Word: beirutization
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...Satan? Syria, the pre-eminent Soviet client state in the Middle East, avid for U.S. approval? Those developments sound as unlikely as . . . well, as the release of an American hostage by Lebanese kidnapers who apparently got nothing whatsoever in return from Washington. But Robert Polhill, 55, a professor at Beirut University College who had been abducted and held for three years and three months, was in fact turned loose on the streets of Beirut at the start of last week. His freedom did result from a combination of arm twisting and blandishments by Iran and Syria. And these surprising turns...
...wisp of hope for the release of a captive, only to snatch it away? This time hope was not in vain. On Sunday, kidnapers set free American hostage Robert Polhill, 55, one of three American teachers who had been seized more than three years ago from the campus of Beirut University College. Polhill, a New Yorker, was released to Syrian army officers near a seaside hotel in Beirut and then driven to Damascus, where he was handed over to U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian...
...first hint of a breakthrough had come earlier in the week in the form of an unexpected announcement and a picture of a thin-looking man in a grimy T shirt.In notes delivered to an Arab newspaper and a Western news agency in Beirut, the group calling itself Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine declared it would release one of its captives "within 48 hours." With the announcement came a photograph of Jesse Turner, one of Polhill's fellow captives...
...Arab Christian woman living outside Bethlehem did not dare make Easter eggs this year. Reason: "Our Muslim brothers consider any signs of celebration a violation of the intifadeh." In West Beirut some churches canceled Palm Sunday processions through Muslim streets or shifted Easter midnight Mass to 3:30 p.m. so that worshipers could be home by nightfall. "How can we celebrate Easter?" asks a refugee from inter-Christian fighting. "We have never been this...
...weeks ago, Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi called for the hostages' release. After the three were set free in Beirut and safely returned to Paris, French President Francois Mitterrand expressed his "personal thanks" to Gaddafi, and French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas effusively praised the Libyan leader for his "noble and humanitarian gesture." But suspicious Frenchmen and other Europeans noted that last January France returned to Libya three Mirage jet fighters that had been grounded in France since 1986, when the European Community imposed an arms embargo against Libya. Many denounced the release as part of an arms-for-hostages deal...