Cronica de una muerte anunciada

The Pierre Gemayel assassination was probably the most quickly solved murder in history. In fact, even before the trigger was pulled, the Israeli intelligence groupies at MEMRI issued a report (dated November 21, the same day as the assassination) dramatizing the Hizbullah decision to hold street-demonstrations in support of their demands for bigger representation in Cabinet, under the scary heading "Lebanon on the brink of civil war". MEMRI added: "It should be noted that these statements and threats are supported by Syria and Iran."

And when the assassination news broke, the Western news outlets, as if with a single voice, referred to the victim as the anti-Syrian cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel. Knowledgable people everywhere "hinted" at the involvement of Syria in this. Or at least they referred to people who did, including Israeli foreign minister Livni, US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and Saad Hariri. Quite a broad cross-section, in other words, of informed opinion.

Naturally, the guilty verdict against Syria isn't based on any forensic evidence in the traditional sense of the word. It is all based on motive, namely a supposed Syrian motive for destabilizing the Lebanese political process.

Which is surprising, since it seems clear that Syria stood to benefit from the current directions in political development, not only in Lebanon, but in the Mideast region as a whole. Hizbullah has been intent on exploiting the opportunity to advance its position domestically, and it is hard to see how any gains it made would have been upsetting to Syria. Meanwhile, the Bush administration had quietly asked the Syrian administration to help out in the pacification of Iraq, and this was reflected in the highly-publicized visit to Baghdad by the Syrian foreign minister on the weekend. Any such US request would have involved some degree of US concessions to Syria, and this would probably have involved an easing of direct US pressure on the Syrian regime, and a lighter US hand in Lebanon. Hardly the kind of environment that would make the Syrian regime anxious to stir up an international outcry over an assassination.

On the other hand, there are a couple of regimes that could well have felt they were losing control of the regional political evolution. Unexpectedly, the visit to Baghdad by the Syrian foreign minister was quickly followed up by the news about a three-country summit in Tehran next weekend. Maybe it's just me, but if I were in charge in Tel Aviv or Washington, I would have been more than a little upset to hear that. This was supposed to be a controlled process for the strictly-limited purpose of pacifying Iraq, and suddenly it was turning into a Syrian-Iraqi-Iranian summit. Without the US, and where none of the participants was particularly friendly to Israel.

Which is merely to say that if all there is to go on is motive for upsetting the card-table, I don't think the finger points that decisively at Syria. Quite the contrary.

Of course, once you realize that Western news media didn't point out to people the dramatic shift in the US-Syria dynamics, or the regional implications of the Tehran-summit idea, perhaps you can being to understand the Syria-is-guilty mentality. All you have to do is recall that for the entire six years of the Bush administration Syria has been the embodiment of evil. So I guess after all it wasn't that hard to pick them out of the lineup.