Word: hariri
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...suddenly returned following Wednesday's kidnapping of two Israeli solders in a cross-border raid by Hizballah, a militant Shiite Muslim faction. Accusing the Lebanese government of an act of war, the Israeli government launched a blockade against Lebanon Thursday morning. It started with an air blitz on Rafic Hariri International Airport, stranding hundreds of travelers before they could board scheduled flights. Earlier, Israeli artillery, gunboats and air strikes hit targets in southern Lebanon, including bridges, roads and a power station. Attacks continued at the rate of about one every 10 minutes, according to a Lebanese television channel...
...Israelis: they struck it in 1996, 1993 and most famously in 1968, when Israeli commandos blew up 13 Middle East Airlines planes in retaliation for an attack in Athens by Palestinians. The airport, recently rebuilt during a Beirut reconstruction plan led by the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, is a lifeblood of Lebanon's postwar recovery. "Tourism in Lebanon is finished if this continues," Joseph Sarkis, Lebanon's Minister of Tourism...
...Then, as now, Israel intended to warn Lebanese authorities to curb the activities of terrorist groups operating in its sovereign territory. Time will tell whether Israel's tactic, which has included bombing the runways of Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport, produces the desired results, and leads Hizballah to free the two Israeli soldiers. But there is a real risk that the move may have the same unintended consequence of the raid 38 years ago: pushing Lebanon further into a spiral of internal strife and even a civil war that embroils the entire Middle East...
...Hizballah and its allies on one hand, and an alliance of Christians and non-Shi'ite Muslims that wants Hizballah disarmed on the other. Lebanese have tried hard to escape the ghosts and hardship of the civil war years, and the reconstruction led by the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri has reinvigorated the tourist industry. Hizballah's move and Israel's response to it, however, is likely to send thousands of foreign visitors - and their much-needed money - fleeing the country, and could even spark a return to Beirut's dark days of internal strife...
That was the case with Hariri, who says that two weeks before a trip to Delray Beach, Fla., he was bumped from his chosen property. On another occasion, he says, a "beachfront" house was 700 ft. from the water. Still, Hariri has not given up on the concept. He joined a different club, Havens, based in New York City...