Published: 6 August 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Lebanon’s descent into madness was almost complete before massive explosions at the Port of Beirut ripped the heart out of the country. The country of my birth.
For many Lebanese, it was the last straw. In October last year, mass protests swept across Lebanon. Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters from across the religious and class divide took to the streets accusing the political elite of corruption and calling for social and economic reforms. Similar events took place all over the world, including at the Sydney Opera House and the old Federal Parliament in Canberra. People were fed up with the corrupt Lebanese government and were prepared to express it.
There were changes in government, but these were deceptive and cruel. It was like shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. The continued existence of Hizbullah in government, with its unswerving allegiance to Iran, dashed any hope that Lebanon could emerge as a strong, proud and independent nation.
If there is to be a new dawn for Lebanon, it will need governments like ours to demand change. Foremost is a decision to declare and ban Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation, in line with the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The local Lebanese community have called on our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, to follow the example set by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, who promised the Lebanese people that no aid will reach the hands of the corrupt.
While Hizbullah is in the mix, the only hand to reach out will be theirs.
Public anger in Lebanon has grown with each passing year. Electricity and water shortages are a daily reality. The economy has stalled and unemployment has grown to unacceptable levels, particularly among the young. The health system, once a jewel of Lebanese society, is no longer capable of treating itself let alone the people. The COVID-19 pandemic made sure of that.
Not so long ago, Lebanon was one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East. Today it is technically one of the poorest. Prof Faysal Itani, a political analyst and deputy director of the Center for Global Policy at Georgetown University, wrote that the port, like other aspects of Lebanese society, suffers from "a pervasive culture of negligence, petty corruption and blame-shifting."
Even before the smouldering embers have been extinguished at the port, which has been sarcastically described as the ‘Cave of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves’ because of the rampant corruption, the Hizbullah-aligned President of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, and Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of the Iran-linked organisation, have tried to blindside the people with outrageous claims. Among them is that the explosions were caused by a bomb or a missile, fired they say, by a malevolent force. Where is the evidence?
Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, declared that he would chair a local investigation to report in five days. On the fifth day, he and his government resigned. With the country in election mode, there will be no investigation; no insight into the cause of the explosion and loss of more than 200 lives.
President Aoun has closed down the possibility of an international investigation by claiming it would undermine Lebanese sovereignty. No Lebanese investigator would risk his life or the life of his family by presenting an impartial report. But the families of the dead and injured deserve to know the truth, no matter how unpalatable that may be to the ruling elite. The Lebanese are rightly cynical of locally-conducted investigations. A good example is the assassination of Major General Wissam Elhassan in October, 2012. The car which exploded came from a Hizbullah enclave in south Beirut. Its movements were caught on street cameras. The political elite refused to make the findings public because no-one dares challenge Hizbullah’s power.
The denial by Nasrallah that his group had stored weapons or explosives at the port is outrageous. “I would absolutely, categorically rule out anything belonging to us at the port. No weapons, no missiles, or bombs or rifles or even a bullet or ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah declared. “No cache, no nothing. Not now, not ever.”
Nasrallah must have forgotten that his ‘Party of God’ was the first to report that the explosion was due to ammonium nitrate, less than half an hour after it happened.
It is well known that the port was of strategic military importance under the control of Hizbullah. This accounts for the repeated bombings of Iranian road shipments destined for the port by the Israeli air force.
There is mounting evidence that explosives, ammunition and missile fuel were stored by Hizbullah at the port, well away from prying eyes. And it’s the reason why Hizbullah refused to allow the ammonium nitrate to be moved, despite repeated written requests by Civil Port authorities since 2014. Some Hizbullah operatives (one of them an Australian citizen, Milad Farah) were caught red-handed in 2012 with a stockpile of ammonium nitrate in Europe, South America and the Gulf region.
Everyone in Lebanon knows that the port was a revenue generator for Hizbullah, the same as Beirut International Airport and the many border crossings into Syria. Australian citizens wanting to import products from Lebanon can also testify to this fact.
It is not the incompetence or negligence of port officials that led to the explosion. Placing them under house arrest is a ruse, a way of deflecting attention from the real culprit, Hizbullah.
If President Aoun really cares about Lebanese sovereignty, he should call on Hizbullah to hand over its arms to the Lebanese army and let independent Lebanese lawmakers run the country.
Whatever the truth, only an independent and transparent investigation run by international experts has the capacity to convince the people of Lebanon and the international donor community of what actually transpired.
The Lebanese people are owed that much.
*Dr Jamal Rifi AM, is a Lebanese-born Australian citizen who runs a medical practice in Sydney. He is a prominent member of the Lebanese Muslim community and was awarded The Australian newspaper’s Australian of the Year in 2015.
