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Hezbollah and its allies are again apparently the big winners in the latest round of struggling over political power in Lebanon.
Nothing is official yet, but insiders say Hezbollah's main Christian ally, the group led by lawmaker Michel Aoun (below right), will likely have a significant share of government posts in the next government.  "Formally, the Christian group in the opposition has won important portfolios, but it is still Hezbollah, and through it Iran, which have the upper hand," said Ali Al-Amine, a Beirut-based political analyst and editor of a local newspaper.
A high-profile accord brokered in Qatar last May among Lebanese political players ended an escalating armed conflict and led to the nomination of a long-awaited president. The deal gave the Hezbollah-led opposition and Hassan Nasrallah (above, left) veto power over government decisions in the next government.
But until recently, wrangling over the main portfolios had slowed down formation of a Cabinet. Finally, after six weeks of negotiations, Prime Minister-designate Fouad Siniora reached an agreement on Saturday with the opposition regarding the distribution of ministries. He told reporters after meeting with Aoun that the Cabinet lineup will be announced in the "near future."
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Iranians claim they have documents and testimony proving that four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon during the war-ravaged 1980s are still alive and languishing in Israeli prisons.
Iranian authorities announced this week that the mystery of four Iranian diplomats might be revealed soon. The three diplomats and a state-employed photographer were allegedly kidnapped by Christian militiamen in 1982.
Earlier, the formerly pro-Israeli Lebanese Forces militia leaders who detained the four Iranians during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut have said they were executed in Lebanon.
But the issue is surfacing again. Israel is supposed to hand over information about the fate of the missing diplomats to the United Nations as part of a prisoner swap between the Jewish state and the Shiite militant group Hezbollah over the next few weeks.
At a ceremony this week marking the 26th anniversary of the disappearance of the diplomats held in Beirut, the Iranian Charge d'Affaires Mojtaba Ferdowsi-Pour accused Israelis of secretly holding the diplomats: Our brother diplomats kidnapped in 1982 during the Zionist invasion of Lebanon are still detained in Israel and all news which has been provided to us proves it.
Also present at the ceremony was the son of one of the missing diplomats, Raed Mousavi, who said that they got information from former prisoners held in Israeli jails: Documents and testimonies by detainees in Israeli prisons, and the fact that Israel has not published any documents proving their martyrdom, shows our loved ones are still alive.
Meanwhile, media in Israel have quoted Israeli officials as dismissing the Iranian statements about the diplomats as "nonsense." An Israeli government official was quoted in the Jerusalem Post in an article posted today on the newspaper's website: This is not serious.... It is a fabricated claim. They did not disappear here, but in Lebanon. We have nothing to do with the matter.
— Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki sits in front of a portrait of four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon 26 years ago. Credit: File photo
The Lebanese heard a shocking sound after a major televised political speech yesterday: Almost nothing.
Usually every time a political leader makes an appearance here, there is a spree of heavy celebratory gunfire that shakes the skies of Beirut.
This tradition results in frequent injuries and occasional deaths. But after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah finished a news conference lauding the prisoner swap with Israel as a great victory late Wednesday afternoon, it was unusually calm in the capital.
That's because Nasrallah dedicated the last part of his talk to exhorting people not to fire in the air during ceremonies or after political speeches: We cannot bear anymore that with every occasion or appearance of a political leader, there are victims and wounded. This is a very dangerous matter, very painful and catastrophic. ... I say openly to the people listening to me, ... every person who fires a bullet in the air at an occasion like this is really firing at my chest, my head and my turban. ... Firing is equivalent to firing at the resistance and our martyrs and achievements. ... I reiterate that this is dangerous and serves the enemy.
The Hezbollah leader added that his enforcers on the streets were cooperating with neighborhood residents to suppress the celebratory gunfire. Right before yesterday's news conference, the Shiite militant group had issued a statement warning that legal action would be taken against every person who shot in the air during the occasion.
The gunfire is particularly provocative now because it exacerbates already volatile political tensions on the streets.
— Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: Supporters of a Lebanese politician fire their weapons into the air in celebration. Credit: Patrick Baz / AFP/Getty Images
With sounds of helicopters hovering overhead, Samir hunched over behind a pile of sandbags and sank his teeth into a hamburger.
The thirtysomething Beirut resident was not a warrior taking a moment of rest in the battlefield. He was a regular customer dining with his black-veiled wife and little son at Buns and Guns, a new war-themed restaurant where every detail, from the menu and decor to the names of sandwiches, is inspired by the military world.
 The eatery, which looks like a military outpost, was designed to be an unconventional hangout but it also resonates because of recent armed clashes in Beirut and the many tanks and military troops deployed here in the capital. The restaurant is located in a crowded street of Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburb and a Hezbollah stronghold that was the scene of heavy airstrikes during the militant group’s 2006 war with Israel.
