Hezbollah siezes Beirut

Laxamana.

Yep. Not under the banner of Sunni that clashes with Hezb in Beirut.. it was Saad Hariri hired missionaries and one minor Sunni political party that tried to take advantage of certain public protest that was not based on politics earlier. Never mind those, Beirut is rather peaceful in the last one week after Hezb 'crushed' the crooks and handed back the authority to the Army. God bless Lebanon. Hezb is loved by most Sunnis, Christians and Druze as well now. Good for the country. May be not good for Israel and you.

Laxamana.

Mustakbal Party does smells like Saad Hariri's armpit. On the contrary, Rafik Hariri doesn't have that stinly smells. Anyway, calm returned to Beirut on Saturday with Lebanese army taking control of its areas, after Mustakbal militiamen laid down their arms and surrendered their offices. There was no appearance of armed men from the opposition in any of Beirut's streets.

Indeed, residents breathed a sigh and businesses opened Saturday. Traffic and the sound of car horns also resumed in neighborhoods that had been largely deserted since Thursday, and cleaning crews cleared the debris from streets.

Handing over Mustakbal and Progressive Socialist Party offices also continued Saturday in the southern city of Sidon, Bshamoun, Aramoun, Khaldeh, Naimeh. Al-Mustkbal militia was also negotiating with the army to surrender their offices in Barja, Baassir in the Couf area, and Dawood Ali in Sidon.

In the same context, some members of Al-Mustakbal militia surrendered their offices in the Fakiha region in the northern Bekaa as well as Kherbet Rouha village in Eastern Bekaa. They also handed over some of their offices in Jeb-Jennine and Manara towns in western Bekaa. And in Shebaa, the Mustakbal militia handed over its offices to the Annour Muslim Religious Trust, (Wakf Annour).

In the North, Lebanese army reopened the Halba-Akkar main road that was cut by Al-Mustakbal militia, in protest to the Beirut incidents. In Mount Lebanon, the PSP militia handed over the (8-8-8 Hill) to the Lebanese army. The Lebanese Democratic Party headed by former minister Talal Areslan, declared that the party leadership was working responsibly to maintain calm and prevent bloodshed. The party said in a statement that Areslan received on Friday evening a call from PSP chief MP Walid Jumblatt to discuss the situation. The PSP had earlier surrendered the Kfarheem office to the army, upon direct orders by Jumblatt.

Mustakbal militiamen opened fire in Aramoun on a car carrying four members of Areslan's party killing two of them and injuring the other two. Beirut returned to calm and the Mustakbal party is breaking down after it was abandoned by its allies.

Ha ha ha... Hamdulillah.. Well, 'Israel' expressed deep concern about the developments in Lebanon and the US found no other way to support the remainder of its allies, but rhetoric. However, according to the opposition, any change in the situation depends on withdrawing the latest decisions by Saniora's unconstitutional government and dialogue. Otherwise, the status quo on the ground will not get better.So far, the weakening ruling bloc has refused dialogue. BUT, Hezbollah has showed what they can do... they can be very firm in taking actions in Lebanon. Army knows now that Hezbollah has no intention to over run the government by force. They are peace loving and the saviour of Lebanese now.

Nick_Perelman

Another stupid "victory"

I wonder how the Arab delegation felt when it was greeted by a resigned minister and a dismissed security official dubbed the 揂ssad of the airport

Debmey

The Sunni Arab league will not be doing anything and don't expect them to.
They are more interested in spending their oil wealth more than anything else now.

Civil war is the most likely scenario. I see no other way around it. All sides will be stocking up arms from now on.

Laxamana.

God bless Lebanon... pray for it.

Debmey

Iran's Lebanon Game           
By Amir Taheri
The New York Post | Tuesday, May 20, 2008

"RWANDA on the Mediterranean!"

That's how some Beirut residents described Lebanon's prospects last week, as Hezbollah gunmen went on the rampage in Sunni Muslim districts and Druze villages in nearby mountains. They feared that the move would trigger a religious version of the 1990s Hutu-Tutsi conflict.

By the end of the week, however, those fears were somewhat alleviated as all factions decided not to cross the Rubicon. Hezbollah withdrew from the areas captured, while Sunni Muslims, Christians and the Druze who back the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora kept whatever armed force they had out of sight.

