Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: A new round of national dialogue to be held Tuesday will likely be dominated by the specter of terrorism currently hanging over the country following last week’s deadly twin suicide bombings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, officials said Monday.
However, the sudden easing in strained ties between the Future Movement and Hezbollah, brought on by a rare show of Lebanese solidarity that denounced the ISIS-claimed attack, is expected to leave a positive impact on the 10th dialogue session among rival political leaders, a Future MP said.
“The new encouraging climate between the Future Movement and Hezbollah will have a positive impact on the all-embracing dialogue as well as on the bilateral talks between the two parties,” Future MP Mohammad Qabbani told The Daily Star.
“This positive climate might lead to medium progress in the national dialogue’s attempts to break the presidential deadlock,” he said.
But Qabbani ruled out “a major breakthrough” in the 18-month-old presidential interregnum while the nearly 5-year-old war raged on in Syria. “A breakthrough in the presidential crisis will have to wait for hammering out a political settlement for the Syrian conflict,” he said.
At least 46 people were killed and over 200 others were wounded in the double blasts that ripped through a bustling shopping area in Beirut’s southern suburb of Burj al-Barajneh last Thursday, in ISIS’ deadliest attack that has sent shudders across Lebanon, which had been jolted by a string of car bombings and suicide attacks in the past two years linked to the Syrian conflict.
The attack has brought the Lebanese of all political and religious stripes together, including Hezbollah’s rivals, in condemning the attack, sparking calls for national unity to prevent the country’s slide into chaos and sectarian strife similar to what is happening in Syria and Iraq.
Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who voiced solidarity with the residents in Burj al-Barajneh, has reacted positively to Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s renewed call to reach a comprehensive political agreement, including the election of a president and an electoral law.
In an indirect response to Nasrallah’s appeal, Hariri stressed that the election of a president was the key to a political settlement.
Two days after the bombings, Nasrallah pleaded in a televised speech with rival factions to benefit from the “positive atmosphere” that has prevailed in the country to reach a comprehensive political agreement on key issues, such as the presidency, the formation of a new Cabinet, Parliament’s work and an electoral law.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said an internal political settlement for which Nasrallah had called demanded mutual concessions by the rival parties.
“We consider Sayyed Nasrallah’s proposal for an internal settlement essential. Let citizens and officials meet this initiative positively because there is no alternative to this settlement for two reasons,” Qassem told a Hezbollah ceremony at the Lebanese University in Hadath, to mark the party’s “Martyr’s Day.”
“The first reason is that waiting for [the outcome of] external developments is a futile act. … The second reason is that there is still a chance amid reasonable and appropriate security to meet and engage in dialogue to reach the required results.” “Let it be known that any settlement entails concessions and gains. There is no settlement with gains only. We must make concessions in return for what we gain and they [March 14] must make concessions in return for what they gain. We call for a settlement that includes an exchange of concessions and gains in order to move to a healthy Lebanon,” Qassem added.
Tuesday’s dialogue session will be held at Speaker Nabih Berri’s residence at noon instead of Parliament. A spokesman told The Daily Star that the decision to move the dialogue venue from Parliament to Ain al-Tineh was in response to Kataeb MP Sami Gemayel who had demanded changing the venue in order to avoid the disruption of businesses in Downtown Beirut.
The presidential impasse is the first and single item on the dialogue agenda. The all-party talks, which began Sept. 9, are also intended to end paralysis in Parliament and the government and approve a new electoral law.
Following last week’s two legislative sessions that passed urgent draft laws, Berri called for the formation of a core committee to draft a new electoral law within two months.
Berri will host a luncheon for the dialogue members at the end of the session, the Central News Agency reported.
It quoted Deputy Parliament Speaker Farid Makari as saying that he did not rule out the possibility of the latest security developments, namely the Burj al-Barajneh bombings, and the “positive harmony” between Hariri and Nasrallah to figure high at the dialogue session.
In their last dialogue session on Nov. 3 that was dominated by the 4-month-old trash crisis, rival political leaders remained sharply split over the characteristics of a new president, further prolonging the presidential impasse that has paralyzed Parliament legislation and crippled the government’s work.
The last two dialogue sessions have been boycotted by the Kataeb Party in protest at the government’s failure to solve the trash crisis. Similarly, the Kataeb Party has said it would not attend any legislative session before the election of a president.
The Kataeb Party Monday criticized the Cabinet for failing to hold an urgent and extraordinary session following the Burj al-Barajneh attack. “This is a crime against the Lebanese people equal to the Burj al-Barajneh crime,” the party said in a statement following a weekly meeting of its political bureau chaired by party leader Gemayel.
Referring to Nasrallah’s call for a comprehensive political settlement, it hoped that this would be “a signal to restoring priority to the internal situation and seeking a Lebanese solution to the political crisis regardless of what is happening in the region.”