“We wanted to create a new attractive idea inspired from the events that our country went through,” said Yussef Ibrahim, the restaurant’s general manager. “People from all backgrounds come here and find the place amusing.”
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 Despite the fanfares of peace over the last few weeks, the Lebanese are realizing that it is still premature to celebrate the end of their troubles.
It is true that a high-profile political accord was reached in Doha last month putting an end to a descent into civil violence. But the recent renewal of armed clashes in some parts of the country, and the delay in forming a national unity government, are raising questions about the intentions of the feuding political parties.
Hezbollah appears to intent on consolidating its political victory. The militant organization will make up one-third of the of new government. But Hezbollah is now pressing to ensure that it controls all of the country's security institutions.
In a speech on Saturday, Hezbollah's Foreign Relations officer, Nawwaf Al-Moussawi said: "There won't be at the head of any security apparatus in Lebanon or any army position someone who does not enjoy the trust of the resistance… Nobody will be able to appoint at any position someone whose allegiance to the nation is doubtful or who is conspiring against the resistance."
Some analysts think that with talks between Syria and Israel on the horizon, the regional political machinations are not in Hezbollah's favor. According to Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Hezbollah pushed in May for a new political situation favorable to them:
"Hezbollah is concerned about Syrian Israeli talks. They have an interest in a normalized and stabilized country where the balance of power is in their favor. This would prevent Israel from attacking them and Syria from selling them off."
For Sami Nader, a professor of International relations at Beirut's Saint Joseph University, Hezbollah's main challenge today is to ensure "harmony" with the army: "The core issue today for Hezbollah is the country's security system. In 2005, Hezbollah lost its complete harmony with the army. They now want to regain their full trust in the allegiance of the army to them."
One dispute blocking the formation of a government is Hezbollah's refusal to accept that the Ministry of Defense remains in the hands of Minister Michel Murr; he is regarded as too pro-US by the Hezbollah-led opposition.
In the face of Hezbollah's growing sway, its western-backed opponents are attempting to minimize their political losses in the current process of dividing of power.
But amid the continuing political struggle, violence continues in the country awakening old-time rivalries. According to the national news agency, 10 people were killed in the last two days in the north of the country as a result of heavy clashes between supporters of the western-backed majority and a pro-Syrian group allied with Hezbollah.
The battles, where mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns were reportedly used, have reportedly quieted down since the Lebanese army redeployed its troops in the streets.
-- Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Credit: vwt.d2g.com:8081/
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 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice took Beirut by surprise Monday when she formally congratulated the newly elected Lebanese president and gave her blessing to the political era just starting in Lebanon.
Allies of Iran and Syria here tried to play down the influence of the United States. They mostly depicted Rice as a "mediocre" diplomat arriving late to gloss over the "failure of the U.S. policy in Lebanon."
But in the many interpretations to her unscheduled visit, one aspect caught the attention of observers. Rice stressed for the first time resolving the issue of the Shebaa Farms, a small parcel of land regarded by Hezbollah and the Lebanese state as a Lebanese territory still under Israeli occupation.
She told reporters after meeting with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that "the United States believes that the time has come to deal with the Shebaa Farms issue ... in accordance with [U.N. Security Council Resolution] 1701." She added that Washington, D.C., was planning to urge U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to "lend his good offices" to end the sovereignty dispute over the Shebaa Farms.
For the last few years, Shebaa has been an element of competition between the Western-backed Lebanese government and Hezbollah. Siniora and his allies pushed for a diplomatic solution whereby Shebaa would come under U.N. control until the border between Lebanon and Syria is drawn. Hezbollah, on the other hand, saw the occupation as a reason to continue its armed struggle against Israel.
The pro-Western-backed majority daily Al-Mustaqbal said that Rice told her allies that the Shebaa farms issue was "a priority to the Bush administration." The newspaper interpreted Rice's remarks as "a U.S. support to the new era and a commitment to help Lebanon face the upcoming challenges."
The pro-Hezbollah daily Assafir, on the other hand, said that Rice was preparing its allies to the need of following the steps of Syria in its peace talks with Israel before regaining the Shebaa farms.
According to the newspaper, Washington's allies in Lebanon pressed Rice to "remove all the alibis that give a legitimacy to Hezbollah's weapons." The newspaper added that Siniora's team was trying to gain ground vis-a-vis Hezbollah before the formation of the new government.
Rice's visit comes after a major agreement in Doha last month brought an end to a drawn-out political crisis in the country and a brief period of violence. The deal, which gave Hezbollah a veto power in the upcoming government, was regarded by observers as a slap in the face for the U.S. policy in the region.
