Please click Read More to view Michel Hayek predictions of 2011
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News ) As Lebanon bids farewell to 2010, it also bids a bittersweet goodbye to the hope that some 500 items on the Cabinet’s agenda – and on the agenda of the Lebanese people – would receive the attention they deserve.
Lebanon’s politicians have been busy warning the public daily that civil strife and unrest could break out with the issuing of an indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 killing of Rafik Hariri.
Unrest related to events in The Hague is a possibility. But so is the outbreak of unrest that springs from the failure to address people’s needs and grievances.
The daily business of government is not a luxury. When the government fails to act on the poor situation of electricity, water supplies, sanitation, road safety, infrastructure, or the economy, to name just a few items, resentment and despair grow to dangerous proportions.
If a given community feels it’s getting short-changed by the government, while other parts of the country “get their share,” tension over seemingly trivial things like a broken power line or unfinished road works can easily become a mini-sectarian war. It doesn’t take grand statements from the Hague to push the country to the brink.
It is no cliché to state that poverty, like the Cabinet’s paralysis, affects all sects. The political stalemate is eating away at the reputation of the government, and of the political system itself. If left untreated, it will eventually have a negative impact on investors and the business community, and lead to a drying up of political support from abroad. A government mired in such an impasse will find itself less and less capable of earning others’ respect, or securing their much-needed cooperation.
Lebanon has in the past lurched from one year to the next, suffering from an acute lack of planning and political vision. But 2010 will be remembered as the year of the infamous 500-item Cabinet agenda, which brings to mind the way the government allows garbage dumps to grow to frighteningly large sizes, until a bout of bad weather brings collapse, with disastrous consequences.
Lebanon has entered the Guinness Book of World Records of late, for its giant plates of tabbouleh and hummus, but the pile of accumulated policy paralysis also deserves mention in a record-book somewhere.
Elsewhere, countries will be entering the new decade by making huge efforts to provide better lives for their citizens. In Lebanon, the political class lives in denial, subsists on grandiose rhetoric, and waits for solutions from the outside world. But no solution will be durable unless Lebanese shoulder their portion of responsibility in 2011, acting with courage, creativity and inspiration. Otherwise, another lost year awaits.
Please click read More for exclusive Michel Hayek Video and Predicitons for Lebanon, Lebanese and Middle East in 2011. Prediction that covers the whole middle eastern region.
Michel Hayek Part II video predicions 2011
After a review of Michel Hayek predictions, khazen.org do not believe that these are predictions.
A prediction is specific, after reviewing all of the predictions that Hayek discussed it is more an analysis of the current situation worldwide with a focus to Lebanese citizen. Really nothing new was presented. For example he discussed wiki leaks getting ready to distribute bank sector information, anyone following the news would be aware that wikileaks has specific information on bank of America, and Bank of America has started taking all necessary action to get ready to handle the new information that wikileaks will distribute by buying specific domain names, so this is already out on the news, not really a prediction. Other prediction such as Turkey and Israel relation, this is also an analysis and can be explained in many ways, he specified that Turkey will be the winner, winning what? do you see what I mean, they can win in many ways, and then next year they say they have predicted that but in reality this statement is just too broad. Most of what Michel Hayek predicted can be explain in many ways. Another example was about the Lebanese weather. Please remember the last 3 month weather in Lebanon, and analyze how unique was the Lebanese weather so this is also not something new and more an action that we are encountering right now. A prediction about the Lebanese university, we are all aware that they are in a financial turmoil and has been fighting it throughout the last year. He has also predicted that Qatar will expend its Business shares by buying more worldwide. This is very easy to predict because Qatar has already started to expend they just won the soccer world cup for 2018, they really need to expend it is not an option to be able to welcome all of the new attention. Also Qatar and Abu Dhabi has been already expending throughout 2010 tremendeously. But it is interesting to listen to the analysis of Michel Hayek, which in my view is a good analysis of the current Lebanese situation.
EIRUT: The central political theme of 2010 – tension over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) – looks set to dominate 2011, as Lebanese wonder whether the country is headed for a “grand settlement” or only a temporary truce.
