A lot has happened since the last update. Lahoud was already weak, but now he is even in the position of possible resignation. Karami is thinking of resigning again, and Hizb’allah’s hold is weaker as well. The most startling news over the past couple of days has been a car bomb, which is roundly being said to be a “goodbye present” from the Syrian services.

Before starting, I found an interesting series of posts called “Lebanese Politics for Beginners.” So here’s parts 1, 2, 3, 4.

News:
President Lahoud called for immediate dialogue with the opposition, citing civil war fears.

Lahoud called on the two sides to stop their media war of words and street demonstrations rocking Lebanon since Hariri’s assassination and the subsequent beginning of a Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon.

The Ein El-Tineh coalition, which supports Lahoud’s Syrian-backed regime, is expected to quickly respond favorably to the dialogue call. But the opposition, many of whose leaders are demanding Lahoud’s ouster as a precondition for any dialogue, is expected to reject.

The presidential move came as Premier-Designate Omar Karami was reportedly nearing a give-up on efforts to form a salvation government of national unity. He is expected to formally renounce the formation bid on Tuesday or Wednesday, the local media reported on Saturday.

The opposition rejects the idea of a national union cabinet, insisting on a neutral government of a transitional nature to oversee the complete withdrawal of the Syrian army and conduct the spring elections for a new parliament under international observation.

The opposition also insists on an international investigation of Hariri’s Feb. 14 murder. His sister, Bahia Hariri, who is emerging as the standard-bearer of the opposition, has vetoed a proposal by Hizbullah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that the investigation be conducted by an Arab committee named by the summit in Algiers next week.

But the big event of the past week was a car bomb that went off in a predominently Christian neighborhood north of Beirut.

A car bomb wrecked the front of a building in a predominantly Christian suburb of Beirut early Saturday, wounding nine people and kindling fears of schemes to reignite civil warfare so as to show that Syria is sill needed in Lebanon as a stabilizing force.
There was no immediate clue linking the blast in New Jdeideh to the ongoing withdrawal of the Syrian army and intelligence services from Lebanon or the turbulent aftermath of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.

But opposition parliament member Pierre Gemayel, called the bombing an act of terrorism that could be an attempt to destabilize the country.

“This has been the message to the Lebanese people for a while — to sow fear and terror among Lebanese citizens,” Gemayel told Al-Jazeera satellite television.

The message is “if there is a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, look what Lebanon will face,” said Gemayel, elder son of former President Amin Gemayel.

As if to corroborate Gemayel’s theory, Hariri’s Future-TV network quoted witnesses as saying another car was seen racing out of the blast scene with three gunmen holding a man they had kidnapped. The speeding car was escorted by another and a 4-wheeler, FTV said.

The blast devastated shops on the ground floor of the adjacent building and blew off the facades of the apartments on the first and second floors.

“We don’t know what and why,” said a white-haired man who was asleep on the second floor when the bomb went off. “No one important lives here. We’re all ordinary.”

Standing in the street in blue pajamas, the man declined to give his name and broke into tears when a neighbor kissed him and asked about his children. “The two children were taken to hospital with glass cuts, but they’re fine” he replied.

Police said seven people were injured. But three local hospitals gave a total of nine people treated for light injuries, most from flying glass and debris.

The Future-TV network said the car, a Japanese-made Datsun, belonged to an Armenian citizen identified as Hagop Jankoian and was parked in front of an empty bingo parlor in the commercial area of shops and boutiques off the Beirut-Tripoli coastal highway.(Naharnet-AP-AFP)

The most interesting information appears in the next article, however, with the identification of the amount of explosives used.

Police have classified the Jdeideh bombing as an “act of terror designed to terrorize the people” but had not uncovered any solid evidence to pinpoint the identity of the culprits or their motives despite a public conviction that Syria’s secret service was behind it.
“They are bidding us farewell,” one Jdeideh resident was quoted by An Nahar Sunday as having said. “Whatever they do we shall keep demanding freedom. Why don’t they let go of us?” said another resident. The “they” was a clear reference to the Syrians.

Preliminary investigation has shown that 25 kilograms of high-powered TNT explosives equipped with a timed detonator were planted besides a privately owned car parked close to the wall of the ground floor shops and boutiques of an apartment building.

That’s a very powerful device, and no doubt very sophisticated as well. The terrorists generally have to use suicide bombers in the first place because it is hard to acquire modern weapons like this. This was a 25kg time-donated bomb. A sophisticated bomb was used to kill Hariri as well, placed in a gutter and detonated that way. If we remember correctly, one ton of explosives was found missing from the Bekaa Valley prior to Hariri’s assassination. I’ll hedge a bet that whoever killed Hariri was behind this as well. *cough*Syria?*cough*

This whole car bomb fiasco only helped escalate fears of a civil war, but Bahia Hariri was able to capture the “blame Syria” sentiment and unite people on that front.

