Word: beirutization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Israeli-Lebanese dispute could grow into a wider war, if Hizballah's backers in Iran or Syria decide or are provoked to join the fray--a possibility that grew when Israeli intelligence claimed on Saturday that Iranian forces helped Hizballah fighters hit an Israeli ship off the coast of Beirut, killing one sailor. (Iran denies the charge.) "It will never completely cool down," says Edward Luttwak, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "When the Israelis have hit enough targets, they'll be inclined to slow down. [But] these things don't get resolved...
When the electricity finally failed in my East Beirut neighborhood, I set up shop at a rooftop hotel bar and waited for the next Israeli bombs to fall. Almost immediately, the sky erupted with what sounded like antiaircraft fire but turned out to be red and green fireworks garishly flashing over the hot, dark city. The Shi'ite residents of Beirut's southern suburbs, pummeled all day by the Israeli assault, were celebrating Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah's declaration of war with Israel...
That's what passes for a party in Beirut these days. Monot Street, Beirut's main nightclub drag, is normally throbbing with oil-rich Arab playboys and European hipsters on such a steamy summer night. But with the city under siege, the only buzz coming from Beirut's bars is the hum of power generators. There's not a bikini in sight on the city's sunny shoreline or a parked Porsche in the chic shopping district. Few Lebanese saw it coming. After this country's 15-year civil war ended in 1990, the nation transformed itself from a byword...
...problem is that there's almost no place to go. Poor Beirut airport, recently rebuilt, was famously attacked in 1968, when Israeli commandos blew up 13 Lebanese civilian planes as they sat on the tarmac. This time the attack came in slow motion: first the runways, then the fuel-storage tanks, then the runways again, then the terminals...
...three-hour trip to Damascus until an air strike knocked out a key bridge. Now cars have to take back roads through the high mountain passes or head north up the coast road toward the Syrian city of Homs. Given the conditions on the roads, staying in Beirut while the bombs fall is as good an option as trying to make a run for it. "You share your bed with a Lebanese girl?" a staff member at the Tourism Ministry asked me. "Get married, and you won't have to leave...