The stalemate over the STL, which is investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, took shape in mid-year, as Hizbullah, expecting to be implicated in the long-awaited indictment, stepped up its campaign against the tribunal.
By year’s end, the central government was mired in paralysis. Cabinet sessions on November 10 and December 16 were adjourned shortly after convening, with ministers unable to compromise over the contentious issue of “false witnesses” who misled international investigators into Hariri’s killing. Meanwhile, the government’s ability to function as a cohesive whole, never strong in the first place, disappeared entirely.
In a bid to avert possible civil strife, regional players will exert exceptional efforts to contain fierce tension that has crippled Lebanon this year, analysts said.
“Let’s face it, countries of the region will not allow the court to jeopardize the overall stability of the area,” Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut (AUB) told The Daily Star. “The situation in the region is not opportune for the tribunal to easily perform its tasks,” he said.
In the last six months, Lebanon has been ravaged by a flood of rumors over the post-STL indictment repercussions.
In a speech in July, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah slammed the court as an “Israeli project” aimed at striking at the resistance and sowing strife in Lebanon.
Nasrallah’s sharp condemnation forced the leaders of Lebanon’s two main powerbrokers, Saudi Arabia and Syria, to fly to Beirut on July 30 and call for calm.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also paid visits to Lebanon in late 2010 in a bid to ease the mounting tension.
However, the joint visit by Syrian President Bashar Assad and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah took center stage.
“I am convinced that Saudi-Syrian efforts are serious and fall in the interest of Lebanon,” said Fadia Kiwan, head of the political science department at Saint Joseph University. “Both Syria and Saudi Arabia are interested in Lebanon avoiding strife.”
According to Khashan, Saudi Arabia was trying to prevent any potential escalation in Lebanon. “Saudi Arabia’s main concern right now is not to know the truth [about who killed Hariri],” he said. “Iran’s rising influence in the region, internal problems such as political succession, as well as monitoring the insurgency in Yemen, are Saudi Arabia’s areas of interest at the moment.”
Local media has been rife with speculation about what Hizbullah might do if named in the STL indictment, with party officials remaining tight-lipped about their future plans.
According to Khashan, the media-spun scenarios were “baseless.” He downplayed serious violence following the release of the indictment, and predicted that Hizbullah would not take over Lebanon, as some have suggested.
Kiwan also dismissed the possibility of major clashes occurring, but did not exclude the possibility of sporadic security incidents, especially in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas.
A dispute in August over parking space in the mixed Beirut neighborhood of Burj Abi Haidar quickly degenerated into armed clashes between the supporters of Hizbullah and those of an ostensibly allied Sunni Islamist faction, the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (Al-Ahbash). The incident was seen as a sample of the intensity of clashes that might occur if the STL points the finger at Hizbullah.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri has so far remained silent over the presumed involvement of Hizbullah in his father’s murder, which was first widely blamed on Syria. Immediately after the killing, Damascus came under tremendous international pressure to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence.
Nonetheless, after he was appointed prime minister in 2009, ties between Hariri and the Syrian regime have warmed. In line with his rapprochement to Damascus, which he visited four times this year, Hariri said he was mistaken to accuse Syria of killing his father.
“At a certain stage we made mistakes and accused Syria of assassinating Rafik Hariri,” he told Saudi daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat in September. “This was a political accusation, and this political accusation has finished,” he added.
However, Hariri again lost touch with Assad in October, when the Syrian judiciary issued 33 arrest warrants against individuals said to have misled investigations into the Hariri killing, based on a lawsuit filed by former head of Lebanon’s General Security, Jamil al-Sayyed.
Sayyed, who was detained in 2005 for alleged involvement in the brutal assassination but released four years later for lack of evidence, argued defendants were involved in a conspiracy of false testimony intended to point to the involvement of Syria and its supporters in Hariri’s killing.
Many of those named in the Syrian arrest warrants are political allies or associates of Saad Hariri.
