We Are All Lebanese Today

Lebanese students protest the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. (AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

By Mona Eltahawy

There is a book that many visitors to Beirut buy. It shows "before" and "after" pictures of the city. The before pictures show devastated streets and crumbling buildings that date back to Lebanon's 15-year civil war. The after pictures are transparent overlays that show the same streets and buildings today, rebuilt, gleaming and resolutely Beirut once again.

Rafik Hariri was responsible for many of those "after" pictures. In fact, in one of those historical ironies that we are all too familiar with in the Arab world, Hariri was killed in an area that is probably featured in that book. He was killed in a neighbourhood that he helped rebuild.

Perhaps one of the more famous cases of historical ironies behind an assassination in the Arab world came on October 6, 1981 when Muslim militant army officers murdered Anwar Sadat as he watched a parade marking the 1973 war that helped propel him into the international statesman he became.

I will not try to persuade you of who killed Rafik Hariri. You have probably already made up your mind. I will tell you instead that conspiracy theories take so much effort that they deplete the energy needed to think straight. And anyone who is thinking straight will know that those who killed Hariri want to tear out those pictures of the Beirut of today. They are more comfortable with the bloody past of the "before" pictures.

That Beirut of the crumbling buildings and destroyed streets is the city that many invoked when trying to describe Iraq after the US invasion. When car bombs began to explode and hostages were paraded on television one after the other, when Iraq's various ethnic and sectarian groups seemed to teeter on the edge of a civil war,Beirut of the "before" pictures was invoked.

But today's Lebanon is not that of the 1970s. The mourners at Hariri's funeral are proof of this - Muslim, Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze came together to show that the violence of last Monday's assassination will not push them back into the crumbling buildings of the "before" pictures.

Each one of those sects knows only too well the price of violence, especially on a personal level. Michael Young, opinion editor of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper captured this poignantly when he described the scene at Hariri’s residence on Tuesday night.

"Walid Jumblatt, Nayla Mouawad, Amin Gemayel and Hariri's children were all standing in line accepting the sympathies of mourners. Each of them had a relative who was assassinated. That Syria should have been considered, fairly or not, a culprit in each instance, and that Hariri's murder should have revived such sentiments, suggests that it has long overstayed its Lebanese welcome," Young wrote in the Daily Star.

If such unity now turns its anger against Syria and calls for its withdrawal from Lebanon so be it. The Arab world cannot complain of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the American occupation of Iraq while continuing to remain silent over the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Remaining silent is an example of the double standards the Arab world is always accusing the Americans of exercising. I am well aware that the Syrian army did not invade Lebanon but was instead invited by the Lebanese government. It is now time for the Lebanese government to have the courage to ask the Syrian army to leave.

The unity that Hariri's death strengthened is not the only antidote against violence in Lebanon. There is also this: the Arab world is getting tired of violence. Surely the blood that has flown in Iraq is too much to bear?

The book of pictures of war-torn Beirut and rebuilt Beirut is an apt metaphor for the Arab world today. Which pictures reflect our aspirations? Do we want to hold onto the "before" pictures that are a tragic reminder of how quickly our differences turn bloody? Judging by the tone and behaviour of many Arab governments, these pictures are perfect representations of that mindset - out of touch with the world, out of touch with their own people and still mired in the failed rhetoric of Arab nationalism.

The Arab world wants to live. The majority is younger than 30 and whether they live in Cairo, Damascus, Khartoum or Sanaa they want to live in the here and now, in the equivalent of the "after" pictures that show a rebuilt Beirut. The majority of the Arab world is fed up with stale ideas and wants new ones instead.

In the same way that Le Monde newspaper published a huge headline reading "We are all Americans" after the September 11 attacks, and the same way the New York Times said "We are all Madrilenos now" after the train bombings in the Spanish capital on March 11 2004, the Arab world should be saying "We are all Lebanese today" as a sign of solidarity with Lebanon.

It would be our way of saying that regardless of who is found by an investigation to have killed Rakik Hariri, we send our condolences and support to the people of Lebanon.

And it would also say that we are all with Beirut in the "after" pictures - that we support the unity of the Lebanese people and we will not let anyone tear out those pictures of a rebuilt Beirut. We must turn our back against the old pictures.

Mona Eltahawy is a New York-based columnist for the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where this originally appeared. Her website is www.monaeltahawy.com.