Nearly six years after the horrific attack, reverberations from the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rakif al-Hariri continue to rock Lebanon. As an international tribunal prepared to hand down indictments against the perpetrators, Cabinet ministers from parties aligned with the suspects resigned, toppling the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, the son of the target of the 2005 bombing. These politicians want to force Lebanon to choose between justice and stability. They ignore the fact that there cannot be stability without justice.
Rafik al-Hariri died in a massive car bombing in February 2005. The attack claimed 21 lives and wounded 100 others, depriving Lebanon not only of its prime minister and wealthiest citizen, but a virtual dynamo who was committed to the renovation of the country and its re-emergence from decades of bloodshed and violence. The killing triggered the "Cedar Revolution" that helped push Syrian forces, which had virtually annexed Lebanon, out of the country and restored Lebanon's sovereignty.
The Cedar revolutionaries also demanded establishment of an independent tribunal to discover who had killed Hariri. At first, suspicions fell upon Syria and its allies in Lebanon, with the reasoning that Syria wanted the state weak so that it would be unable to counter the extension of Syrian influence to Lebanon as well as claims that Damascus' presence was stabilizing. Syria's opponents claimed that even if Damascus was not officially responsible for the attack, its grip on the state was so tight that no such incident could occur without its knowledge. Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals were held in connection with the incident, but they were eventually released for lack of evidence.