In July, Sayyed appeared before the STL in the body’s first public hearing, seeking to obtain information from the court to support his lawsuit.
In parallel, Hizbullah sought to discredit the Netherlands-based tribunal over the issue of so-called “false witnesses,” while demanding that Beirut block funding for the STL, withdraw Lebanese judges from the court and cancel its cooperation protocol with the body.
Analysts, however, agreed that the young prime minister caving in to Hizbullah’s demands would amount to political suicide.
Kiwan said the prime minister was currently in a “very critical position.”
“Hariri discrediting the tribunal is unthinkable,” she said, adding that Syria and Saudi Arabia were working out a formula that would likely see the Lebanese government express its reservations over any indictment accusing Hizbullah until clear-cut evidence is provided by the STL.
Khashan, meanwhile, considered Hariri’s comments to Ash-Sharq al-Awsat as having considerably weakened his position. “Hariri is already doing a good job of committing political suicide; his comments to Ash-Sharq al-Awsat stand as proof,” said the analyst.
Kiwan said Hariri completely bowing to Hizbullah’s demands will have drastic repercussions.
“Discrediting the tribunal will weaken Hariri’s position … He is not ready to do it,” she said. Such a move, Kiwan continued, would likely create major divisions among the Sunni community. “There will be divisions among Hariri’s Future Movement and the emergence of Sunni Jihadi groups which would embrace the cause.”
Another flare-up took place in late October, when dozens of women attacked two investigators and an interpreter dispatched by the STL’s Office of the Prosecutor to a gynecology clinic in Hizbullah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs to inquire about telephone numbers of patients there.
The clinic, owned by gynecologist Imane Charara, is believed to provide medical services to the wives of top Hizbullah commanders.
The STL vowed that the attack would not deter its investigators, while Nasrallah demanded that the government boycott the tribunal and warned in a speech on November 11 that Hizbullah will “cut off the hand” that dares arrest anyone of its members.
While Khashan highlighted that the court will not be able to apprehend suspects, Kiwan viewed any such attempt as the start of a violent confrontation. “The court should avoid making forced arrests because this will spark violent confrontations,” she said.
The two analysts agreed that the most plausible scenario was for the STL to carry out trials in absentia because Lebanon will not hand over suspects. “Trials will drag for years and are unlikely to reach any tangible conclusions,” said Khashan.
Several reports, including a controversial documentary broadcasted on November 22 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, suggested that STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare will base his indictment on the analysis of telephone data records.
Hizbullah reiterated on several occasions that such a premise was unreliable, backed by Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas, who said in November that Israel widely intercepts Lebanon’s telecommunications network and could tamper with phone records. Since 2009, Lebanon has arrested more than 150 individuals, including high-ranking telecom employees, on charges of spying for Israel.
This month, Israel remotely detonated spying devices it planted in south Lebanon, while the Lebanese Army, operating on a tip from Hizbullah, uncovered two sophisticated Israeli spying devices planted in mountainous regions of Lebanon.
Nasrallah had called on Bellemare not to overlook the premise that Israel might be involved in the Hariri assassination, and used an August news conference to unveil footage from Israeli spy planes of routes used by the slain former prime minister.
Amid a stalemate that has seen American officials vow the STL must continue, while Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared the tribunal “null and void,” analysts said only a comprehensive deal was likely to spare Lebanon the drastic repercussions of the indictment. Khashan said since Lebanon could not be considered an independent political entity, the country’s problems were a reflection of regional developments.
Kiwan said the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, will definitely reflect on the situation in Lebanon.
“We need to reach a minimum level of accord in order to face the difficult times in the region,” Kiwan added.
The analyst said the Saudi-Syrian initiative, which is trying to sort out the post-indictment phase, should mainly focus on preventing any confrontation between the government and Hizbullah.
“The deal might include a minor government change, with the new government vowing not to handover suspects to the tribunal,” she said.
Thorny issues such as “false witnesses” will also be resolved through judicial means, according to Kiwan. “The country is moving toward a settlement, although not a long-term one,” she added. “Let’s call it a temporary truce.”