Following her meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, Rice recognized that Hezbollah had gained more political power: "Obviously in any compromise there are concessions, but this was an agreement that I think served the interests of the Lebanese people. And since it served the interests of the Lebanese people, it serves the interests of the United States. We support the democratically elected government of Lebanon. That's who we support."
Rice added that her country still regards Hezbollah as a terrorist organization but would still cooperate with the new "democratically-elected" government.
In a fiery editorial, the English-language newspaper the Daily Star urged the United States to adopt a more balanced policy in Lebanon: Generally, Washington's approach to Lebanese affairs has been to pick sides regarding internal issues and to ignore Beirut's very real grievances against Israel on external matters. ... America's failure to get its Israeli allies out of the occupied Shebaa Farms was a key factor in the circumstances that led to the 2006 war between this country and the Jewish state. ... Rice can help ... by getting her colleagues back in Washington to recognize that Lebanon is the last place where anyone should try to flog Bush's notorious assertion that people and governments are "either with us or against us." ... She can lean on the Israelis, too, to end their occupation of Lebanese land once and for all.
Despite the recent Doha agreement, political disputes over portfolios are ongoing pending the formation of the new national unity government. Meanwhile, armed clashes between Sunni and Shiite supporters of the two feuding camps continued east of the country in the Bekaa Valley, leading to casualties early this morning, according to some media reports.
-- Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice meets Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Credit: www.state.gov
Israel and Hezbollah are evidently moving toward a prisoner exchange deal that will bring home the two Israeli army reservists kidnapped in July 2006, an incident which triggered the second Lebanon war. After two long years of public campaigning and private anguish, the families may soon attain closure as the second anniversary of the kidnapping approaches and reports of an imminent deal persist.
 Between press interviews, meeting with government officials and attending support rallies, it is doubtful whether the families had time to pay attention to the 55th international advertising festival in Cannes this week. But Cannes paid attention to them and perhaps tribute too as it granted a prestigious Golden Lion award to an Israeli advertising agency for a public awareness campaign it ran last year to keep the missing soldiers atop the nation's agenda.
The campaign called for a five-minute Internet blackout on the first anniversary of the kidnappings. More than 400 Israeli websites complied and on July 12 at 9:05 a.m. -- the exact hour of the blast that had killed three soldiers and injured another three, including Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were kidnapped -- shut down and posted a Web page with the message "the soldiers cannot be found," designed like the universal "page cannot be found" message one gets when loading an inactive website. Television and radio stations stopped broadcasting, too, to participate in what became an Internet equivalent of the minutes of silence observed on somber commemoration days in Israel.
The campaign was produced pro-bono for an activist organization promoting awareness of the abductees' agenda by Y&R Interactive, of the Israeli office of Shalmor, Avnon, Amichay/Y&R.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit remains captive in Gaza. Seven hundred twenty-three -- and a lot of people are counting.
-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
Photo: "The soldiers cannot be found" on the MSN website. Click to enlarge. Image courtesy of Shalmor, Avnon, Amichay/Y&R.
Hezbollah scored what some considered a small propaganda victory against Israel. It tried to undermine the Israeli government amid reports that a grand exchange of prisoners between the two parties is imminent.
In a pompous ceremony Sunday, cadres of the Shiite Muslim group welcomed the return of Lebanese-born Nasim Nisr, shown in the video below, an Arab Israeli who had been imprisoned in Israel for more than six years after being convicted of spying for Hezbollah. On the other side of the border, Israelis were apparently caught off guard when they received the body parts of soldiers who were killed during the 2006 summer war. At first, it seemed like a goodwill gesture by Hezbollah. An International Red Cross official in Jerusalem, who carried out the exchange, called Hezbollah's move a "complete surprise."
But Hezbollah's game soon became clear.
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Recent reports suggest Israel and Hezbollah are nearing an agreement. The talks, mediated by Conrad Gerhard, former head of Germany's federal intelligence service (BND) involve the possibility of Israel releasing Samir Kuntar, another four prisoners and the remains of 10 Hezbollah combatants in exchange for IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose kidnapping by Hezbollah in July 2006 sparked the Second Lebanon War.
 According to reports, the two had been injured -- at least one gravely, but taken alive. Their fate remains unknown, as Hezbollah refuses to divulge any information on their condition.
Israel has paid controversially high prices for abducted soldiers and civilians, dead or alive. Redeeming prisoners is an important Jewish principle, as is bringing Jews to burial. But so is the precedence of the living over the dead.
Some maintain that past deals set bad precedents that left Israel vulnerable to kidnappings and extortion, and urge the government to re-set definitions to exchanging live prisoners for live prisoners only, not for bodies or remains.