The opposition has shot down on the spot President Lahoud’s initiative for an immediate dialogue at the Baabda palace between Syria’s loyalists and opponents in Lebanon as the nation reeled Sunday under a growing scare of renewed car-bomb attacks designed to show that Syria’s withdrawal may rekindle the civil war.
Slain ex-Premier Hariri’s sister Bahia, the rising star in Lebanon’s turbulent politics, touched off a fireball of public emotions when she visited the scene of the car-bomb explosion that wreaked havoc at suburban Jdeideh north of Beirut on Saturday, slightly wounding nine persons.

“I am here to assure you that my heart goes for all of you,” Mrs. Hariri told a frenzied crowd of weeping women who greeted her with chants of support for her opposition-backed drive to uncover the assassins of her brother, the architect of Beirut’s reconstruction from the ravages of the 1975-1990 civil war.

“Let’s all band together against whoever is trying to return us to civil warfare by such acts of violence,” the Muslim Bahia Hariri told the predominantly Christian crowds at the scene of devastation in added evidence that Rafik Hariri’s assassination has given birth to a genuine national unity. “We’re not ever going to fight each other again.”

She indirectly rejected Lahoud’s call for dialogue, saying “I do not deal with such matters.” But her principal opposition ally Walid Jumblat was blunter. How can he sponsor a dialogue while he is shielding the security commanders blamed for Rafik Hariri’s murder. “He’s acting as if he is neutral, free from responsibility for the assassination.”

Jumblat also renewed his urge to Lahoud to resign his post and clear the way for the election of a new president. “Otherwise, the future of Lebanon could be dark.

Jumblat also warned Syria against relying on “bands of vagabonds to stage destabilizing acts of violence” after its withdrawal from Lebanon, contending that Syrian intelligence agents were behind the Jdeideh bombing. “there is no other explanation,’ he said.

She certainly looks like to be the candidate of choice for when Karami resigns again.

A lot has happened earlier in the week as well. Syria has pulled its spies out of Beirut, but the current controversy surrounds Lebanon’s intelligence infrastructure, accused of aiding Syria. General Sayyed has brought a lawsuit against himself as well as the other intelligence generals.

Lebanon’s highest ranking security commander, Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, announced on Thursday that he was committing himself and all other security commanders in the country to trial before a court of law to establish whether they were involved in ex-premier Hariri’s assassination.
“I hereby refer myself and the rest of the security commanders to a judicial probe by acting State Prosecutor Judge Rabia Kaddoura to establish where any or all of us have taken any part or were duty derelicts in Martyr Rafik Hariri’s assassination,” said Sayyed, who heads Lebanon’s General Security Department better known by its pre-independence French name of Surete Generale.

“We are ready to accept the consequences and are even willing to stand trial before international courts,” Sayyed told a packed news conference at his office, charging Lebanon’s opposition leaders were demanding the ouster of the security commanders for political ends.

And the opposition is accusing him for these very reasons of setting the stage for a military coup.

The opposition accused Surete Generale Chief Brig. Gen. Jamil Sayyed of seeking to set the stage for an army coup d’etat to subject Lebanon to the reign of a military junta in the aftermath of ex-Premier Hariri’s assassination.
“It does look like we are on the threshold of an army coup to impose a military junta,” said resigning Tourism Minister Farid Khazen in response to Sayyed’s statement at his news conference a few minutes ahead.

“Sayyed has no right to make such statements as head of the Surete Generale. This is a violation of his duty as a state security official actually heralding a military coup with President Lahoud’s blessing,” said legislator Walid Ido, a member of Hariri’s bloc in parliament.

You also may remember President Bush saying that the United States will recognize Hizb’allah as legitimate if it disarms. Well, Nasrallah knows it will lose its power if it does so, which means that they have decided not to disarm.

Hizbullah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has rejected a suggestion by President Bush to disarm and enter Lebanon’s political mainstream with U.S. tacit blessing, assuring the Party of God will never leave Lebanon defenseless.
“We are ready to remain million of years until the end of time a terrorist organization in Bush’s view, but we are not ready to give up protection of our country, our people, their blood and their honor,” Nasrallah said in an interview broadcast by Hizbullah’s Al Manar TV station Wednesday night.

An Nahar said Thursday Hizbullah’s remarks about the crisis squeezing Lebanon since ex-Premier Hariri’s assassination were apt to draw sharp retorts from the opposition.

Nasrallah rejected the opposition’s call for an international inquiry into the Feb. 14 assassination and proposed, instead, a pan-Arab panel chosen by the upcoming Arab Summit in Algiers to probe the assassination.”

The opposition in turn rejected a pan-Arab panel and called for an international inquiry. Heh. A few other Hizb’allah news items of note is that the EU has banned Hizb’allah’s satellite broadcasting program. They cried about it. Perhaps the funniest was when Nasrallah apologized to the opposition after the tsunami demonstration.

