Word: hizballah
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...compromise solution that would give the opposition greater representation in and effective veto power over a new "National Unity" government is being promoted by an Arab League envoy. There was a time not too long ago that such a deal could perhaps have been enough to assuage Hizballah's concerns that Siniora and his government are American puppets who are intent on disarming the Shi'ite militia and reshaping the Middle East in Israel's favor. But the standoff between the Hizballah-led opposition, and the government has lately become so raw, and so personal, that it is hard...
...rhetorical battle took a turn for the worse on Thursday, when in a speech that was broadcast to the crowds in Beirut on giant projection screens, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Siniora's government of collaborating with Israel to destroy Hizballah in this summer's war with the Jewish state, in part by trying to block supplies from reaching the battlefront of southern Lebanon. Siniora and his allies have responded by saying that Hizballah is acting on orders from Iran and Syria - from whom the group's military wing receives weapons and other aid - to destabilize Lebanon and mount...
...still have plenty of support. On the same day that the opposition resumed its mass protests, pro-government counter-demonstrators, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, rallied in Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city, several miles up the coast. If the pro-Siniora forces lack the organizational clout of Hizballah, most independent observers agree that the country is split nearly even between those who support the government and those who want to bring it down...
...problem is that Hizballah is also fighting for its survival and unlikely to back down. The group's patron, Syria, is on the run from a U.N. investigation that has implicated the Assad regime in the car bomb assassination last year of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, an event that led to the end of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Moreover, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the summer war with Israel, also placed thousands of new U.N. soldiers in southern Lebanon, which had been uncontested Hizballah territory since the group drove Israel out in 2000. "Both sides...
...longer the struggle continues, the greater the stakes become. In his speech on Thursday, Nasrallah declared that unless the government resigned soon, Hizballah would demand even greater concessions than just a blocking veto in the cabinet. Nasrallah also threatened an escalation of tactics to include unspecified acts of civil disobedience, which could range from strikes by government employees who support the opposition, shutdowns at the ports and airport, and a walkout by opposition members of parliament...