Lebanon First MP Ammar Houri told New TV on Saturday that the Syrian-Saudi Summit will reflect positively on the Arab situation in general, but that the issue of Lebanon’s cabinet formation is to be managed internally, stating that “the situation regarding the government formation is encouraging.”
Houri also said that Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has not and will not be left “uncomfortable,“ especially given his insistence on forming a national-unity cabinet that represents all parliamentary blocs, in spite of leaving all options open.
The killing of one person and the wounding of four others in clashes in a Beirut suburb sparked a flurry of comments and condemnations on Wednesday, and raised fears about the renewal of security incidents similar to the ones that preceded the May 7, 2008 street clashes between pro-government and opposition gunmen.
One person was stabbed to death and four others were wounded in clashes that broke out overnight Tuesday in Beirut’s suburb of Ain al-Remmaneh.
The violence late on Tuesday pitted youths from the mainly Shiite district of Shiyyah against residents of the nearby Christian area of Ain al-Remmaneh.
The incident took place in an area that was the first line of demarcation during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 bloody Civil War.
A well-informed security source told The Daily Star that Lebanese troops arrested eight men suspected of involvement in the fight.
Security reports said young men on scooters came from Shiyyah and began circling near a restaurant located on the Sanine Intersection of Ain al-Remmaneh. “A heated exchange with local residents ensued and knives were used leaving one dead and four injured, all from Ain al-Remmaneh,” the reports added.
On Wednesday, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said the victim, George Abu Madi, 30, had nothing to do with the mishap. The NNA identified the four wounded as Moussa Abdel-Ahad, George Mansour, Mazen Mitri, Salim Boulos and Jean Habr.
Ain al-Remmaneh residents called for a shutdown Wednesday to coincide with the funeral of Abu Madi.
The Ain al-Remmaneh clash came as Lebanon grapples to form a government four months after a general election that saw the March 14 coalition defeat the opposition alliance.
In another security development on Wednesday, eight people were wounded, one seriously, in a grenade explosion targeting a coffee shop in the northern port city of Tripoli, a security report said on Wednesday.
The blast took place in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood and was followed shortly afterward by a second grenade explosion in the nearby district of Bab al-Tebbaneh. No one was injured in the second blast, the security report said.
The area was the scene last year of deadly sectarian clashes between Sunni supporters of Lebanon’s parliamentary majority and rivals from the Alawite community supported by Syria.
Commenting on Ain al-Remmaneh killing, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said the incident would not be another Ain al-Remmaneh bus incident, in reference to a 1975 attack in which gunmen from the right-wing Phalange Party killed Palestinians riding a bus in the neighborhood. The incident is considered the spark of Lebanon’s 15-year Civil War.
Aoun urged the Lebanese judiciary to be “firm and prompt” in dealing with the incident. “We condemn the incident and the militia acts that followed it,” said Aoun.
Shiite factions Amal and Hizbullah downplayed the incident describing it as an “individual quarrel.” Shiyyah is considered a stronghold for the Amal Movement.
Following talks with Interior Ziad Baroud on Wednesday, Hizbullah MP Nawwaf Moussawi described the Ain al-Remmaneh incident an “individual quarrel,” adding that “politicizing the incident is an attempt by certain parties to improve their political positions or instigate unrest.”
Amal Movement MP Hani Qobeissi, meanwhile, said the incident had “personal rather than political” motives behind it.
The secretariat general of the March 14 forces on Wednesday condemned the incident and urged the army and police to protect the Lebanese. It also urged the Lebanese to “be cautious against the scheme aimed at inciting strife, transferring it from one area to the other and creating a tense situation.”
The coalition stressed the need for taking immediate steps to “arrest the murderers and perpetrators who attacked a safe neighborhood in Ain al-Remmaneh.”
Phalange Party MP Sami Gemayel urged the army to erect “permanent checkpoints” in hot spots to avoid similar incidents.
Lebanese Forces media officer Nadi Ghosn described the Ain al-Remmaneh incident as an “attack.”
“This is not the first time Ain al-Remmaneh citizens are assaulted,” he told the Free Lebanon radio station.
He asked how residents of Shiyyah would respond if “they were ever attacked by their neighbors from Ain al-Remmaneh.”
Late last month, the sixth Francophone Games opened at the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium on the outskirts of Beirut. The ceremony was suitably lavish – this is the first time that the games have been held in an Arab country since their inception in 1989.
The games are open to participants from the member states of the International Organization of the Francophonie, which exists essentially to promote the French language internationally and unite French-speaking populations, most of which are former colonies and protectorates. Formed in 1970, it welcomed Lebanon into its ranks just three years later.
