Word: hizballah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...agreement broadly gives Hizballah what it wants: legitimacy as an armed state-within-a-state. The opposition will now have enough ministers in the Lebanese cabinet to veto any major decisions, effectively ending any attempt to move against Hizballah's weapons. It also calls for parliament to elect a consensus candidate, army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman, to the country's presidency, which has been vacant for months. The government had been hoping to elect one of its own, since it controls a majority in parliament...
...current government could have continued to hold out against Hizballah and clung to office and symbolic support from the West. But in the absence of any real central authority, the country was already starting to unravel along sectarian lines. Lebanon's multi-religious character and political system - which divides power among the country's largest sects - is famously fragile. The sectarian feeling unleashed by clashes between Hizballah, a Shi'a Muslim party, and government supporters, who are mostly Sunni and Druze Muslims, threatened to push the country into another civil...
...agreement doesn't mean Lebanon is out of the woods. For real stability to take root, the foreign countries fighting for regional supremacy in the cold war for the Middle East will have to stop using Lebanon as a battlefield. On the one hand, Syria could use Hizballah's political and military victory to work its way back into dominance over Lebanon, which Syria occupied until 2005. Hizballah's strengthened government role will help Syria get the new Lebanese government to scupper plans for a U.N. tribunal to investigate the assassinations of a series of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians...
...government may find a Hizballah-dominated Lebanon hard to swallow. Disarming Hizballah and securing Lebanon's independence from Syrian and Iranian influence was one of the Bush administration's major Middle East policies; it garnered broad support among European governments, including France, that were not on board in Iraq. Nor will Israel be keen to live with the fact that its most formidable adversary is now in de facto control of almost an entire country, with a sophisticated banking system, an international airport and a varied mountainous terrain in which to train and prepare for war. But Israel and America...
...Israel's main interest in dialogue with Syria lies in reining in the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hizballah, and also the Palestinian Hamas movement, both implacable enemies of Israel that enjoy extensive Syrian patronage. The Jewish State's other objective: to limit the malign influence of Syria's key ally, Iran...