Word: rails
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...grand sérail, seat of the Lebanese government, is a magnificent 19th century Oriental palace. The stone façade, geometrical courtyard and ornate chambers were originally built as an Ottoman military barracks. Though beautifully restored, the structure was gutted at the start of the 15-year civil war - a wound on Lebanese history that is never far from the mind of the Grand Sérail's occupant since 2005's Cedar Revolution: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora...
Recently, that wound threatened to rip open. One evening in December, thousands of protesters from the Shi'ite Muslim group Hizballah and other factions threatened to storm the gates of the Sérail, calling the Western-backed Siniora a traitor for allegedly undermining Hizballah during its war with Israel four months earlier. Only a week before, masked gunmen had assassinated one of Siniora's Cabinet colleagues, Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. For hours, nobody knew if the mob would overwhelm the guards, enter the building, drag Siniora and his ministers from office - and perhaps ignite a new civil...
...standing his ground. "They wanted us to evacuate," recalls Marwan Hamadeh, Siniora's Telecommunications Minister. "He said, 'I will only go out of here dead.'" As Siniora remembered the standoff during three hours of interviews with Time in his office and over lunch in the Sérail: "I have never had that degree of serenity in my life. Despite the risks, which I am aware of, don't think at all that I am troubled...
Siniora's December defense of the Sérail may well have been a turning point in that struggle. There are signs that the crisis has cooled, at least temporarily. Hizballah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has retreated from his militant rhetoric and called his people from the streets. His main political ally, ambitious former Lebanese army commander Michel Aoun, who is popular with a significant bloc of Christians, has become publicly worried about future opposition protests out of apparent concern they could trigger Christian-on-Christian fighting...
...praise Nasrallah as a hero for fighting Israel have been slow, not surprisingly, to commend Siniora's stand for freedom. But he has won the hearts of many Lebanese and enjoys broad support among Sunnis, Druze, Christians and some Shi'ites. When he sneaks from the Sérail for a rare meal outside, surprised restaurant patrons drown his arrival in applause. "He is a source of pride," says Elie Khoury, a leading pro-democracy activist who created the "I Love Life" advertising campaign to perk up Lebanese spirits. "We have a Prime Minister who is not performing like...