LEBANON: Backroom deals and checkbook diplomacy

In the conspiracy-minded Middle East, nothing is how it appears, especially when enemies suddenly put aside their differences and make a deal.

After six months without a president and more than a year-and-a-half without a properly functioning government, Lebanon today finally swore in a new head of state, President Michel Suleiman, and began the process of healing a rift which has cost scores of lives in sectarian and political violence over the last few weeks.

On the surface, the U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition put aside their differences during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha and made a last-minute deal for the good of their nation.

But nobody really believes that.

On the streets of Beirut, a common view is that Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stepped in as talks were about to collapse and whipped open his checkbook.

Most believe his intervention salvaged not only Lebanon but his tiny Persian Gulf state's fledgling attempt at high-stakes conflict resolution and international diplomacy.

LEBANON: Protestors warn politicians they're fed up

Think Americans have it bad with their elected leaders?

Consider the Lebanese, whose politicians have somehow managed to bring the country back to the brink of civil war 18 years after the end of the last one.

On Friday, as Lebanon's political leaders headed to the recently reopened airport to fly to Qatar and attempt to resolve their differences, a group of disabled Lebanese, many of them disfigured in the last civil war, gathered at the airport to greet them with a blunt message: If they don't work out a new power-sharing deal, they should just stay away.

"If you don't agree," said signs held up by the demonstrators, "don't come back!!!"

LEBANON: Qatar emerges as diplomatic powerhouse

Pity Amr Moussa.

For months the dour Arab League secretary-general shuttled between his Cairo home and the Lebanese capital in a futile attempt to get Lebanese factions to talk, only to walk away in abject failure.

Then along came a smiling Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, foreign minister and prime minister of Qatar.

In a space of hours, he appears to have done what neither Moussa nor French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (who also spent many fruitless weeks trying to solve the Lebanese mess) have  been able to do: get these guys locked in a room together to hammer out some kind of agreement.

During the news conference announcing a new deal between fighting Lebanese factions, Sheik Hamad spoke gently but firmly to the whole country, as if they were adults who must take charge of their own country:

The Lebanese people will have to help us. As Lebanese, you have to accept that this is your wound. You will have to heal it. … All the Arabs are with you, but you have to exert your own efforts. You as Lebanese have to decide to end this crisis.

Sheik Hamad also said: “Everyone knows that there is no winner in this.”

Except for maybe the sheik himself, who emerged as a diplomatic rock star.