Will Lebanon pay the price for the swap deal?

I was making some rounds of meetings last week, as Israel and Hezbollah were completing the implementation of their controversial swap deal (I wrote about Israel's motives to have such deal here, a harsher view can be found here). Israelis were grim on the day of the actual swap, Americans were somewhat puzzled, and Lebanese were celebrating. Not just Hezbollah-Lebanese - but Lebanese in general, or at least their leaders (I know some Lebanese whom I'm sure weren't as happy as the leaders pretended to be).

This was not a pretty scene, as some were quick to point out. The result of the deal can be strategically devastating as the Lebanese Daily Star reported: "[The swap] undermines moderate Arab states and leaders, and may encourage armed struggle across the region at a time of upheaval in the relations between the West and the Middle East."

But it can also harm Lebanon, or at least those factions in Lebanon that believed in the March 14 revolution. "What happened this week reveals the limits of that alliance", wrote Michael Totten. "If internal war begins in earnest again--and it increasingly looks like it will - the alliance likely will rupture and the liberals will find themselves isolated in their own sectarian cantons again as they did during the last civil war".

In my meetings around town I heard similar voices from all corners.

Administration officials wondered if the support for democratic Lebanon was another naive and mishandled policy that should be scrapped; Administration critics said that they knew all along, and warned, from investing such effort in what Secretary of State Rice was calling the "birth pangs" of the new, supposedly democratic, Middle East; Israelis with which I spoke mainly on the phone were stating the obvious: There's no such thing as Arab democracy and this was a pipedream that was not going to last.

Some of these Israelis believe that Bush senior officials not get it - hence their tolerance of Israel's renewed negotiations with Syria. For Israelis the deal with Assad was always clear and somewhat cynical: you do what you have to do in Lebanon, as long as we get the peace and quiet we need both on the Syrian and the Lebanese border. If Assad wants the Golan Heights and Lebanon for real peace, Israelis will have no problem to say yes (the Golan will be more problematic than giving up the dream of a new Lebanon).

Such a deal was never in the cards as long as the Bush administration believed in the possibility of a new Lebanon. In fact, some wealthy Lebanese in America are now supporting John McCain over Barack Obama because they believe Obama will not be tough on Syria as McCain will. They think McCain will be the one less prone to "sell" Lebanon. But these Lebanese ought to listen to the new voices coming out of the most supportive Washington corner they ever had. People who bought into the idea of a different Lebanon waiting to emerge, people who did not yet lose hope in Arab democracy in Iraq and Lebanon and other countries.

Some of these exact same people (and others as well) were watching Saad Hariri calling the swap "a historical day of national joy" - and felt no sense of joy. They felt outrage - both at Israel for signing the deal but also at the leaders of free Lebanon for celebrating it. They felt betrayed by these Lebanese leaders. They felt disgust. It was for them - as one knowledgeable Israeli jokingly said - a "moment of clarity." This is the term the President is used to using as to explain why Hamas' victory in the Palestinian election was not all bad.

And yes - this was last week, as emotions ran high and TV reporters were covering celebrations live for the world to see. It is too soon to know whether such feelings survive the more detached analysis of the weeks after. It is hard to tell whether the outrage, the disgust, remain in place.

But something happened last week that's hard to ignore: The March 14 Lebanese movement lost its image. Thus, to the long list of possible groups that will be paying a high price for the swap deal between Israel and Hezbollah one should add a candidate: free Lebanon.