Word: bekaa
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...last month's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Assad told Arab League President Amr Moussa that he was planning to withdraw from Lebanon, only to have the Syrian Information Minister later say that Moussa had got it wrong-Syria was only redeploying its troops to the Bekaa Valley. The tap dance continued all week, culminating in Assad's speech to the Syrian Parliament on Saturday, in which he scuttled back to his pre-Moussa position: no mention of complete withdrawal but the promise of gradual redeployment to the Bekaa Valley. "It is an embarrassment," said Ayman Abdul...
...Outrage at the assassination threatens its long domination there and could even fuel opposition to the Baath regime in Damascus. For nearly three decades Syria has kept a tight grip on its client state, exercised through the 14,000 military and intelligence forces still based around Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. But opposition to the Syrian presence has grown. Damascus made a serious miscalculation last August when it manipulated the constitution. Hariri resigned in protest and quietly backed the U.N. resolution sponsored by France and the U.S. calling on Syria to depart. Since then, Hariri appeared to be joining political...
...prices spiked to $28 a barrel, and the stock market plunged. Anti-Semites vandalized synagogues in France and Belgium. American embassies cabled Washington that they might be the next targets. And White House officials were poring over satellite pictures from the region: Syria was moving its troops in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in anticipation of Israeli strikes across the border. The situation, a senior White House official concedes, was "getting out of control...
...also possible that the air power is being marshaled to hit countries other than Afghanistan - some U.S. officials, notably deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, are reportedly pushing hard for strikes against suspected terrorist facilities in Iraq and in Lebanon's Bekaa valley. But unless Washington is able to show its allies cast-iron evidence of direct involvement of any state in the September 11 attacks, air strikes on third countries remain an unlikely scenario because they could easily alienate the Arab allies whose intelligence support remains the critical factor in the coalition's ability to destroy Bin Laden...
...West Bank and Gaza Strip and to expand their brand of Islamic revolution to the gates of Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest city. They aren't keen to share the spotlight with Hamas. In the past few months, Hezbollah canceled the training of Hamas operatives in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and in Iran. Hezbollah is still training Palestinians, but when it sends them back to the Gaza Strip or West Bank, they'll be working for Hezbollah, not Hamas. A source in the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, tells TIME that Hezbollah has recruited several activists from Hamas...