A Lebanese woman displays a poster of Rafiq Hariri as people gather outside his Beirut mansion Feb. 15 to mourn his death (AFP Photo/Patrick Baz).

This writer was in Saudi Arabia with colleagues when an historic series of events took place which began with a tragic and horrendous explosion in Beirut on Feb. 14. Just days earlier we had predicted that something violent would occur, because it looked like President George W. Bush was about to make a series of historic moves to try to end the Arab-Israeli dispute along lines already worked out several years ago.

Whenever a possible moment of truth has arisen in the past, something unexpected has happened—like the assassination of then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—and peace has been drastically set back. We had even discussed what might happen this time.

It had become clear with the Iraqi elections that things were going to change in Iraq forever. It also had become clear that Bush and his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, were determined to make an historic decision to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute along the lines of the Middle East “road map” to create a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been working desperately to forestall this solution. But it appeared that Bush and Rice had made their decision and already seemed prepared to implement it, much to the joy of the European allies and all of the Middle Eastern states. Then, boom. Someone murdered Rafiq Hariri, the self-made Lebanese man from Sidon who had made his fortune in Saudi Arabia and then gone on to become the man of the hour in trying to put together the broken pieces of his nearly defunct country.

For more than 30 years, Lebanon had been controlled by the late Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad and his Ba’ath party. Upon his death five years ago, Assad’s mild-mannered son, Bashar, who originally had been studying in London to be an ophthalmologist, had become the heir apparent when his brother, Basil, who was being groomed to succeed their father, was killed in an auto accident six years before the father’s death.

The Assad family, members of Syria’s secretive Allowite minority, control all key Syrian military and political positions. The explosion in Beirut, which occurred very close to Hariri’s home in Beirut’s seaside corniche area, stopped everything in its tracks.

Some people, including this writer, and such an astute observer as the prominent British author and journalist Robert Fisk, concluded that Hariri’s murder was planned and executed by Israel’s dreaded Mossad. The Israelis have been deeply involved in such assassinations at key moments in Middle Eastern history for many years.

Later, as my colleagues and I passed through the United Arab Emirates to Dubai, we asked industrialist and writer  Khalaf Al-Habtoor, as well as prominent Palestinian editor Ghassan Tahboub, who has lived in the Emiratesfor more than 20 years, for their conclusions about Hariri’s killing. Both declared that it was too early to name a suspect before a thorough investigation has been concluded.

Now that an investigation has commenced, it would be wonderful if the mystery can be solved. My guess, however, is that the evidence will not be conclusive, because the assassination was so carefully planned and the scene was so thoroughly obliterated by the giant amount of explosives expended.

Some put the blame on the Syrian government, which has a sinister reputation—almost rivaling that of the Israelis. Other speculation centered on Iran and its control of the Hezbollah, and that cannot be ruled out. It seems unlikely, however, that the Syrians or the Iranians would do something so counter-productive to their own interests, because their guilt could only hurt either of those two countries.

This writer, who by then had moved on to Qatar, found that there, too, most people were hesitant to nameeither of the two principal suspects, Syria or Israel.

There really was no reason for Damascus to commit this horrendous murder and cause all this human tragedy. The Syrians angrily refuted the accusation, and continue to deny it. On the other hand, Israel has every reason to distract all of the Middle East, because the Israelis have no intention of letting the Israeli-Palestinian problem be solved with a two-state solution. 

Events moved very rapidly starting on Tuesday, March 1. Condoleezza Rice and representatives from France and other European nations attending a Middle East conference in London called on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Russia, an important Syrian ally, flatly told it to leave Lebanon. On Thursday, Bashar Al-Assad traveled to Saudi Arabia to try to secure support. According to Western news accounts, however, the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, is said to have told him directly to get out of Lebanon, and quickly.

Political analysts and Lebanese opposition leaders have expected Assad to repeat Syria’s pledge under the 1989 Taif accord, reached in Saudi Arabia, that ended Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. That accord, then as now, calls for a redeployment of Syrian troops out of Lebanon. Once again the Syrians have been reluctant to carry out the pledged withdrawal. They say the withdrawal must be gradual, in order not to set off another Lebanese civil war. That is a reasonable request, but the Lebanese insist that this time there be a time limit for the Syrians to leave the country.

Meanwhile, Damascus is very concerned that the Israelis, who took a large swath of territory from Syria during the 1967 war, will take advantage of the situation. The Syrians believe they will never get the Golan Heights back, although they have been demanding its return for 38 years. Some Israelis have implied that the land will be returned in a final peace settlement. A larger number of Israelis have made it clear that they have no intention of returning that key strategic area. In fact, they hope that Lebanon’s Litani River may eventually be seized in some opportunistic manner to benefit Israel.

If Washington would make it clear that the Israelis must return the Golan Heights to Syria, everything else would begin to fall into place. The Israelis, of course, continue to ignore their own obligations in this regard. It would be much better to heed President Ronald Reagan’s advice—“trust but verify”—rather than put all the onus on the Syrians and make no demands on Israel. As usual, the United States seems to be afraid of the Israelis. Therefore it is vitally important that the European Community and the Arab League hold to their principles and insist that Israel must pay a price as well.

The world may never know who killed Rafiq Hariri. It is certain that the goal of the assassination was to shuffle the deck in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Israel. But if the Syrians withdraw from Lebanon and some stabilization measures are taken to keep Lebanon from returning to civil war, the international community may be able to pick up the pieces very rapidly.

The key to stability in the region is settling the Arab-Israeli dispute and restoring the two-state solution, which is the only way to end this problem once and for all. Both the Arab states and the European Union understand this perfectly. It is only the United States that appears to be so uncertain and unpredictable. If this problem is ever to be solved, however, it is time to start now, during President Bush’s second term, and without further delay.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.