Word: beirutization
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...praised the plan, but he quickly changed his mind when fellow Christian leaders voiced concern that the pact would end traditional Christian dominance of Lebanese political life. Last Monday, as Gemayel prepared to return to Damascus to share his misgivings with Assad, fighting broke out in Christian-dominated East Beirut between the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia commanded by Elias Hobeika, 29, who had signed the Damascus pact, and the fighting arm of the Phalange Party, which is loyal to President Gemayel...
Furious that its blueprint for peace had been scuttled, Syria allowed its Lebanese supporters to shell Gemayel's hometown of Bikfaya, in the mountains east of Beirut. Tank and artillery clashes between Druze militiamen and Christian forces shook Suq al Jharb, a hill town overlooking the Presidential Palace. In Beirut, meanwhile, there were exchanges of artillery and rocket fire across the line that divides the capital between Muslim and Christian sectors...
...condemned his country to yet another round of blood-letting. Assad is unlikely to abandon his objective of imposing order on Lebanon, although he is reluctant to commit Syrian troops to the battle. One Syrian option would be to starve Lebanon economically by shutting off its seaports. Said the Beirut leftist daily newspaper As Safir, which often reflects Syrian strategy: "[Gemayel] will not be able to rule, and total paralysis will engulf the state." That situation would be acutely painful for Lebanon's long-suffering citizens, especially since they seemed so close to winning a respite from their agony...
...Socialists, who had been regularly going down to defeat in local and regional elections since 1983, seemed to be picking up votes in the final days of the campaign. Adding to the uncertainty, the election was held against the backdrop of a hostage drama being played out in Beirut, where Shi'ite extremists claimed to have executed one Frenchman and held seven others prisoner...
...campaign hoopla, though, was partly upstaged by more dramatic doings 2,000 miles away in Lebanon. There, Michel Seurat, 39, a French Middle East researcher who was kidnaped in Beirut last May by the shadowy pro-Iranian Shi'ite-dominated terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, purportedly had been executed as a French spy. The terrorists released three black-and-white photographs that showed a bare-chested Seurat with unfocused, half-closed eyes, a shrouded figure in a closed coffin. Although his body has not yet been found, there appeared to be little hope that he was still alive...