The area that comprises modern-day Lebanon has historically had a close relationship with France and became one of the country’s official protectorates in 1918. As Raghid al-Solh notes in Lebanon and Arabism: National Identity and State Formation, “French motives were clear; they wished to create a viable ‘homeland’ for the Maronites, their traditional clients, and establish a strong territorial base in the Levant for French interest and French influence.”
That influence did not end in 1943, when the country was granted independence. The Christian community in particular has remained attached to its association with France, hence the prevalence of fully Lebanese people named Jean-Michel, Pierre, Antoine and Marie. But it’s not just Christian. As a result of the highly developed French private education system, the reach of the French language has spread across sectarian divisions.
Today, the best schools and universities in the country teach in either French or English, with the latter quickly becoming the more widely spoken foreign language. As the Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross noted in an October 2007 article on Lebanese society “English has incontestablement [indisputably] supplanted French as the language of status in this resolutely status-conscious land.”
Nonetheless, Canadian politician Louise Beaudoin, the member of the pro-independence Parti Quebecois who played a large part in instituting Quebec’s bilingual language laws, insisted in a 2008 article for Canadian newspaper Le Devoir that around 38% of the Lebanese population can more or less express themselves in French. The “peu ou prou” – more or less – noted is perhaps the most important part of her opinion piece.
While, a percentage of the Lebanese may well speak fluently and primarily in French, like their equally Anglophone counterparts, they tend to be those who attended private schools, where there is more of an emphasis on teaching English and/or French. It is indeed possible to travel in Lebanese social circles where no language other than French is really needed, and equally possible to live in Lebanon and communicate almost solely in English. Yet these social circles are as select as they are small.
Although the Lebanese constitution notes that French can and will be used officially when specified, Arabic is the official language and that in which both the country’s politics and its day-to-day affairs on the street are conducted.
However, given the predominance of private schooling here, many grow up speaking a foreign language with as much, if not more, fluency as Arabic. The result is a mix-and-match dialect in which all three languages are meshed together in an attempt at national communication.
It is likely that total French fluency in Lebanon is restricted to the 16,600 speakers that the 16th edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World as of 2004, while the rest are the “more or less” that can express themselves in French just enough to get by in the quirky linguistic mix produced by three systems of education and adapted two strong language influences into the indigenous Arabic.
The section on basic Lebanese-Arabic phrases that online travel guide iGuide provides is particularly illustrative of this linguistic phenomenon. The Lebanese-Arabic phrase for “Excuse me” is the French pardon. To apologize, travelers are instructed that the English word sorry will do just fine and should they need to find a bathroom, a seamless Arabic-French mixture of “wein il Toilette?” is provided.
Should hunger strike, Wikitravel’s phrasebook helpfully details that the Lebanese-Arabic word for ham is the originally French jambon, and instructs that to inquire whether a Lebanese bar provides snacks visitors should ask “3endkoon Bar Snacks?” meaning “do you have bar snacks?”. Should drinks be desired following the bar snacks, the ever-useful Lebanese-Arabic phrase to ask for another round is also provided; “Round tenye, please.”
While this dialect is widespread and for the most part facilitates the interactions between the different linguistic populations of the country, it hardly counts for the trilingualism that tends to be claimed in clichés along the lines of “in Lebanon even the car-park attendant speaks three languages.”
The car park attendant does not speak three languages, as he runs a car park he has probably not been afforded a private education in a foreign language and so he speaks Arabic. But, having absorbed enough elementary phrases in both the preferred languages of the upper class, he will find your voiture and express “thanks” upon payment.
Are the Lebanese lost with all those languages, or do they want to use them all when they speak? a blogger from France living Lebanon asked on her blog named “Hi! Kifak, Ca Va?” after a common English-Arabic-French greeting often used in the county. Not really finding an answer, she concluded the mixed dialect was amusing, “as long as everybody understands each other.”
With an educated class that often speaks French and English with more ease than Arabic, and tempestuous domestic politics that are run in the complete opposite linguistic pattern; the dialect would indeed be amusing, if it did not literally illustrate the largely absent national dialogue.
Montag, 05.10.2009 [Berlin]. Jetzt sind es noch acht Tage, bis mein großer Traum nach über drei Jahren beginnt, in Erfüllung zu gehen. Ich verschlinge die Reiseführer und die Informationen, die man über den Libanon finden kann wie am Fließband. Hotel und Flug sind gebucht, sogar das Servicetaxi für die Fahrt vom RHIA nach Ras Beyrouth ist schon bestellt.
Für alle, die mich immer noch für verrückt halten, habe ich einen schönen, kurzen Bericht gefunden, der auch die letzten Zweifel aus dem Weg räumen sollte.
