Lebanon deal in works after mass Beirut rally

Arab League envoy due in Beirut Monday after announcing he received positive response from Hizbullah-led pro-Syrian opposition to proposals aimed at ending political crisis which paralyzed government and raised fears of return to civil strife

Lebanon's feuding pro- and anti-Syrian factions looked set for a compromise after an opposition rally drew protestors on to the streets of Beirut in numbers the army said were "unprecedented."

An Arab League envoy was due in Beirut Monday after announcing he had received a positive response from the pro-Syrian opposition to proposals to end a political crisis which has paralysed the government and raised fears of a return to civil strife.   

The envoy, Mustafa Ismail of Sudan, told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television that he had received the "agreement in principle" of Shiite militant group Hizbullah, which has been spearheading the 10-day-old opposition protests, and was returning to Beirut for further talks. ...

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Surprise: Deal struck to end Lebanon standoff?
Allahpundit

Exceedingly strange. Hezbollah dropped another massive protest on Beirut today replete with veiled threats of violence and a call from its Christian Syrian-tool ally, Michel Aoun, for the formation of an alternate government. An impressive display of power.

By the end of the day, they were ready to accept a deal brokered by the Arab League that would keep the current government in power. Huh?

You’ll have to wait until morning for an informed analysis from the Lebanese bloggers, but here’s my half-assed take in the meantime. Egypt’s foreign minister said this afternoon that an international tribunal would be convened to investigate Rafik Hariri’s murder regardless of what happens in Lebanon. Syria is mortified at the thought of its role in the Hariri assassination playing out in public; they’ve been bumping off Lebanese cabinet ministers, the theory goes, in hopes of preventing a quorum so that the government can’t legally approve the tribunal. Didn’t work, though — the government approved the tribunal last weekend, although the country’s Syrian-puppet president refused to sign off on it. That leaves us at an impasse. It may be that the Sunni powers in the region, i.e., Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis, are now sufficiently worried about the Shiites grabbing Lebanon that they’ve decided to play hardball and break the impasse by working to have the tribunal convened through other avenues. If so, it would render the protests largely (but not totally) pointless. In which case, if you’re Assad or Nasrallah, why not make a deal and take what you can get? Meanwhile, the pro-government side held a massive protest of its own today in the Lebanese city of Tripoli. Clearly things were starting to escalate and they weren’t going to stay peaceful forever. Maybe Nasrallah, for whatever reason, wasn’t ready for outright civil war.

So what kind of deal did Nasrallah get? A pretty good one all things considered, sounds like to me: ...