Robert Fisk: Who's running Lebanon?
from The Independent
Devastated by Israel's bombs, threatened by the looming might of Iran and Syria, and divided from within by its own ethnic bloodletting - Lebanon is an unfolding tragedy with little hope of salvation. As the nation rushes headlong towards civil war, Robert Fisk, who has lived in Beirut for 30 years, picks through the city's wreckage to identify the agitators, military leaders and politicians who now wield the real power
Published: 15 December 2006
Some four years before his murder, when he was still Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri angrily told me a story of his struggle with Hizbollah. We were walking in the garden of his Beirut palace at Qoreitem - he reasoned that, even though his phones were all tapped, the Syrians had probably not bugged the flower beds with listening devices - and his hands were shaking with rage.
"They wanted to bring some of their 'martyrs' who had died fighting the Israelis and bury them in front of the Beirut international airport," he muttered. "Can you imagine what that would have meant? We want to show the world our new Beirut and the graves of Hizbollah members would be the first thing that every visitor to Lebanon would see. And once buried there, they could never be removed. I managed to stop it."
"How?" I asked. But Hariri just flicked his right hand in the air dismissively. There must have been some compromise with Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of Hizbollah. He wouldn't say.
(Continued here.)
Devastated by Israel's bombs, threatened by the looming might of Iran and Syria, and divided from within by its own ethnic bloodletting - Lebanon is an unfolding tragedy with little hope of salvation. As the nation rushes headlong towards civil war, Robert Fisk, who has lived in Beirut for 30 years, picks through the city's wreckage to identify the agitators, military leaders and politicians who now wield the real power
Published: 15 December 2006
Some four years before his murder, when he was still Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri angrily told me a story of his struggle with Hizbollah. We were walking in the garden of his Beirut palace at Qoreitem - he reasoned that, even though his phones were all tapped, the Syrians had probably not bugged the flower beds with listening devices - and his hands were shaking with rage.
"They wanted to bring some of their 'martyrs' who had died fighting the Israelis and bury them in front of the Beirut international airport," he muttered. "Can you imagine what that would have meant? We want to show the world our new Beirut and the graves of Hizbollah members would be the first thing that every visitor to Lebanon would see. And once buried there, they could never be removed. I managed to stop it."
"How?" I asked. But Hariri just flicked his right hand in the air dismissively. There must have been some compromise with Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of Hizbollah. He wouldn't say.
(Continued here.)
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