What are the Lebanese to do?

On Wednesday, the year-old unity government of the nation of Lebanon collapsed, as 11 of its 30 cabinet members resigned in protest of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s cooperation with the U.N.-backed international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of his father. The tribunal is expected to issue indictments, which will likely include members of Hezbollah, a political party with alleged terrorist ties, in the near future, the anticipation of which has been the root of growing tension in the nation for some time now.

Of the 11 ministers to resign, two are members of Hezbollah and eight belong to the Shia Amal movement, a group allied with Hezbollah, and Michel Aoun’s bloc of Maronite Christians, with the eleventh being Minister of State Adnan Sayyed Hussein.

Although the resignations and consequent dissolution of the nation’s governing body may have been unanticipated, general political turmoil was not. An indictment implicating members of Hezbollah in the Hariri assassination would largely tarnish the image of the Iran- and Syria-backed group in Lebanon, which maintains itself as a pure resistance movement working to defend the nation from Israel, its neighbor to the south. The bombing in question, however, killed 22 people, and such high-profile Lebanese blood on the party’s hands would likely undermine grassroots support. As such, the party has been quick to label the U.N.-backed tribunal as an “Israeli project” and for that reason urged Hariri, prior to their sweeping resignations, to oppose the investigation. The resignations themselves were prompted specifically by the cabinet’s refusal to convene an emergency meeting in hopes of condemning the tribunal’s forthcoming findings.

Many have been quick, especially in western media, to dispel Hezbollah’s allegations of some sort of dark Israeli hand in the tribunal as overstated, but it’s easy to imagine that Israel would be pleased with an erosion of Hezbollah’s place in Lebanon, regardless of Israel’s involvement with the tribunal. And the Lebanese love their conspiracy theories (there is a relatively popular notion there that the Haitian earthquake was triggered by the U.S. government in an effort to establish military bases close to Cuba). It’s not hard to see why they might be wary of the intentions of Israel, which has invaded Lebanon and challenged its borders on multiple occasions, the most recent skirmish occurring a mere six months ago.

All of this amounts to a situation that is extensively complex, and one that is best characterized, for lack of a more eloquent turn of phrase, as an absolute mess. And it raises a question that stretches as far back as the founding of that nation itself, which is this: what are the Lebanese to do?

After all, in addition to their conspiracy theories, the paradoxically cynical optimists that inhabit the nation hold tightly as well to their grudges, and the issue at stake in the Hariri investigation is one that pits the value of absolute justice against that of present and future stability. And although the notion that no crime should go unpunished, especially as it relates to one’s own blood, is perhaps one of the strongest motivators to man’s sense of purposeful initiative, at what point does it become nothing more than obscenely unproductive?

There are many who argue that those responsible must be brought to justice, and that to deviate from that conviction is to not only give in to and reward criminal behavior, but to ensure that it persists in the future. The argument is one with which I, alongside many other Americans, align myself, but it is not one that I can say with absolute certainty should be universally applied. That is because it is founded on supposition; the supposition that a governing or judiciary body can cooperate within itself against outside forces and that it is capable of ensuring its own preservation. This supposition does not apply in the case of a government that has endeavored to dissolve itself.

I do not know what will happen in Lebanon, nor can I discern exactly what should happen, either, and I suppose that many in the region feel the same way. Sadly, though, I think that history will be doomed to repeat itself there in the coming months, and what was for a time known as the Paris of the Middle East will become once again embroiled in the political and military feuds of its many factions and lawless neighbors.