Word: beirutization
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...Beirut in the early '80s, I watched as the Reagan administration threw its weight behind two other Gemayels, Pierre's uncle, Bashir, and father, Amin, in a radical project to re-make Lebanon as a bastion of pro-Western liberalism, aligned with Israel and free from Syrian domination and Iranian influence. That effort failed: Bashir wound up dead; Amin went into temporary exile; U.S. credibility evaporated and Americans remaining in Beirut became kidnap targets; and Israel got mired in an 18-year military occupation. By contrast, Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon swelled...
...only to start negotiating with Yasser Arafat after a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza trip a few years later. Suspected Syrian agents assassinated Bashir Gemayel days before his presidential inauguration. His supporters retaliated by slaughtering hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut. The U.S. dispatched troops to quell the unrest, while Reagan's envoys negotiated a peace accord between Israel and Amin Gemayel who had taken his brother's place...
...Beirut is boiling, as a Lebanese friend called to tell me. Over the weekend, Hizballah announced it would defy a government ban and hold mass, open-ended demonstrations until the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora resigns - a slow-rolling coup d'etat, if you like. Then on Tuesday, the anti-Syrian minister Pierre Gemayel was assassinated. His father, Amin Gemayel, is the pro-American former president, his grandfather was the founder of the Christian Phalange party, and you can count on his assassination having momentous political consequences for Lebanon. I asked my friend what happens if the government doesn...
...civil war. With the way Iraq is going, you would think that would be the last thing the White House would want. But apparently not. On Tuesday Bush insisted the tribunal go forward, which means he'll soon have to deal with finding a way to put out Beirut's latest fires...
...streets of Beirut filled with cars fleeing the city as soon as news spread that one of Lebanon's most prominent Christian politicians, Pierre Gemayel, had been assassinated in the capital. The killing of his uncle, President Bashir Gemayel, in 1982, marked the beginning of a particularly bloody chapter in Lebanon's 15-year Civil War. And the fear now spreading through the country is that this latest attack could usher in a similar period of heightened violence...