Major Summit to Avert "Explosion" in Lebanon?

There's talk of a major Arab summit, including both King ‘Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Bashar al-Asad of Syria, assembling in Beirut Friday to avert a major "explosion" in Lebanon.

This is all about the Special Tribunal on Lebanon (STL), which has been assembling evidence on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Over the past year the main finger of suspicion has shifted from the Syrian government to Hizbullah, and that could blow the Lebanese government apart, to the point that even Sa‘d Hariri has been talking about defusing things.

It's a complicated subject, byzantine even by Lebanese standards, but you should read the analyses by Qifa Nabki and the multiple posts by Nick Noe at The Mideastwire Blog, including the text of Hasan Nasrallah's speech. Also I note that the Al-Manar website (Hizbullah TV) is sounding conciliatory rather than confrontational. (They include a photo of Ahmadinejad along with ‘Abdullah, Bashar and the Amir of Qatar, also said to be coming.)

I suspect that if indeed the STL blames Hizbullah, but the Lebanese government soft-pedals the matter, there will be some in the US who will be totally puzzled by why even the Hariris might look the other way rather than provoke a new explosion. (And some will no doubt be outraged.) Part of it is the Lebanese tradition of trying to find consensus, rather than structuring political debate in a zero-sum, two-party game. And one is the degree to which the geopolitical chessboard has has shifted since 2005. In any event, this summit is an interesting development, especially in Saudi-Syrian relations, since they seem to be singing the same tune on this one.

Part of it, too, is a real nervousness that Lebanon, if it were to descend into chaos, could provoke a new Israeli intervention and a spiraling escalation.