What had looked like the start of a coup d'etat by Hezbollah ended as a mere coup de force by the Shiite militia. By the weekend, representatives from all Lebanese communities were in Doha, Qatar, to acknowledge another stalemate.

So, why did Hezbollah make the move, and why did it decide to change gears midway?

The trigger was the government's decision to remove a pro-Hezbollah officer from his position at Beirut Airport and to open an investigation into the parallel communications network that Iran is building for Hezbollah without Lebanese-government authorization.

Hezbollah saw the decisions as the start of a plan to disarm the militia in accordance with two United Nations Security Council resolutions. Hezbollah has rejected both resolutions and vowed to fight anyone trying to disarm it.

By forcing the government to suspend both decisions, Hezbollah not only won a major political victory, but also made it clear it could impose its will by force. It also destroyed part of its rivals' media assets and political structures.

Muhammad Khatami, Iran's former president, has said there "would be no Lebanon without Hezbollah." The last few days' events have showed this wasn't an empty boast.

Backed by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah pushed Lebanon to the edge of destruction to preserve its position as a state within the Lebanese state.

As far as Hezbollah is concerned, there are only two ways out of the current crisis: the creation of a government dominated and protected by Hezbollah, something that other Lebanese communities wouldn't accept; or the de facto acceptance of a dual reality - the existence side-by-side of a formal Lebanese state and a Hezbollah state-like structure alongside it.

The Siniora government's dream of absorbing Hezbollah into the broader Lebanese reality by breaking its parallel state-like apparatus would lead to conflict - perhaps even civil war.

Hezbollah's coup de force, staged on the eve of President Bush's Middle East high-profile visit, was also designed to remind the Americans that their dream of creating a pro-US Middle East was fading fast.

For the last three years, Washington has singled out Lebanon for praise as the vanguard of regional democratization. It now seems that the Islamic republic has decided to prove that, far from being the beating heart of a new democratic Middle East, Lebanon is part of the Iranian sphere in a broader war against the US and its Israeli ally.

Tehran wanted the coup de force in Beirut in order to test US resolve as the Bush administration moves toward its end.

The Americans' weak response and the Lebanese government's quick surrender may have sent the wrong signals to Tehran and its allies in Damascus - persuading Tehran to make a more direct bid for seizing control of Lebanon in the next few months, when the United States would be preoccupied with elections.

That, in turn, may oblige the Lebanese communities who don't want to see their country become an Iranian satellite to respond to force by force. In doing so, they'd certainly find local allies, especially among Arab nations that see Tehran's hegemonic schemes as a threat. Lebanon's lesson has always been that no one can win exclusive control. Everyone can lose, as the 15-year-long civil war amply proved a generation ago.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has expressed pessimism about Lebanon's future. Many facts support his pessimism. The Lebanese are divided by conflicting national visions. Some see it as a beach where people enjoy life, make money and express themselves freely. Others see it as a bunker in a war of civilizations between the Muslim world and the US-led "Infidel" camp, starting with Israel.

Supporters of both visions, however, are found in all communities. This fact makes me less pessimistic than Jumblatt. If no community can press its adepts under a single flag, none can impose its vision on the whole nation.

Hezbollah won a tactical victory for which it may have to pay a strategic price. In 2006, most Arabs saw it as their champion in the struggle against Israel. Today, they see it as a pawn in Tehran's gambit to dominate the Middle East.

Nick_Perelman

Sunni backlash follows Hezbollah's strike in Lebanon

MARJ AL-ALI, Lebanon - Broadcast from loudspeakers attached to the local mosque, a fiery sermon of anger and resentment against the militant Shiites of Hezbollah echoed across the rooftops and surrounding wooded hills of this small Sunni-populated village.

"They said they were resistance against Israel, but now the mask has fallen, exposing their true faces," thundered the sheikh, his oratory just one of many similarly themed Friday sermons from dozens of other mosques scattered throughout the Sunni-dominated Iqlim al-Kharroub district between Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon.

"You hear that?" asked Mohammed Hajjar, a parliamentarian with the Future Movement, Lebanon's largest Sunni political party, sipping coffee in his garden a few hundred yards from the mosque.

"The people are furious about what happened and they are scared. All the time I have Future Movement people coming up to me, saying they want weapons. But our strategy is not to have weapons. We don't want a civil war."

Hezbollah's swift routing of Sunni groups during deadly street battles that started May 8 in Beirut has spawned an ominous backlash within Lebanon's Sunni community