Lebanon

Lebanon’s troubles don’t include civil war

by News Sources 10.25.2012

Rami G Khouri writes: Following events in Lebanon from the United States, as I have done during the past week, leaves one with the impression that most media in the U.S. are eager to see a resumption of the devastating and wasteful civil war that ravaged Lebanon for 15 years until 1990. Virtually every story [...]

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Video: Is Syria’s conflict being fought in Lebanon?

by News Sources 06.05.2012
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Lebanese have no appetite for another civil war

by News Sources 05.22.2012

Robert Fisk writes: There was gunfire at Sheikh Ahmed Abdul-Wahid’s funeral in northern Lebanon yesterday, a promise from the Lebanese army that they will investigate his killing – by a soldier – on Sunday, and a heap of appeals for calm from both the military and the government. But, and here’s the worrying factor, not [...]

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Lebanon boils after sheikh killing

by News Sources 05.21.2012

The Daily Star reports: Fears grew over the stability of north Lebanon Sunday after soldiers shot dead a prominent anti-Assad Muslim preacher and a companion at a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Akkar, triggering a wave of anger in several parts of the country. The gravity of the incident, which quickly led to the Army withdrawing [...]

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Electoral reform in Lebanon

by News Sources 01.18.2012

Elias Muhanna writes: Lebanon’s peculiar brand of democracy, dysfunctional and widely unpopular, is a perennial source of national vexation, debated over Sunday lunches and in the press. Since the Taif agreement of 1989, which helped end the civil war, half of Parliament has been reserved for Christians, the other half for Muslims, with each half [...]

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Assad’s Lebanese invasion

by News Sources 12.25.2011

Mitchell Prothero writes: The blacked-out sport utility vehicles entered the small mountain village of Arsal, in the furthest reaches of Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, at midnight on a cold night late last month. The mostly Sunni residents of the town immediately knew what was happening: Hezbollah had come to grab someone from his bed. The target [...]

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Hezbollah identifies undercover CIA officers in Lebanon in dangerous spy war

by News Sources 12.12.2011

The Associated Press reports: The militant group Hezbollah has revealed the identities of CIA officers working undercover in Lebanon, a blow to agency operations in the region and the latest salvo in an escalating spy war. Hezbollah made the names public in a broadcast Friday night on a Lebanese television station, al-Manar. Using animated videos, [...]

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Evidence that al Qaeda killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005

by News Sources 09.13.2011

Part Two of an interview with Gareth Porter: Part One: See also, Hariri Bombing Indictment Based on Flawed Premise and Tribunal Concealed Evidence Al-Qaeda Cell Killed Hariri, by Gareth Porter. For more background on the history of Lebanon, see the RealNews series parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten.

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Syrian opposition decides to take up arms against Assad regime

by News Sources 08.28.2011

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports: The leader of the Revolutionary Council of the Syrian Coordination Committees, Mohammad Rahhal, said in remarks published Sunday that the council took the decision to arm the Syrian revolution. Since mid-March pro-democracy protests have engulfed most of Syria calling for political and economic reforms as well as for the ousting of Syrian [...]

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U.N. slams Israel for lethal reply to protesters along Lebanese border

by News Sources 07.07.2011

The Wall Street Journal reports: The United Nations sharply criticized Israel for using live ammunition in May against Palestinian protesters who tried to scale an Israeli security fence on the Lebanese border, according to a U.N. report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The confidential report to the U.N. Security Council, dated Friday, also accuses [...]

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Nasrallah implies Israel behind Hariri murder

by News Sources 07.03.2011
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Syrians pour into Lebanon after Friday protest killings

by News Sources 06.25.2011

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of Syrians have fled to Lebanon after 20 people were killed in the biggest day of protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Up to 1,000 Syrians escaped through the al-Qusair crossing in the region of Akkar near Wadi Khaled in northern Lebanon, according to a Lebanese security official. At least six of [...]

