Word: siniora
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hizballah and its allies thought Siniora could be intimidated; instead, they got the measure of a man undaunted. Siniora phoned various Lebanese leaders and declared he was 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...
...protesters backed off; Siniora had saved the gains of the Cedar Revolution, when, after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, a million Lebanese in Martyrs' Square demanded the withdrawal of Syrian military forces that had dominated the country for three decades. Lebanon remains deeply divided, however, a fact made plain in January on what some are calling Black Thursday, when a cafeteria shoving match between Sunni and Shi'ite students at a Beirut university set off a day of clashes that tore across the capital...
...crucial for Lebanon, the Middle East and the U.S. that Siniora succeeds in safeguarding Lebanon's independence and guiding its political and economic reconstruction. In a struggle between a rare Arab democratic movement supported by the West and parties backed by authoritarian regimes in Syria and Iran, his defeat would shatter a model for other Arab states to follow and dash the Bush Administration's only realistic hope for a Middle East success story. Victory for Iran, Syria and its allies, on the other hand, would probably doom the country to future conflicts with Israel and trigger a new exodus...
...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...
Arab commentators who 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...