According to press reports, Israel has threatened to declare the missing reservists dead on more than one occasion during the negotiations but hasn't.
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Iranian and Syrian officials poured a bucket of ice water this week on Israeli hopes for a rupture in the long-standing Tehran-Damascus relationship.
Israeli officials had demanded Syria break ties with Iran in exchange for returning the occupied Golan Heights to Syria.
Instead, Syria this week appeared to strengthen its ties with Iran, signing a defense cooperation pact in a showy Tehran photo-op on Tuesday.
That same day, Syrian President Bashar Assad told a visiting delegation of British lawmakers that Damascus' relationship with Tehran was not up for negotiation.
In reality, despite a lot of media attention, there was never really much chance of a peace deal between Syria and Israel or a break in ties between Damascus and Tehran. At least not anytime soon.
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It was the first fruit of Hezbollah's latest political victory.
The Shiite militant group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said today that armed "resistance" against Israel would remain the cornerstone of the country's defense strategy.
Indeed, he strongly suggested that armed struggle against Israel would take precedence over Lebanon's democratic experiment.
On a gigantic screen, Nasrallah addressed thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut's southern suburb to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the end of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. His speech came a day after the long-awaited election of a new president in Lebanon, which resulted from a recent Qatar-sponsored political agreement between all Lebanese factions.
Nasrallah devoted a big part of his speech to argue that armed resistance and not negotiations, whether in Palestine or Iraq or Lebanon, had proved the only way to liberate Arab soil: The resistance presented a paradigm and a strategy in two areas and not in one area only: the strategy of the resistance and that of expelling the occupier, and the strategy of defending the nation and the people in the face of aggression and invasion and threats.
And he laid down the law as to Lebanon's priorities. The goals of the resistance, he said, remain above the interests of the Lebanese state: The resistance does not wait for a national and popular consensus. It should carry weapons and move ahead to accomplish the duty of liberation with weapons and blood and high-priced sacrifices.
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The United States along with most other countries enthusiastically supported the ascent of army Chief of Staff Michel Suleiman as president of Lebanon.
To many, he appears to be a beacon of stability for the country. But don't expect the Maronite Christian to change the country's position on the staunchest of U.S. allies in the Middle East, Israel.
In his inaugural speech to parliament today, he affirmed the right of the Hezbollah-led "resistance" to confront Israel and obtain a disputed piece of property under Israeli occupation called the Shebaa Farms: The continuing occupation of Shebaa Farms and the breaches and threats by the enemy [Israel] compel us to find a defense strategy that protects the nation coupled with a calm dialog to benefit from the competence of the resistance so that the achievements of the resistance are not consumed in internal struggles. And this way we can preserve its values and its national position.
He also said Lebanon would continue to refuse to grant the 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon passports in order to keep alive their dream of returning to a viable Palestinian state: Our rejection of giving them nationality is not a rejection of hosting of our brothers the Palestinians and caring for their human rights, but an establishment of their right of return when a viable state is formed.
But much of Suleiman's speech was focused on healing the country's recent self-inflicted wounds. Below are more excerpts from a rough, unofficial Los Angeles Times translation:
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In the conspiracy-minded Middle East, nothing is how it appears, especially when enemies suddenly put aside their differences and make a deal.
After six months without a president and more than a year-and-a-half without a properly functioning government, Lebanon today finally swore in a new head of state, President Michel Suleiman, and began the process of healing a rift which has cost scores of lives in sectarian and political violence over the last few weeks.
On the surface, the U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition put aside their differences during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha and made a last-minute deal for the good of their nation.
But nobody really believes that.
On the streets of Beirut, a common view is that Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stepped in as talks were about to collapse and whipped open his checkbook.
Most believe his intervention salvaged not only Lebanon but his tiny Persian Gulf state's fledgling attempt at high-stakes conflict resolution and international diplomacy.
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The Shiite militia Hezbollah's audacious takeover of West Beirut earlier this month remains puzzling to many observers. The group launched an unprecedented attack targeting very specific locales. They came with guns blazing, in full force, showing some of their key assets.
Watch the extraordinary video of Hezbollah driving through West Beirut below. Hezbollah said it was responding to two government decisions targeting its telecommunications and intelligence assets around the country and at Beirut's international airport.
But most believe the government would have no way to get an army sympathetic to Hezbollah to enforce those decisions. And it probably could have gotten them set aside or ignored without so extreme a reaction as occupying downtown Beirut and fanning the flames of the country's long-burning sectarian and religious hatreds in violence that left scores dead.
After years of fighting against Israel, did Hezbollah end up emulating its own enemy?
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is waging a peace offensive as he battles on the home front against allegations of corruption that threaten to cut short his term in office.
