Word: lebanons
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...current political battle for Lebanon, the Serail has become a garrison once again, under siege by an angry army of opposition supporters camped out in white refugee tents in the squares of central Beirut. On Sunday, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators answering Hizballah and its allies' call for reinvigorated protests to topple the government, the Lebanese Army lined the causeways leading to the Serail with razor-wire barricades and tank columns, while riot police in full black battle armor guarded the citadel's gates...
...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 to imagine anything resembling unity returning to Lebanon anytime soon...
...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 a coup d'etat...
...collaborated with the enemy is just a few steps away from calling for an assassination. At the very least it complicates any potential for compromise: how can one negotiate with traitors, or for that matter, coup plotters? The accusations of treason are also at odds with how many in Lebanon remember Siniora's behavior during the war: He broke down in tears on television asking the world, and especially the United States, to push Israel for an immediate cease-fire...
...Though they are stuck in the Serail, Siniora and ministers 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...