One positive gesture made by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was his public apology to opposition leaders Walid Jumblat and Gebran Tueni, An Nahar’s General-Manager, for the abusive slogans against them during a recent pro-Syria Shiite demonstration in South Lebanon’s market town of Nabatiyeh.
“I am against the language of firing treason charges. It is unacceptable, shameful and deplorable, whether it targeted Gebran Tueni or Walid Jumblat or against me in the opposition demonstrations at the Martyrs Square. We reject and condemn these abuses,” Nasrallah said in the course of an interview with Al Manar TV station.

Portraits were raised in the Nabatiyeh demonstration depicting Jumblat as a Jewish Rabbi and Tueni as a bull with long horns. Tueni had dismissed the event as unworthy of comment, but Jumblat announced the suspension of his Progressive Socialist Party’s dialogue with Hizbullah pending a satisfactory explanation.

Also, for the first time ever, Hizb’allah supporters have paid tribute to Hariri.

BEIRUT – Thousands of partisans of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah gathered on Sunday for the first time at the tomb of Rafiq Hariri to pay tribute to the slain former prime minister.

They placed a floral crown and Lebanese flag on the grave, located near a mosque in central Beirut’s Martyrs Square.
…
An estimated 3,000 scouts attached to Hezbollah carrying portraits of Hariri and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later marched to the tomb where they observed a minute of silence, recited verses from the Koran and sang the Lebanese national anthem as well as a hymn to the dead.

“We have come to express our sorrow and our pain before a symbol of reconstruction and liberation and to say that we want the assassins to be identified,” said a young woman, speaking for the gathering.

“We renew our allegiance to Lebanon, the country you (Hariri) served with devotion and we swear to you that you will remain the symbol of our national unity.”

I see this as Hizb’allah taking a more conciliatory over offensive tone.

President Bush met with the patriarch of the Maronite Church, quite an influential guy, which has worried some commenters on our side of the Atlantic. In the very least, he has come out in favor of international monitors and for Hizb’allah to disarm.

The United Nations has given a fresh assurance that Syria would complete its military and intelligence withdrawal from Lebanon before the spring elections, reportedly by April 19, and pledged to send international observers to make certain the new parliament would be voted in without Syrian meddling.
The assurance and the pledge were reported by Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir after a meeting late Friday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York, grabbing page-one headlines of the Beirut Press Saturday morning.

The head of the Maronite church told reporters after the meeting that the talks focused on the evolving situation in Lebanon in the wake of ex-Premier Hariri’s assassination, which has generated an unrelenting local and international campaign to free Lebanon from Syria’s stranglehold.

The Patriarch called for a second straight day on Hizbullah to disarm. “Hizbullah fought to free southern Lebanon from 22 years of Israeli occupation. But since the liberation has been accomplished, there is no longer any reason for them to be armed. It is not proper that one group in Lebanon is armed and all others are unarmed,” Sfeir said.

Sfeir said the Shabaa farms, Hizbullah’s alibi to hold to its weapons, “is a question for the three nations — Lebanon, Syria and Israel — to settle. I think the United Nations could find a solution to the problem, and after that Hizbullah should just become a political group.”

That’s good to hear that someone is talking sense.

Blogs:
Tony has a rather large analysis of recent events in Lebanon — a must read.

A Lebanese Abroad has his top 10 predictions for Lebanon in the near-term.

Lebanese Blogger Forum liveblogged the car bomb.

2:41 am More from LBC…. more footages show a huge amount of people there. The car flew from the explosion and landed near a car rental place. 230463 is the license plate number which is really easy to read. LBC just announced that a few minutes after the explosion, in Zalka, a few armed men kidnapped a man from his car which is a Xtrail or a Grand Cherokee. The names are unknown still. It is obvious the explosion was a strong one.. external walls of the first few floors have collapsed from the building. Fortunately, this explosion took play this late at night since the area is a commercial and residential area. People from the neighborhood look shocked and frightened.

2:51 am The exploded car belongs to a person who lives in the building and is wounded as a result of the explosion. He claims that he parked his car at around 7pm and knows nothing of this.

It certainly didn’t make sense to me that it was inside the man’s car. Likely, if it was the same people who killed Hariri, then it was placed on the ground and blown up under or near the car to make it look like a car bomb.

Ah! The Lebanese Political Journal has word on another situation.

www.tayyar.org claims that another bomb was found beneath a Mercedes in Dowra, a Christian suburb of Beirut. Most likely this is connected to the bombing that occurred early this morning in nearby Jdeide.

Under the Mercedes? Definitely a pattern. He also notes some strange military movements.

Lebanon Matters has a hilarious flyer that he made up that pokes fun at crazy conspiracy theorists. You have to see it!

Ziad Zacca is one crazy guy. He jumped in his car, found where the car bomb was, and took pictures of all the damage. Check out the photos!

Roy Saad is worried about it too.

Lastly, Ya Libnan! announces that the House of Representatives has finally passed the legislation condemning Syria and promoting Lebanese democracy.

UPDATE: I almost forgot! The Word Unheard has a roundup of Lebanese bloggers that you should check out.