In an interview with The Times this week, he spoke of a "race against time" to reach an interim accord with the Palestinian Authority in U.S.-backed peace talks before President Bush leaves office in January. "If we miss the opportunity," he said, "then how long will it take before we can restart with a new American administration?"
Broadening his peace effort Wednesday, Olmert went public with the existence, since early last year, of talks between Israel and Syria through Turkish mediators, aimed at ending the two neighbors' long enmity. That represents a longer-term effort by Olmert to end Syria's backing for the Palestinian movement Hamas, a sworn enemy of Israel that is not part of the talks with the Palestinian Authority. The move weakens the Bush administration's policy of trying to isolate Syria.
An Israeli-Syrian accord could oblige Israel to return most or all of the militarily strategic Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. In return, Israel would expect Syria to break its alliance with Iran, which backs the Lebanese group Hezbollah as well as Hamas. Israel is alarmed by Hezbollah's recent muscle-flexing in Lebanon, and by Wednesday's internal political agreement there that appears to solidify the group's status as an armed force overshadowing the power of the state.
—Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem
American University of Beirut student Rama Baaj didn't go to class for a week during the recent fighting that swept Hamra Street, the most cosmopolitan district of Lebanon and the subject of a Los Angeles Times article yesterday.
But like other residents of Hamra, Baaj learned some extracurricular lessons about the real world. The fighting came to an end after the government appeared to cave in to the Shiite militia Hezbollah's demands and rescinded two provocative Cabinet decisions that sparked the conflict.
"When you take a kid to a supermarket and he asks for chocolate and you say, 'no' and he starts screaming and you give in and give the kid chocolate, you've reinforced the screaming," said the 22-year-old psychology major. "If you're gonna give it to him, give it to him in the first place and you reinforce polite asking and talking."
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An advisor to the Saudi Arabian leadership told the Los Angeles Times that his government had warned its Lebanese allies against trying to build an armed force to combat Hezbollah, but to no avail. For months, Lebanon's Sunni-led Future Movement sought to build an armed force under the guise of a security firm, called Secure Plus, in part to counter the Shiite militia Hezbollah's growing strength, according to Lebanese officials, security experts and Sunni fighters themselves cited in a Times report last week.
But at least some in the Saudi leadership — the primary international patron of Lebanon's Sunnis — thought it was a bad idea from the inception.
"The whole concept of these militias was wrong from the start and we never took the idea seriously," said the advisor, who asked that his name not be published because of the sensitivity of the topic.
"We had never directly got involved in the arming of this so-called militia, which was doomed to failure from the beginning due to how it was created and who was leading it up," said the Saudi advisor.
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 Samir Kuntar is Israel's longest-held Lebanese prisoner. In 1979, the Druze teenager who had grown up during Lebanon's civil war embarked on an attack against northern Israel, one from which he hasn't returned.
Israel has suffered many attacks over the years, but the one that killed the family of Smadar Haran and a police officer nearly 30 years ago was seared into the nation's collective memory, and the tragic results became a symbol.
So did Kuntar himself. A celebrity prisoner in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has set Kuntar's release as a goal, repeatedly promising to free him and stating categorically that no prisoner swap would take place without him. Israel is loath to free Kuntar.
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Think Americans have it bad with their elected leaders?
Consider the Lebanese, whose politicians have somehow managed to bring the country back to the brink of civil war 18 years after the end of the last one.
On Friday, as Lebanon's political leaders headed to the recently reopened airport to fly to Qatar and attempt to resolve their differences, a group of disabled Lebanese, many of them disfigured in the last civil war, gathered at the airport to greet them with a blunt message: If they don't work out a new power-sharing deal, they should just stay away.
"If you don't agree," said signs held up by the demonstrators, "don't come back!!!"
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Pity Amr Moussa.
 For months the dour Arab League secretary-general shuttled between his Cairo home and the Lebanese capital in a futile attempt to get Lebanese factions to talk, only to walk away in abject failure.
Then along came a smiling Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, foreign minister and prime minister of Qatar.
In a space of hours, he appears to have done what neither Moussa nor French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (who also spent many fruitless weeks trying to solve the Lebanese mess) have been able to do: get these guys locked in a room together to hammer out some kind of agreement.
During the news conference announcing a new deal between fighting Lebanese factions, Sheik Hamad spoke gently but firmly to the whole country, as if they were adults who must take charge of their own country: The Lebanese people will have to help us. As Lebanese, you have to accept that this is your wound. You will have to heal it. … All the Arabs are with you, but you have to exert your own efforts. You as Lebanese have to decide to end this crisis.
Sheik Hamad also said: “Everyone knows that there is no winner in this.”
Except for maybe the sheik himself, who emerged as a diplomatic rock star.