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Hezbollah backs billionaire Najib Mikati as Lebanese prime minister

by News Sources 01.25.2011

Bloomberg reports: Mikati “is seen as a genuinely neutral figure,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a research adviser at the Doha Institute in Qatar. He “is balanced and enjoys good relations with Syria and Saudi Arabia,” the two main powerbrokers in Lebanon, she said. Syria, Hezbollah’s backer, was initially blamed for Hariri’s killing by many Lebanese, and [...]

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Lebanon Druze leader Walid Jumblatt sides with Hezbollah in crisis

by News Sources 01.22.2011

The Los Angeles Times reports: The U.S.-backed parliamentary coalition led by caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri was on the verge of losing its tenuous grip on the Lebanese government after a key politician defected Friday to support the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The decision by Walid Jumblatt, a Druze chieftain and longtime player amid Lebanon’s [...]

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Turkey’s rise points to the post-American Middle East

by News Sources 01.19.2011

In the New York Times, Anthony Shadid writes: In a series of stalemates — from the Arab-Israeli conflict to Lebanon — Turkey has proved the most dynamic, projecting an increasingly assertive and independent foreign policy in an Arab world bereft of any country that matches its stature. Its success is a subtle critique of America’s [...]

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After the collapse of the Lebanese government — what next?

by News Sources 01.14.2011

Lebanon’s government collapsed on Wednesday while Prime Minister Saad Hariri was in Washington. It wasn’t until today that he returned to Beirut. Robert Fisk writes: There are many who believe that Lebanon will now descend into a civil war, similar to the fratricidal conflict which it endured from 1976 to 1980. I doubt it. A [...]

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Wikileaks: Israel plans total war on Lebanon, Gaza

by News Sources 01.03.2011

Juan Cole writes: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same [...]

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Lebanon is staring into the abyss

by News Sources 12.31.2010

Fawaz Gerges writes: Once again, Lebanon is on the brink of major social and political upheaval. Rumours of an impending armed clash between Hezbollah and the pro-western governing coalition have spread like wildfire among the Lebanese people, who are hoarding food and arms in anticipation of the worst. On the surface of it, the current [...]

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Threat of civil war looms in Lebanon

by News Sources 12.17.2010

The Guardian reports: More than six months of menacing political rhetoric is likely to reach a potent day of reckoning in Lebanon soon when indictments are handed down after a five-year investigation to determine who killed the fragile state’s former leader Rafik Hariri. The indictments are almost certain to implicate at least three members of [...]

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How Israel and the US benefited from the murder of Rafik Hariri

by News Sources 12.07.2010

Who has benefited most from the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005? As the International Court of Justice arrives at its version of events, Dyab Abou Jahjah, writing in Open Democracy, finds confirmation in WikiLeaks for pointing us in a different direction. Lebanon nowadays seems much bigger than it actually is. In a [...]

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Dahieh: flashpoint of the colonial and anti-colonial struggle

by News Sources 11.03.2010

Rami G Khouri writes: Who would have thought that a gynecologist’s office in the Hizbullah-dominated southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh would be the symbolic place where the colonial and anti-colonial struggles of the past century would reach their confrontational peak and bring to a head this long-simmering war? Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call Thursday night [...]

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Ahmadinejad in Lebanon

by Paul Woodward 10.14.2010

While the Iranian president’s visit to Southern Lebanon is being portrayed in the Western media largely in terms of an act of provocation directed at Israel by an antagonist and intruding regional power, the historical ties between that part of Lebanon and Iran span centuries. Nicholas Blanford writes: When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tours Lebanon’s [...]

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How did 1938 turn out to be such a long year?

by Paul Woodward 10.13.2010

“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany and it’s racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” Benjamin Netanyahu declared four years ago. By 1942, Germany had snared itself in the disastrous Battle of Stalingrad — but let’s allow Netanyahu some latitude with his metaphor and assume that it’s still 1938 and that Iran’s race has merely [...]

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Tree that sparked deadly border clash on Israeli side, says UN

by Paul Woodward 08.04.2010

My reference yesterday to an Israeli soldier having been on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border turns out to have been incorrect. The Guardian reports: The tree that sparked a deadly confrontation between Israeli and Lebanese troops along the tense border between the two countries was on Israeli territory, the UN has said. Five [...]

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