Once again, a politician opposed to Syrian hegemony in Lebanon has been assassinated, and again the victim hails from a family with a long history of supporting Lebanese independence. Pierre Gemayel, whose brother Bashir was also assassinated in 1982, died in a suburban hospital after a shooting:

Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party Voice of Lebanon radio station reported.

The shooting will certainly heighten the political tension in Lebanon, where the leading Muslim Shiite party Hezbollah has threatened to topple the government if it does not get a bigger say in Cabinet decision-making.

Gemayel was rushed to a nearby hospital, according to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. and the Voice of Lebanon, the Phalange Party mouthpiece reported. The party later announced that he was dead.

Gemayel, the minister of industry and son of former President Amin Gemayel, was a supporter of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, which is locked in a power struggle with pro-Syrian factions led by Hezbollah.

The assassination of Rafik Hariri set a popular revolt in motion that eventually saw most of Lebanon rise up peacefully against their Syrian occupiers, forcing them out of the country. That assassination came in the form of a sophisticated car bombing, which made it clear that the Syrians committed it. It seems they learned a lesson from the last time, or their Hezbollah proxies did.

Will this assassination resonate like Hariri's? Perhaps. In the case of Hariri, Hezbollah attempted a counter-demonstration in the days of the Cedar Revolution, calling close to a half-million people into the streets. Lebanese patriots then performed a counter-counter demonstration that dwarfed Hezbollah's and sent a powerful message to the Shi'ite radicals, one that had them reeling at the time.

Hezbollah and/or their Syrian sponsors may have overstepped once again. The Lebanese people ejected the Syrians in a powerful but peaceful manner. Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah did not get the message that time. They may have won some respect for their survival against Israel, but they have thrown it away in this ill-timed and ill-considered assassination. Expect severe consequences for this murder, and this time it may not come as peacefully as the Cedar Revolution.

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