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Scholar and Lebanon expert Augustus Richard Norton recently took time out for a lengthy e-mail interview with the Los Angeles Times about the confusing conflict in Lebanon.
 Lebanon watchers have been worried for some time that the current political stalemate between the Western-leaning government and the Iranian-backed opposition could explode and plunge the country into civil war.
"While many Lebanese adults have a living memory of the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, many shabaab or 'young bloods' on all sides have been rearing for a fight," wrote Norton. "On several occasions dangerous clashes emerged and the country seems to have been close to the brink, and then wiser heads prevailed on all sides."
Norton knows Lebanon well. He served as a peacekeeper in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) during the 1980s and wrote the groundbreaking book "Amal and the Shi'a" in 1987.
Now a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University, he recently published the timely "Hezbollah: A Short History," described by Publisher's Weekly as a "remarkably thorough, articulate portrait" and by the Washington Post as a "lucid primer" on the group.
He's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was an advisor to the Iraq Study Group in 2006.
Below is the interview.
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 By Raed Rafei in Beirut
Last week, I became a victim of the violence against the media that has been part and parcel of the recent fighting and unrest in Lebanon.
After taking a photograph of a dying man who was shot during a funeral, I was attacked by an angry mourner.
He was outraged because I was taking photos. I tried to explain that I was a reporter and that I was doing my job, but he grabbed a stick and got ready to hit me. I decided to stop resisting and hand him my camera.
Luckily, more cooler heads were around to calm him down and extricate me from the madness. One of them, Ali, took me by the hand and started running to a "safe place."
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Some Lebanese and U.S. officials blamed Iran, the main patron and backer of the Shiite militia Hezbollah for the current unrest in Lebanon.
Indeed, Iranians are closely watching events unfolding in Lebanon and rooting for their allies.
But though Hezbollah might have discreetly sought its backers' OK before taking over West Beirut, the move came as a shock to most Iranians. One team of reporters from Iran's official state-controlled broadcaster only managed to make it across the Syrian border and into the country on Friday night, well after the takeover.
In Tehran on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini called for "national unity" in Lebanon and blamed the troubles there on Israel and the U.S. "We have always warned that the US and Zionist regime and their media are creating the crisis in Lebanon," he told reporters.
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 By turns fiery, conciliatory and emotional, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora gave a powerful speech today condemning the recent offensive by the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah into the western section of the Lebanese capital.
“We were never against Hezbollah nor stood against it,” the U.S.-backed official said in the televised appearance. “Our stand has always been clear on the role of Hezbollah in freeing Lebanon from Israeli occupation. But when the arms are pointed at our nation, then we have a problem.”
Siniora called for a de-escalation by proposing dialogue, but he also hurled invective at Hezbollah. He called for Lebanese to join in a moment of silence while publicly raising the Lebanese flag tomorrow at noon.
Below are key excerpts from an unofficial Los Angeles Times translation of the speech.
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Politicians issued hot rhetoric as smoke and fire smoldered on the streets of Hezbollah-controlled West Beirut.
At a checkpoint near Beirut's fashionable waterfront, a young man in sunglasses and an olive T-shirt held an AK-47 assault rifle. He couldn't have been more than 18.
Hardened Hezbollah fighters in full camouflage rested next to buildings, rocket-propelled grenade launchers at their sides.
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As chaos spread through Lebanon, panicked residents cleared shelves of frozen chicken and meats, preparing for the worst.
In one war-torn neighborhood a woman walked down the street while struggling to hold bags of clothing and a small child in her hand. A soldier ran to her, grabbed the child and helped her cross the street.
Soldiers ferried terrified citizens out of the war zones, sometimes stuffing them into Humvees.
Those who could escaped to homes of relatives outside Beirut, especially up into the mountains. Those who couldn't hunkered in basement bunkers, just as they did during the 1975-1990 civil war.
One particularly harrowing scene on Al Arabiya television, and rebroadcast by CNN (below), captured a city's dread. Will another generation of Lebanese suffer through a long stretch of war?
— Borzou Daragahi and Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: There was nothing left in the poultry section of the Monoprix supermarket in the Achrafieh section of East Beirut on Thursday. Credit: Borzou Daragahi / Los Angeles Times
 By Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Things started to calm down when the bespectacled nebbish young man with a bandage over the bridge of his nose showed up.
He was short, pudgy and wore a plaid shirt buttoned to the top of his neck. And unlike the other Shiite militiamen who had detained us and taken away our cameras and identification cards, he refused to shake hands with the women.
But the frantic, black-clad Amal party militiamen clearly looked upon this fellow with respect. Once he arrived, the militiamen became calmer and more respectful toward us. They started offering us Pepsi, cigarettes and gum. After being detained by a gang of Shiite militiamen for nearly an hour during Lebanon's troubles today, we were confident we'd be soon be released.
