Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

I come from an Army family. Going back generations, members of my family have served in the Congo and in Lebanon. I am well aware that the participation of Army personnel in Lebanon is done with the best of intentions. The issue we should be discussing is why this situation has continued over decades and what it is achieving. "Keeping the peace", as it is called, is really about maintaining the status quo and retaining a sectarian balance which is not in the interests of ordinary people in Lebanon where, like many other regions across north Africa and the Middle East, citizens are experiencing devastation of living standards and corruption by ruling elites.

The Israeli Government continues to threaten and violate the airspace of Lebanon. These issues will not be resolved by the UN or by the main powers within that body, which consistently act in the region to prop up the interests of Israel as their watchdog in the area. However, there is a way out of this, with the solution lying with the Israeli people. I welcome the growing numbers of Israelis who are refusing to serve in or be conscripted into the country's army. Therein lies the solution.

If we are seriously concerned about the situation in Lebanon, then we have a responsibility to examine it more closely and to seek to develop an alternative. I welcome the development whereby people in Lebanon, in the course of the last month in particular and taking inspiration from the mass movements in north Africa, have become organised and begun to make a stand for themselves. It is through this that we will see a real alternative. In the past month there has been a growing mood of protest, beginning in a small way in Beirut where there was a demonstration by 2,000 people in very poor weather, growing the following week to 10,000 and subsequently to a demonstration in the city by 30,000 people. It is a united movement against the political and institutionalised sectarian system that exists in Lebanon.

We are beginning to see workers and young people in that country going into poor communities and taking the battle to the interior ministry, with slogans proclaiming a revolt against sectarianism, corruption, migration and unemployment. The call of the people is for a toppling of the regime, similar to movements across the region. There is a lesson for us in this because the regime in Lebanon, under successive Governments since 1992, has become a symbol of the slasher type of approach being executed in the national economy in a pledge to carry out the diktats of the IMF and the World Bank. The cost of that is being borne by the ordinary population in Lebanon where there has been a cutting back in industrial and agricultural production, a strengthening of imports, an unemployment rate of 30% among young workers, inflation of 12%, a massive increase in electricity prices, high taxes on gasoline and so on. These are the conditions which are breeding opposition.

It is always ordinary people, no matter which side of the sectarian divide on which they are placed, who are the victims of these crises. I support their demands for an end to the status quo. The basis for that and the way in which it will be achieved is by uniting the workers and the poor of the region against the sectarian system. It is in the interests of those at the top of society in that area to exploit religious affiliations in order to divide the people and bolster support for their own regimes, a situation we have seen not far from home. They seek to foster a quota system which enables them to divide the spoils at the top while ordinary people at the bottom lose out.

People in Lebanon need jobs and a living wage, and I fully support their activity to meet those ends. Part of that struggle is a struggle against the status quo. The experience has been that UNIFIL and so on have not delivered democratic rights and have not delivered power to the Lebanese people to take control of the resources in their own country and use them for the benefit of the population. It is these people's struggles, combined with the efforts of ordinary Israeli citizens who are making a stand against their Government, which will ultimately deliver a way forward for the region. They will be far more successful than the methods employed for decades.

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