Word: beirutization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Israel's withdrawal from all territories occupied in the 1967 war and its agreement that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to homes in what is now Israel. But any Arab-Israeli comity created by the Arab League's announcement disintegrated on Friday. Israeli Cabinet members agreed that the Beirut summit was a step toward Arab acceptance of Israel's legitimacy, but the terms of Abdullah's proposal remain unacceptable to Israel: Sharon has no intention of giving back all the occupied territories, and the Israelis reject the idea that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to Israel proper...
...That, of course, is a deeply frustrating restriction to Sharon, who only a month ago publicly regretted letting Arafat live when he had the opportunity to kill him in Beirut in 1982. The two men may simply be militant representatives of rival nationalisms, but as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana observed this week, anybody who has dealt with them can't miss the fact that for Arafat and Sharon, it's also personal...
Thanks to a major government-driven effort, the capital's once gutted urban center has been turned into a new downtown that aspires to reclaim for Beirut its old title, "Paris of the Middle East." The streets are lined with new and restored office buildings, apartments, shops and cafes. There's a Virgin Megastore (selling DVDs like Legally Blonde alongside videotapes of Osama bin Laden speeches) and a Beirut branch of Paul, a famed Parisian boulangerie. Summer festivals in the mountains east of the city have featured attractions such as Sting and Elton John...
Arabs with a new aversion to vacationing in the West after Sept. 11 are rediscovering Beirut en masse, filling up hotels during Islamic holidays. This week the luxurious seafront Phoenicia Hotel will house the Arab leaders in suites that cost up to $8,000 a night. Nearby, the site of the former U.S. embassy, bombed in 1983, is now a parking lot, while the American Marine barracks, hit by terrorists the same year, is part of a new airport complex...
Besides sprouting trendy nightclubs, restaurants and fitness centers, Beirut has a new stadium, as well as new highways and traffic tunnels. Since the civil war ended with the Taif accord, giving Christians and Muslims equal power in Lebanon, old antagonists are settling their differences in the restored parliament building--rather than with gunfire across the Green Line that once divided Beirut. The Islamic fundamentalists of Hizballah, committed to social harmony with Christians, are among those tasting the nightlife--if not the alcohol that goes with...