Even absent from the latest League of Arab States (LAS) summit in Syria, Lebanon scored a resounding political victory by identifying the core contention facing Arab leaders in 2008.
Put bluntly, the defining issue is the one embedded within the Arab/Iran-ian competition for regional influence -with dangerous sectarian connotations - one that sees the Muslim World divided and subject to unbelievable outside interferences.
Lebanon took a bold stand in this ongoing struggle, reaffirmed its particularity as well as its Arab credentials, and welcomed LAS support to elect Army Commander General Michel Suleiman president of the republic. It accomplished all of this with a vacant seat. Will it now succeed in implementing this victory?
Although the "Damascus Declaration" allegedly failed to do more than support the Arab initiative on Lebanon - to elect Suleiman as the next head of state -League Secretary General Amr Moussa must have wondered whether his efforts during the past several months were to naught.
In the event, Syrian President Bashar Assad asserted that summit debates were honest, while his foreign minister, the gregarious Walid Mouallem, called for Syrian-Saudi cooperation.
One cannot but marvel at their prowess. Supposedly, and although Mouallem insisted that "when the Lebanon issue was raised during the closed session, [Arab] leaders deemed that it should not be discussed in Lebanon's absence."
Why then did Moussa contradict the host foreign minister, by clarifying that "Lebanon was mentioned, and we heard several interventions and debates pertaining to it"?
One of these men must have been out of the chambers when the discussions occurred but it fell on Saudi Ambassador Ahmad Abdul Aziz Kattan, a veteran of intra-Arab debates, to put the icing on the cake.
He pointedly asked: "Are we to go to the [Lebanese] majority and request it to relinquish the rights that were granted to it by the ballot boxes?" Few missed the irony.
At this juncture, it may be useful to make two additional points. First, Damascus was clearly giddy that the summit was held in the first place, even with limited representations.
Parenthetically, this writer stands corrected from an earlier conclusion that no meeting was possible, especially as I failed to envisage a truncated gathering.
Second, the occasion elucidated structural disparities between LAS member-states, with serious repercussions on Arab-Arab ties for decades to come.
Mixed metaphors
If Colonel Muammar Gaddafi indicted the LAS for achieving little -"much like the previous editions"- and mixed his metaphors by claiming that "80 per cent of Arab Gulf citizens are of Iranian descent", he was reminded by Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad, the ruler of Kuwait, that all Arab Gulf ruling families were "100 per cent Arab".
In other words, the observant Gaddafi wished to underscore divergences among GCC countries, which were further reinforced by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who produced a familiar refrain that "the three Gulf islands which the United Arab Emirates is claiming [belonged] to Iran".
Observers laughed at the Libyan leader's humorous diatribes but shook their heads at the Iranian guest's affirmation.
In the context of such declarations, and ironically, it fell to the weakest LAS member to articulate the core problem facing them.
By staying away from Damascus - and not from Dakar because the challenges facing the LAS were different from those of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) - Lebanon reminded its partners that Arabs were threatened by a permanent division of their sub-system.
With a winning streak to divide Arabs among themselves, Beirut highlighted that Iran wished to emphasize routine intra- or inter-Arab disputes, which could not be pushed under the proverbial political rug.
It defined specific interpretations that stood out at a time when Arab leaders attempted to protect individual interests while paying lip-service to Arab identities, not because it wanted to score a point against Syria, but because it wanted to help Damascus return to its natural fold.
By calling on Syria to respect the will of the Lebanese people to put their house in order, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora actually served long-term Syrian interests just as much as he preserved Lebanese objectives.
In person at the OIC to show that Lebanon and all Arabs were ready to cooperate with Iran and by snubbing Damascus to check Tehran's blitzkrieg on the Arab World.
Paradoxically, those who questioned Lebanon's Arab identity in the past finally understood that Beirut represented the strongest amalgam of Arabism, and was able to guide the debate onto its correct path.
Every Lebanese, in the majority as well as in the opposition, could thus take pride in the decisions reached by Siniora. By reaching this painful decision, even risking his life for the sake of the nascent nation, the astute politician demonstrated that he understood the strategic end-game rather than wallow in tactical manoeuvres.
Lebanon and Syria are destined to remain neighbours forever, but must earn each other's respect along the way. Siniora earned his. He went to Dakar to remind the Muslim world of Lebanon's needs for mutual coexistence, but stayed away from Damascus to induce the LAS to think of his president's unique role within it.
In other words, Siniora invited Arabs to reflect on their own alliances, benefit from Lebanon's contributions to the LAS, and project an Arab vision of mutual coexistence to the international community.
Not too shabby for a minor country shaken at its roots, challenged and assaulted by many, while persevering with gusto against some odds.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.
