Posted on 01/25/2002 7:11:58 PM PST by l33t
In July 2001, Elie Hobeika called a press conference to announce that when the time came he would "reveal many important secrets that deal with many people" in Lebanon. The press conference puzzled a lot of people in Lebanon and there was a flood of press articles demanding he say what he knew. Maronite members of the opposition, close to former Lebanese Christian strongman, General Michel Aoun, reached the conclusion that Hobeika was trying to shake off the Syrians, particularly Razi Cana'an, head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, after Hobeika fell out with Damascus.
A short while later, Hobeika announced he was ready to testify in the Belgian courts dealing with the lawsuit against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, filed by survivors of the Sabra and Chatila massacres in 1982. Hobeika said he was going to testify against Sharon, the Israeli defense minister - and Hobeika ally - at the time of the massacres, which were ordered by Hobeika. But especially after his press conference, the Syrians feared Hobeika might use the stand in Belgium to testify about their role or "advice" about how to eliminate the Palestinians in Lebanon. Linking Syria to Sabra and Chatila, even only as a Hobeika ploy, is the last thing the Syrians needed.
The closer Hobeika came to going to Belgium for the Sharon case - only in March will it be determined whether there will be a trial - the more there were people in Lebanon worried about what he might say. Sharon's trial, even if not Israel per se, played an important role in the end of Hobeika's life. He had enemies of every type: businessmen angry that while he was minister for water and electricity, Hobeika gave huge contracts to his cronies; the Jaja family, whose scion, Samir, was commander of the Phalange and was pushed out in a pro-Syrian putsch by Hobeika. They have good reason for wanting Hobeika dead; Samir is rotting in jail while Hobeika became a minister, a parliamentarian and in recent years a very wealthy businessman. The Chamoun and Jumblatt families also would like revenge for Hobeika's murder of their relatives, while General Aoun's supporters have a long history of sour relations with the man they called "the butcher" after his manner of treating political opponents.
Because of the many enemies and especially because of suspicions that Syria knew about the assassination in advance, even if it wasn't involved, one can assume the "intensive investigation" promised by the Lebanese authorities will end up finding the guilty party in Jerusalem. For Lebanon and Syria that is the ideal solution and just as paid assassins can be found there, so can paid guilty parties. Any other avenue in the investigation could reopen war memories and possibly a new round of revenge in the country.
A Lebanese commentator now living in Paris proffered the conspiratorial approach, in which Syria had an interest in killing Hobeika and shaking the political stability in the country to reassert its position as the defender of Lebanon from a new civil war, after it was forced to cave into public pressure and pull out some of its forces from Lebanon.
Hobeika, according to that commentator, was an easy victim, who anyway was hated by the Syrians, the Christians and the Lebanese government, which won't go out of its way to clear his name. The Lebanese princes and their Syrian masters can now relax a little, since Hobeika took a lot of secrets with him in the explosion.
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