When I was in Damascus two months ago, specifically attending the events of the Damascus Film Festival, I felt, from the conversations of intellectuals I met in the lobby of the Sham Hotel, that they were aware of part of the truth and sensed the reality that would unfold, even though the ordinary people did not want to believe that Syria had a role in this assassination. I saw an elderly Syrian man climbing a rickety ladder to hang a canvas sign on which was written, “We will not compromise on Hariri’s blood, and we will expose Miliss’s lie,” and he hung it on the facade of his small shop.
As I pass this scene in my imagination, I imagine the scene of this old man watching Khaddam’s interview on Al-Arabiya and I try to discover the extent of disappointment and frustration that will envelop him and how he will think. I believe he will think of one of two things: First, there is a major betrayal towards Syria from its closest allies, and the matter is planned. The other is that a mistake has occurred, but Syria should not be held accountable for this mistake because he wishes to sell some goods to the tourists who visit Syria during vacations and does not wish for his livelihood to be cut off due to the economic blockade that may be imposed on Syria.
Last Friday was not an ordinary day, neither in the lives of the Syrians nor in the lives of Arab viewers who were glued to Al-Arabiya, which presented an interview with Abdel Halim Khaddam. Khaddam placed the Arab peoples in an unenviable position, those peoples who viewed the assassination of Hariri as a Zionist-American conspiracy to overthrow Syria and force it to implement plans that were drawn up years ago. However, the scenario presented by Khaddam about the Syrian reality and the backgrounds of Hariri’s assassination was the most difficult scenario for the Syrian people, whom I can sense the extent of the pain that they are experiencing due to this situation, and they, who believed that their country was innocent of Hariri’s blood and that all Miliss was doing was trying to convince the world that Syria was involved, contrary to that.
All this change did not happen due to the length of the period Miliss took to investigate, and it did not happen despite all the insinuations that appeared about Syria’s involvement in the assassination. Instead, the change occurred in about an hour only, when Al-Arabiya aired Khaddam’s interview. What he said was like magic for many Syrians who would not easily accuse Khaddam of betrayal and lying, given that he is well-informed about the intricacies of matters in Syria. When the media were tossing around Miliss’s news and investigations and the media hype of this event disappeared dramatically with Khaddam’s departure and his defection from the regime in Syria, his courage to say what he said in the interview, even though the reality of those speaking in Syria knows their fate, made the weapon of media difficult to resist or circumvent. Through this interview, a vast amount of unanswered questions and many question marks were clearly clarified.