BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – At the flower-strewn grave of Rafik Hariri, a woman made the sign of the cross next to a man who spread his hands and solemnly recited the fatiha, the first verse of Islam’s holy book, the Quran.

It was an extraordinary scene in a country where Christians and Muslims have feuded for centuries and fought a bitter, 15-year civil war – a sign perhaps that the Lebanese finally are learning to live at peace with each other.

Ironically, it took the assassination of Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, a former prime minister and the nation’s most prominent politician, to accomplish that.

After his murder by bomb on Monday, and especially at his funeral two days later, Christians, Muslims and Druse came together in a vivid manifestation of unity rare in Lebanon’s violent, sectarian-charged history. Christian and Muslim areas alike shut down during the three-day period of mourning.

“Maybe our great loss in his death will lead to the unity of the Lebanese people,” said Abdul-Halim Shehab, a grocer in Beirut’s Hamra district.

“His grave has brought people together. We hope that this national unity continues. Nobody likes to see his country divided,” Shehab said as he sipped bitter black coffee.

Pessimists immediately predicted that Hariri’s slaying would bring an explosion of sectarian violence but – at least so far – the Lebanese have proved them wrong.

Instead of turning on each other, they turned against Syria, which maintains 15,000 troops in Lebanon and holds sway over the country’s politics through its allies in the Lebanese government. In an unprecedented show of defiance, reflecting a widespread suspicion that Syria was behind the killing, the hundreds of thousands of mourners marching behind Hariri’s casket chanted “Syria out” and slogans against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The slaying of a Lebanese political leader is not at all rare. During the 1975-90 civil war that killed 150,000 people and wreaked destruction worth US$25 billion (euro19.2 billion), the country lost two elected presidents, a prime minister and the Sunni Muslim spiritual leader. Such killings often trigger revenge attacks.

The 1977 assassination of Druse leader Kamal Jumblatt led to the killing of hundreds of Christians. In 1982, after the murder of the Christian president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, his militia allies massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camp.

Many Lebanese remain divided over Syria’s role in their country and the issue will continue to boil between the pro-Syrian government and the opposition.

But it comes as a relief that this time the split is along political rather than religious lines, since both pro- and anti-Syrian camps have Christian, Druse and Muslim politicians.

“His blood united all of Lebanon,” said Walid Jumblatt, a Hariri ally who has accused the Syrian government and its Lebanese allies of engineering the killing.

“What they did not take into consideration, those criminals in the Lebanese and Syrian intelligence services, is that they did not know that the Lebanese people were united behind Rafik Hariri,” said Jumblatt, who inherited leadership of the Druse sect after his father, Kamal, was murdered.

Syria and the allied Lebanese government have denied involvement. Both tried to picture the killing as an attempt by unknown enemies to re-ignite Christian-Muslim violence.

But at the funeral, the emotional outpouring cut across the lines. Tolling church bells mixed with Islamic prayers along the procession route. Catholic nuns and Muslim clerics came to pray and pay respects. Members of the Druse and Maronite parties, fierce foes in the civil war, were there with their banners.

Even the militant Hezbollah movement, his such avowed political opponent, called his slaying a “national catastrophe.”

Hariri is credited with negotiating the 1989 Christian-Muslim power-sharing agreement that ended the civil war, and with rebuilding Lebanon.

As prime minister for 10 of the 14 years since the civil war ended, he was often an ally of Syria but had begun to change course when he resigned in October after Syria orchestrated a three-year extension of the term in office of his political rival, the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

Although not always popular as premier and often blamed for the country’s huge debt, Hariri was nonetheless viewed by many as the best hope to revive Lebanon’s prewar glory as the Middle East’s tourist and commercial hub.

AP-ES-02-19-05 1327EST

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