Times Topics: Rafik Hariri

FIVE years ago today, the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon
was killed, an assassination that set off the “cedar revolution” and forced
Syria, the principal suspect in the crime, to withdraw its army from the
country. Meanwhile, global public outcry led the United Nations Security
Council to initiate an international investigation, the first of its kind.

Half a decade later, however, the Hariri case has made little progress
toward justice. Lately, Syria has reasserted its power in Beirut after years of
trying to destabilize a government dominated by its political foes. In
December, Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister and Rafik’s son, met with
Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, acceding to the reconciliation between
his own political sponsor, Saudi Arabia, and Damascus — making Lebanon
less likely to point the finger at Syria for the killing.

But the more significant problem actually lies within the United Nations
investigation itself. While it has been upgraded to a special tribunal, sitting
near The Hague, it has suffered from questionable leadership, lost key
members and last year had to release suspects for lack of formal
indictments.

The United Nations investigation team was set up in 2005 by Detlev

Mehlis, a German prosecutor who had investigated the 1986 La Belle
discotheque bombing in West Berlin. Mr. Mehlis had few doubts about
Syria’s involvement, and said so in his first report. He asked for President
Assad’s testimony (over Syrian protests), interviewed Syrian intelligence
officers in Vienna and arrested suspects. When Mr. Mehlis stepped down
from his position in December, 2005, he felt he had enough to arrest at
least one of the intelligence officers.

However, the investigation wilted under his successor, the Belgian judge
Serge Brammertz. Mr. Brammertz issued uninformative reports and
displayed a lack of transparency that discouraged potential witnesses,
unsure of whether he had solid evidence in hand, from coming forward; he
wasted time by reopening the crime scene to determine the kind of blast
that had killed Mr. Hariri, which three earlier specialist reports had already
established; he failed to follow through on the interviews with the Syrian
officers; and though he met with President Assad, he apparently did not
formally take down his testimony.

He also brought in more analysts to examine the technical details of the

crime, rather than more police investigators with the experience to compare
testimonies, make arrests and unravel the perpetrators’ chain of command.
After two years, Mr. Brammertz failed to identify any new suspects beyond
those Mr. Mehlis arrested, notably four senior Lebanese security officials
(whose continued detention he nevertheless reconfirmed).

“The investigation has lost all the momentum it had in January 2006” when
Mr. Brammertz took over, Mr. Mehlis told me in 2008. “Unfortunately, I
haven’t seen a word in his reports during the past two years confirming that
he has moved forward. When I left we were ready to name suspects, but he
seems not to have progressed from that stage.”

Mr. Mehlis wasn’t alone in his concern. Two senior Lebanese government
officials closely involved with the United Nations investigation also later
expressed their misgivings about Mr. Brammertz to me; one of them said
that he had “taken the public for a ride” and echoed criticism that his
investigation was top-heavy with analysts.

Mr. Brammertz, who stepped down at the end of 2007, declined my request
for a response to Mr. Mehlis. More disturbing, the United Nations itself has
remained silent, even though Mr. Brammertz’s successor, Daniel Bellemare
of Canada, has suffered his own setbacks. Last April, despite having
acquired prosecutorial powers, he was forced by the tribunal’s bylaws to
release the imprisoned suspects pending an indictment. Mr. Bellemare
deserves blame for taking on such a weak case in the first place, effectively
legitimizing his predecessor’s shoddy work. But the onus surely lies with
Mr. Brammertz, and with those at United Nations headquarters who never
held him to account.

The tribunal has also suffered from the departures of key officials. The first
registrar (the equivalent of senior administrator for the tribunal), Robin
Vincent, left because of differences with Mr. Bellemare. His successor,
David Tolbert, will step down later this month. The costliest exit, however,
will be that of the chief investigator, Naguib Kaldas, a respected Australian
policeman, officially because his contract has ended and he has been
promoted at home — though word has it he was expected to renew.

At the least, these developments raise doubts about the prosecutor’s

capacity to lead a complicated investigation and to get along with
colleagues; they also indicate that indictments aren’t forthcoming, which
may explain why top officials are finding it so easy to depart from a
landmark tribunal.

Any murder case takes time, but there’s reason to believe that investigative
incompetence or international political pressure, or a combination of both,
has played a role in slowing down, and even rolling back, the search for Mr.
Hariri’s killers. Whichever it is, the United Nations has done little to ensure
success. In our interview, Mr. Mehlis recalled that the United Nations
secretary general, Kofi Annan, had warned him that “he did not want
another trouble spot.”

The impetus to identify Mr. Hariri’s assassins is gone; not only has Lebanon
sought rapprochement with Syria, but the Lebanese public’s expectations,
after years of an inconclusive inquiry, have hit rock bottom. Foreign
governments fear the instability that might ensue if Mr. Bellemare issues
indictments, so few will regret it if he doesn’t. But the United Nations
pushed for the Hariri investigation; its integrity is tied up with a plausible
outcome. If that’s impossible, there is no point insulting the victims by
letting the charade continue. Better to send Mr. Bellemare home.

Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Beirut, is the
author of the forthcoming book “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: A Memoir
of Lebanon Found and Lost.”

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on

February 14, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.
SIGN IN TO E-MAILPublished: February 2, 2010
GHAJAR, Golan Heights — In this far-flung village that straddles a tense
international border, location is not just a real estate issue. It determines in
which country you reside.