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 By Raed Rafei in Beirut
He held his Kalashnikov into the air and started shooting.
Behind him, other men in military gear started shouting, ordering us to leave at once. They were members of one Shiite Lebanese faction, the Amal movement, allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition.
I had penetrated one peripheral street where armed clashes had erupted earlier between opposition supporters and followers of the Sunni Future movement.
I cautiously walked out, hearing behind me the rattling of machine guns and occasional rocket-propelled grenades.
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Hezbollah's internal security apparatus is going high-tech, at least according to its U.S.-backed opponents in a recently escalating war of words between the two groups.
The Shiite militant group has placed surveillance cameras near Beirut's international airport and established its own parallel communications network over large parts of Lebanon.
In a fiery news conference Saturday, the anti-Syrian political leader, Walid Jumblatt, did not mince any word in accusing Hezbollah of flying in arms from Iran and preparing for a terrorist attack.
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 The Los Angeles Times' Sebastian Rotella today explores the Shiite militant group Hezbollah's drive to reequip itself with rockets in preparation for a possible war with Israel. The article cites analysts and spooks in the Middle East and Europe as well as Hezbollah itself about the group's weapons arsenal:
Hezbollah leaders have declined to discuss specific numbers. But a source close to Hezbollah agreed with the Israeli assessment of the military buildup... "We are ready, and we are stronger than two years ago," the source said. "In every battle there are weak and strong points. We have found solutions to all of our weak points from that experience."
Indeed. Hezbollah's preparations go beyond merely rearming itself. It has also revamped its organizational structure and possibly bolstered its intelligence-gathering capabilities, say analysts and experts.
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A war of accusations and name-calling has erupted between the U.S. and Hezbollah after the recent release of the State Department's annual report on terrorism in the world. First, the US report (summarized in the video above) claimed that the Lebanese Shiite militant group of being the "most technically capable terrorist group in the world." It accused Hezbollah of providing military and logistic support to insurgents in Iraq and militant groups in the Palestinian Territories, as well as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan:
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 By Noha El-Hennawy in Beirut
Carrying the preconceived baggage of many Arabs, I traveled to Lebanon: A beautiful country with a Westernized population and beaches flecked with bikinis not far from bars where men and women mingle freely. Reality, however, turned out to be more dizzying and complex. After a week of shuttling between the North, South, East and West of Lebanon, my Egyptian sensibilities realized that despite its small size, it’s hard to believe this exceptionally diverse land is actually one country.
EAST BEIRUT: In a nutshell, it is quiet, clean and cosmopolitan. You may think the country’s official language is French as you hardly hear the neighborhood’s Christian residents speak Arabic. Even houses are built and renovated according to European architecture. Blond women walk around in tight blouses showing cleavage; they seek posh malls and Western baubles. On weekends, nightclubs on the famous Gammayze Street are packed with young couples who cruise with hip-hop music thumping from luxurious cars. This is but one, intriguing window into Lebanon.
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 Not all quiet lately on Lebanon's southern front with Israel.
Peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have come under political fire by Israeli authorities for reportedly covering up for Hezbollah's re-arming activities.
This comes at at particularly tense time. All sorts of people are warning of yet another round of war erupting between the Jewish state and the Lebanese Shiite militant group.
The Israeli daily Haaretz today quoted government and military officials accusing the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of concealing information about Hezbollah.
Why would they do that? To avoid any friction with the Iranian-backed group, the paper reports:
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Al Qaeda struggles to show that it still has its fingers on the pulse of the world, even as it hides out in the rocky mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The latest presumptive audio recording by Al Qaeda's No. 2 seems to suggest that the Islamist organization is striving to stay relevant.
In the extensive two-hour message posted on the Internet Tuesday, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, particularly lashed out at the Iranians for their ambitions in Iraq and the Arab region, as well as their attempts to discredit the Sunni Islamist group.
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The U.S. diplomat's message was clear: Stay the course.
But some are wondering whether it's a path to ultimate defeat.
Days before the Lebanese are set to again vote on a president, U.S. assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, C. David Welch, arrived in Beirut. He came to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy bombing.
But he also met with Lebanese officials and party leaders, most of them America's allies in the ongoing stalemate with the opposition, led by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia.
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A stunning report carried by pro-government Iranian media accuses Saudi Arabia of complicity in the February assassination of the militant Imad Mughniyah, the shadowy Lebanese commander with ties to Syria and Iran.
The report cites unnamed sources close to the investigation and could not be confirmed. At the very least it hints at ongoing tension between Damascus and Tehran over the course of the probe into the legendary Hezbollah commander's fiery death.
