970-76 reign, President Suleiman Franjieh clashed militarily with Palestinian factions, even using the air force to bomb a neighborhood thought to be pro-Palestinian. I have heard followers of assassinated president-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose Maronite Christian militia massacred Palestinians in 1976, brag that he was stopped at a checkpoint in the early years of the country’s 1975-1990 civil war with a trunk full of the skulls of dead Palestinians. Even today, the Lebanese opposition’s preferred candidate for president is Michel Aoun, a Christian retired general who also participated in the 1976 killings." (thanks Nir)