Enlarge This Image

David Furst/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Boys played by blast walls in the village last month.

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David Furst/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ghajar is a village of 2,200 that has continually adapted to the shifting map of territorial conquests.

The New York Times

Ghajaris are Israeli citizens whose allegiance is to Syria.

The village, a cluster of pastel-colored houses in a deceptively tranquil
valley, sits at a volatile juncture where regional rivals Israel, Lebanon and
Syria meet. It commands crucial water sources, perched above the Hasbani
River and the Wazzani springs.

Ghajar (pronounced RAH-jar) has a complicated history, adapting to the

shifting map of territorial conquests and squeezed between Israel, which
currently controls the village, and its enemies, including the Lebanese
Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Now international powers interested in stabilizing the region are pushing

for another change in Ghajar’s status by returning the northern part to
Lebanon, unnerving the residents.

“These are simple people who want to live and earn a living in dignity,” said
Najib Khatib, the official village spokesman.

“What we want is for the village to remain united” with its 2,800 acres of
agricultural land, he said.

The latest chapter in the village’s saga began with Israel’s withdrawal from
south Lebanon in 2000. The United Nations determined that the
international border with Lebanon ran right through Ghajar’s central
square. The border has mostly been a virtual one, however, and with
Israel’s war against Hezbollah in 2006, Israeli soldiers returned to take
control of the Lebanese side.

But with a new government in Beirut and a desire to deny Hezbollah any
justification for attacking Israel on grounds that it is occupying Lebanese
territory, interested parties, the United States among them, want to see
Ghajar removed from a long list of grievances. Israel also wants to show a
willingness to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon in compliance with
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006
war.
As a temporary solution, Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force in
southern Lebanon, has proposed taking control of the village’s northern
part.

Yet, the roughly 2,200 residents of Ghajar are Israeli citizens whose
allegiance is to Syria. They insist that they never belonged to Lebanon.

“Now, Israel is occupying me,” said Atef Khatib, a pharmacist who lives in
Ghajar’s northern section. “I prefer to live in Syria. That is my country and
my home.”

Personifying the somewhat paradoxical existence of the villagers, Mr.

Khatib, who drives a shiny S.U.V., studied pharmacology in Syria and works
in Qiryat Shemona, an Israeli border town that has suffered greatly over the
years from Hezbollah rocket fire.

Despite signs of relative affluence in the village, daily life there already
borders on the bizarre.

Because of Ghajar’s location, the Israelis have surrounded the village with
fences and declared the area a closed military zone. Border police officers
control the southern entrance to the village and inspect every vehicle that
comes and goes. Access to the village for outsiders is strictly limited; a
group of reporters recently visited with special permission from the military
and were allowed to stay little more than an hour.

Since 2000, Israel has stopped providing services to the north. Mr. Khatib,
the spokesman, said that if a refrigerator broke down, it had to be taken to
the southern entrance for repairs, with electricity from an extremely long
extension cord.

Similarly, if the police need to certify the cause of death of a villager from
the north, the body has to be taken to the village entrance — “like a
refrigerator,” Mr. Khatib said.

The residents of Ghajar are members of the Alawite sect, the governing
minority of Syria. The village came under Israeli control as part of the
Golan Heights, the strategic plateau that Syria lost to Israel in the 1967 war.
When Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, the villagers chose to
become Israeli citizens.

At the same time, with Israel occupying a buffer zone in southern Lebanon,
the village expanded north into the territory now marked as Lebanese soil.
Disputing the United Nations demarcation line, Mr. Khatib, the
spokesman, claims that there were houses on the northern side before 1967,
built with permits from the Syrian authorities. By now some two-thirds of
the residents live in the northern part of the village. The school, the
mosque, the cemetery and the village lands lie to the south.

Between 2000 and 2006 northern Ghajar remained a kind of no man’s

land. Then the Israeli Army moved in, citing security concerns. Military
officials said that Hezbollah was working inside the village and had used it
as a base in a foiled attempt to abduct Israeli soldiers in 2005.

Israel is negotiating with Unifil and says it is ready to see the peacekeeping
forces replace its troops in northern Ghajar. But working out the details of
the arrangement, Israeli officials say, will take time.

Aside from security issues, the sides are trying to figure out the legal and
practical logistics of how Israeli citizens can continue a semblance of a
normal life while living in Lebanon.

The residents, who say they have not been consulted, fear that a barrier and
checkpoints will go up in the center of the village, disrupting life and
splitting up families. Most of the inhabitants belong to the same clan.

Ultimately, the villagers say, they want to be returned to Syria as part and
parcel of the Golan Heights under an eventual Israeli-Syrian peace deal.

In the meantime they prefer to stay united under Israeli authority. But they
are reluctant to say so explicitly. Such an admission could be construed as
betrayal by the neighbors across the lines.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 13, 2010
Because of an editing error, the dateline of the Ghajar Journal article on
Feb. 3, about the uncertain future of the residents of Ghajar, a far-flung
village that straddles the border convergence of Israel, Lebanon and
Syria, misstated the location of the village. It is Ghajar, Golan Heights —
not Ghajar, Israel. (Israel’s claim to Ghajar has not been accepted
internationally because Ghajar is part of the Golan Heights, which Israel
seized from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.)