“The death of Gemayel, a Maronite Christian and son of a former president, coincides with a government power struggle. Among the stakes are Lebanon’s participation in a United Nations tribunal to prosecute suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syrian security officials are among the suspects,” reports Bloomberg.

Saad al-Hariri, the son of another famous assassination victim, is quoted as saying “the hand of Syria” is behind the death, according to EuroNews.

“As Gemayel was an outspoken critic of Hezbollah and a member of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian movement, Syrian intelligence likely staged the shooting as part of an intimidation strategy to keep the lid on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Hezbollah will use the momentum generated by the Gemayel assassination to further its plans to plunge Lebanon into a constitutional crisis,” Stratfor tells us.

However, in order to understand Gemayel’s assassination, we need look no further than the murder of Rafik al-Hariri. “Al Hariri’s assassination provides the raison d’être for severing ties with Syria and for transforming Lebanon into a US vassal,” explains Mike Whitney. “This conforms nicely with Israel’s ambition to surround itself with non-threatening states as well as affording access to the vital water resources of Lebanon’s Wazzani River. In other words, the murder of al Hariri has created some extremely fortunate opportunities for both Israel and the US; merging seamlessly with their overall objectives in the region.”

Call it cui bono on steroids. Whitney continues:

“The likelihood that Syria was involved in the assassination is zilch. One can hardly imagine a greater disaster for poor Syria who has been scrambling to avoid the American bludgeon for the last four years. Few people realize that Syria provided more assistance in the first year of the war on terror after 9-11 than any other nation. That’s of little consequence now, as the US is on a mission to quickly integrate the entire region beneath the American standard and prove that it can be trusted with its continued stewardship of the world economy.”

“According to several political analysts, Al Hariri’s assassination is aimed at drowning Lebanon in another civil war. Arab commentators called on Lebanon on Tuesday to unite against such threat, with some suggesting that Israel has greatly benefited from the death of Al Hariri,” explained Aljazeera on February 15, 2005.

“We must do as they do in other criminal cases, look at who had the most to gain from the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri,” writes Sam Hamod. “The Lebanese had a lot to lose, as did the Syrians (he was close to Bashar Al Assad, the leader of Syria), as did the other Arab countries in the region who saw him as a strong leader and a stabilizing force in Lebanese politics. On the other hand, Israel has wanted chaos in Lebanon, as has America.”

For more detail on who benefits from the al-Hariri assassination, see the in-depth article by Bill Van Auken.

Wayne Madsen wrote a few days ago that “Hariri’s assassination was ordered by neo-cons in Israel and the United States who wanted to implement their ‘Clean Break’ policy in order to drive Syrian occupation troops out of Lebanon and then engineer wars with the Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. With the Iraq Study Group led by Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker and including Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates engaged in negotiations with Syria to work out an American military withdrawal from Iraq, the neo-con charges against Syria for the Hariri assassination are being cast aside, according to U.S. intelligence sources.”

Naturally, this effort by the Baker Boys runs counter to the Zionist plan to sow chaos and destruction in the neighborhood. According the Madsen, the “realpolitik” Baker Boys are a direct threat to the neocons, as they are apparently “taking steps to lay blame for the assassination on operatives linked to notorious Russian-Israeli Mafia weapons smuggler and Defense Department air transport contractor Viktor Bout. Such an assignment of blame is designed to send a friendly signal to Damascus while signaling to Jerusalem that the blame for the Hariri assassination is being laid very close but not actually on the doorstep of Israel’s Mossad and their neo-con allies in the Bush administration.”

Predictably, the “detente with Syria and its Lebanese allies is sure to irritate the neo-cons,” and thus it makes perfect sense for them, through the Mossad and its documented network in Lebanon, to muddy the waters by taking out Pierre Gemayel, as all Arabs are, of course, expendable pawns.