Word: beirutization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...buffer strip along the southern Lebanese border that Israel calls the Security Zone. The Lebanese postal service is issuing stamps in honor of the jihad. And though still on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, accused in the suicide bombings of U.S. diplomats and military forces in Beirut and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon, Hizballah is reinventing itself as an increasingly respectable Lebanese political party. They've even relaxed their enforcement of Islamic codes on drinking and women's veils...
Israel's planned withdrawal is a pivotal event for Lebanon. Lebanese see it as a chance to rebuild their nation. The streets and cafes of Beirut are filled with ambitious, entrepreneurial Arabs from around the region, eager to transform the country. Visions abound: some see Lebanon as a kind of Singapore of the Middle East, a technology and business center for the entire region. Others dream of a more cosmopolitan nation that recalls Lebanon's days as one of the Mediterranean's most opulent jewels...
...group's accomplishments also dot much of the country, hinting at its nation-wide ambitions. Hizballah runs one of the country's finest schools, the Shahed (Witness) School--just a few minutes' walk from the Beirut barracks near the airport where a suicide bomber killed 241 U.S. servicemen in 1983. Children of Hizballah martyrs make up a quarter of the 1,000 students there, who are drilled in daily English classes. Another symbol of the new Hizballah is its al-Manara (Lighthouse) TV, which broadcasts news, soap operas, kiddie programs and with-the-guerrillas footage of attacks on Israeli fortifications...
...impoverished Shi'ites. Far from fixating on Islamic law, Hizballah's representatives in parliament have busied themselves winning funding for projects that will benefit their constituents. One recent morning, as Hizballah fighters were launching attacks on Israeli outposts in southern Lebanon, a Hizballah M.P. was walking Lebanese journalists around Beirut to highlight the more mundane problem of potholes. Says Mohammed Baydoun, an M.P. for Amal, a rival Shi'ite party: "They are pragmatic. They understand the political game...
...Born in Beirut in 1932, Safra joined his family's banking business as a young man. Eventually, Safra founded the Republic Bank of New York in 1966, which merged with HSBC Bank USA after Safra's death...