analysis: Assassination in Lebanon
Mohamad El Masri, Peak Staff

Elie Hobeika, a former government minister and pro-Israeli militia leader in Lebanon will forever be remembered for his role in a 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.

Last week, Hobeika, along with two of his bodyguards, was killed when his Range Rover was destroyed by a car bomb carrying 100 tons of TNT. Hobeika's killing rekindled memories of the thousands of bombings and assassinations that characterised Lebanon's civil war.

The country's rival militias wiped out their political enemies in gangland-style killings that claimed the lives of two presidents and a prime minister. The blast that killed Hobeika was the first major car bombing in Beirut since 1994. One of Hobeika's former bodyguards has alleged that Hobeika himself ordered assassinations in the 1980s. His death comes as no surprise, as a man who was regarded by many in the Middle East as a monster and a warlord, many felt he was bound to such a fruitless end.

Hobeika, 45, was the intelligence chief of the right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces militia, the military wing of the Christian Phalange at the time of the massacres.

Christian militiamen attacked the refugee camps after the assassination of their leader, then president-elect Bashir Gemayel, an ally of Israel at the time.

Hobeika, however, said he had "irrefutable proof" of his innocence in the killings. He would later admit however that he was following the orders of Israeli defence minister, today's prime minister Ariel Sharon.

In discussions with Belgian legal authorities in the past year, Hobeika had agreed to testify in Belgium's international court where Palestinian survivors of the massacres are trying to indict Sharon for crimes against humanity. Israel found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacres in Beirut in a subsequent inquiry.

More recently, a Belgian senator claimed publicly that Hobeika had come to him with new revelations and incriminating information against Sharon.

After Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended in 1990, Hobeika became a government minister, responsible for resettling one million displaced people.

Like many other Maronite Christians, Hobeika was initially allied with Israel against what they saw as the threat of Syrian domination.

But only five years after Israel trained him and other officers of the Lebanese Forces militia to fight Palestinians, leftists and Muslims, Hobeika cemented a new and more enduring alliance - with the Syrians.

He remained close to Syria, the most influential power in Lebanon, until his death.

As investigators seek out the perpetrators, public scrutiny points its finger directly at Sharon, whom many say, ordered the assassination in order to protect himself from any of the damning information Hobeika may have had to bring to the Belgian court.

If Sharon was indeed behind the assassination, it certainly is no surprise considering Hobeika not only could sway the case in Sharon's international indictment, but as well was not a faithful ally to Sharon when Hobeika switched alliances from Israel to Syria in the 1980s. Syria was, by then, an enemy of Israel.

With tensions in the Middle East higher than they have been in a decade, Hobeika was a liability for Sharon and Israel.

At this point, it all seems nothing but speculation because there is no proof linking Sharon to Hobeika's killing.

In the game of Middle East politics there are few friends and many enemies. Hobeika, a notorious man in Lebanon, certainly had many enemies.

Others possibly behind his death may remain unaccused in Lebanon itself among Palestinian or Shii Muslim groups. Or perhaps Syria itself was weary of Hobeika's public ramblings in Belgium, also seeing him as a liability against their interests.

Even Israelis are positing possible culprits. Some have said that Hobeika held evidence that would clear Sharon of any responsibility in the massacres and that Muslim groups in Syria or Lebanon sought to quiet him.

Whatever the truth might be, the killers will most likely go unknown as in most of these cases. Even if the most likely scenario is that Israel was behind the assassination, many people in the Middle East, and especially Lebanon, could not be happier to see the death of a criminal.

Meanwhile, while denying any allegations that he was involved in Hobeika's death, Sharon - one of the few remaining warlords from the1982 debacle in Beirut - makes no bones about his intentions last week by stating publicly that he probably should have "killed [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat back in 1982," when he had the chance.

Only in the Middle East, do "partners in peace" wish such things upon one another.

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