Word: beirutization
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Lebanon, the financial center of the Arab world, is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Middle East. By now, some sectors of its capital city look more like a World War II battlefield. For the third time in scarcely three months, Beirut has been rocked by fighting between members of the right-wing nationalistic Phalange Party, most of them Maronite Christians, and bands of predominantly Moslem leftists backed by Palestinian extremists (TIME, July 7). By the time the third round ended last week, after eight days of violence, some 300 people had been killed and 700 wounded. That brought...
...mostly Moslem leftist extremists. But the battle was soon joined by some hard-line fedayeen (though not by the P.L.O.'s Yasser Arafat, who attempted to serve as a mediator) as well as by bands of privateers who turned it into a sort of free-for-all. "Beirut has gone through another difficult night," the national radio mournfully announced each morning, before warning citizens to stay off the streets and appealing to the warring parties not to fire at ambulances or fire trucks...
...midweek, however, as life in the capital began to return to normal, convoys of armored personnel carriers, trucks and Jeeps cruised through the streets of Beirut to demonstrate that the new government was determined to restore order. The irony of having an army that nobody dared use was not lost on the Lebanese. "Now that it's all over," mused one spectator, "they figure that it's safe to come out in force...
...sure exactly how the latest round started. One report was that two Iraqi youths made a pass at a pretty Christian Lebanese girl in a suburb of Beirut. Unfortunately, the suburb was Ain Rumanneh, the stronghold of the right-wing Christian Phalangist Party, where violence broke out last April between Phalangists and Moslems. In no time, according to the story, the Iraqis were attacked by Christians. Before long the incident had somehow escalated into Beirut's third round of street fighting in as many months. The stutter of automatic weapons fire and the thud of rockets and mortars echoed...
...ready, closed the main highway routes to Tripoli in the north and Damascus to the east. Shops shuttered quickly, and frightened Beirutis scuttled through rapidly emptying streets in last-minute efforts to stock up their larders. At the very last moment, the American University of Beirut canceled its commencement exercises, leaving capped-and-gowned students walking on an otherwise deserted campus...