 The report was first published Tuesday by the Persian-language section of the Fars News Agency and then carried today on the front page of the conservative newspaper Kayhan, which is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority on all matters.
On the off chance you read Farsi, the links are here and here. The report has been translated by the Italian AKI news agency, as well.
Mughniyah was a high-ranking Hezbollah commander said to be in charge of the group's international operations. He was killed in a Feb. 12 car bombing attack in a highly secure section of Damascus.
The source quoted in the report told Fars that the Syrians had discovered a network connected to Israeli intelligence and Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan as well as a Saudi intelligence official in Damascus as partly behind the death. The source alleged that the Syrians had already arrested a Saudi official and were about to release their long-delayed report about the killing implicating the Saudis but were swayed by Kuwait to hold off.
Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait urged their citizens to leave Lebanon after Mughniyah's slaying.
Here are other allegations in the report:
- Israeli intelligence officials monitored Mughniyah's comings and goings for a year before the assassination.
- Conspirators included Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians who, along with their families, had rented or bought housing near Mughniyah's residence in the Kafar Sosa district of Damascus.
- The Saudi official overseeing the operation fled home after the assassination but was lured back by a woman with whom he was having an affair.
Take 'em all with a grain of salt.
Publication of the report by pro-government outlets suggests an ongoing rift between Syria and Iran over Mughniyah's death. It could also stir up sectarian troubles in Lebanon, where Shiite Hezbollah is at odds with the Saudi-backed Sunni-led government.
— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Photo: The front page of today's Kayhan in Tehran featured a photograph of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan conferring with President Bush above an article alleging Saudi complicity in the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah.
U.S. officials and analysts are increasingly casting the Iraq conflict as a part and parcel of a broader regional battle against Iran — a "proxy war" between U.S.-backed forces and those supported by Tehran.
Just as we predicted, Iran's influence in Iraq was a major theme woven throughout the Senate testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the two top American officials in Iraq.
Petraeus accused the Quds Force, an elite unite of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and Lebanese Hezbollah of training, arming, financing and directing Shiite militias he called "special groups," who've been blamed for rocket attacks on the U.S.-protected Green Zone: Unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.
Crocker coined a nifty new term, saying that Iran and Syria were pursuing a strategy of "Lebanization" of Iraq by using Shiites to undermine the government and the U.S.-led security forces, just as they used Hezbollah in Lebanon: They're using that same partnership in Iraq, in my view, although the weights are reversed, with Iran having the greater weight and Syria the lesser. But they are working in tandem together against us and against a stable Iraqi state.
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While Israel is trying to keep a low profile about its latest series of catastrophe drills, the Lebanese are accusing the Jewish state of beating the drums of war.
Top Hezbollah officials said that the military exercises next door, which continued for the second day today, were a sign that Israel was preparing for the next war after its "humiliating defeat" in the summer 2006 war.
The Shiite militant group's deputy leader, Sheik Naeem Qassem, told a rally in south Beirut on Sunday: These drills are part of preparations for war because Israel is always in a warlike situation … These drills are part of plans for something in the future, probably it could be far off, but it is a preparation for war.
Hezbollah's main supporter, Iran, described the Israeli home front defense drills as "provocative actions." Mohammed Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Tehran today: "The war game was performed to boost the low spirit of the Zionist regime's troops. But the nature and raison d'etre of the Zionist regime is terrorism and intimidation. Regrettably, whenever one U.S. official visits Israel, the Zionist regime's officials are emboldened to behave aggressively."
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It’s emergency preparedness week in Israel, as authorities conduct the nation’s largest-ever series of disaster drills.
Military and civilian authorities will practice responding to a weeklong series of scenarios ranging from natural disaster to chemical weapons attack.
On Tuesday, schoolchildren across the country will file to protected areas when a nationwide emergency siren sounds.
The drill won’t be in effect, however, in Sderot, the southern city that is a target of regular rocket launches from the neighboring Gaza Strip. Sderot residents, it is believed, have more than enough experience ducking and covering in response to sirens.
Israeli officials have repeatedly denied that this week’s drills are tied to any specific looming threat. But it’s hard to ignore the rising anticipation of another round of hostilities with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
There are mixed interpretations on whether the two sides will lock horns again this summer, but Israeli officials remain braced for Hezbollah to take revenge for the February assassination of senior leader Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria. Hezbollah blames Israel, and Israeli officials have issued several less-than-categorical denials of involvement.
Every week seems to bring new, unconfirmed reports of massive expansion in the size and range of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal.
Israel’s neighbors have taken note of the country’s preparedness drills. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ordered his country’s forces to go on heightened alert, and Hezbollah spokesmen have said their cadres will also be watching closely.
— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
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