Why ex-minister’s return to prison may ease Lebanon’s political deadlock - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/michel-samaha-hariri-military-court-sectarian-strife.html
the voices that once supported Samaha are muffled. Even Jamil al-Sayyed, one of the most hard-line figures in the Axis of Resistance — the anti-West alliance between Hezbollah, Iran and Syria — and within the ranks of the March 8 Alliance, has nothing good to say. Sayyed tweeted Jan. 15, a day after Samaha’s release, “Michel Samaha betrayed my trust and erred against me when he accompanied me from Damascus with him knowing what he was hiding in his car.” Sayyed reaffirmed that stance in another Twitter posting April 8, the day the court handed Samaha his prison term.
It appears that the irreversible decision came against the backdrop of uninterrupted bilateral dialogue sessions between the Future Movement Party (part of the March 14 Alliance) and Hezbollah (part of the March 8 Alliance) that started in December 2014. The dialogue has been ongoing despite the political sparring between Future Movement and Hezbollah over the war in Syria and the emerging crisis with Saudi Arabia; the next session is scheduled for May 10. Two items on the agenda are easing sectarian tensions and finding a solution to the two-year presidential vacuum.
One of the outcomes of this dialogue so far is Minister of Interior and Municipalities Nouhad al-Machnouk’s rejection of the Arab Interior Ministers’ decision March 2 to brand Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
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