Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, says he didn't really mean to call Syrian president Bashar al-Assad a "savage" or "an Israeli product."
Jumblatt made those comments in February 2007, at a memorial service for the assassinated Lebanese leader Rafiq al-Hariri. At the time, Jumblatt was positioning himself as staunchly anti-Syrian; he blamed Assad for Hariri's murder, and fretted publicly that he too would be the victim of a Syrian car bomb.
Can the U.S. stop Israel from attacking its neighbors? Sen. John Kerry thinks the Israeli government wouldn't bomb Iran without American approval.
Kerry's actual remarks are a little more caveated than the Ha'aretz headline suggests, but my interpretation is that he doesn't think Israel will attack Iran unless Obama admits diplomacy has failed and gives Netanyahu the green light.
Not because I'm a huge fan of his or anything. But Nasrallah gave a speech today -- delivered, as usual, via giant video screens in south Beirut -- and much of the reporting on his talk is woefully out of context. Yedioth Ahronoth, for example, headlines its story Nasrallah threatens to attack Ben-Gurion Airport. The Jerusalem Post goes with Nasrallah warns TA will be targeted in next conflict.
These headlines are factually correct -- but they ignore the fact that Nasrallah's speech (عربي) was largely defensive.
Two headlines from Lebanon's Daily Star (which desperately needs a new Web design, by the way).
Conference debates Palestinian refugee population's right to work in Lebanon
Gun battle in Ain al-Hilweh leaves one woman dead
Not implying a causal relationship between the two! Ain al-Hilweh won't suddenly become a paradise if the Palestinian refugees living there get better access to well-paying jobs (though it certainly wouldn't hurt).
Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri's supporters descended on Beirut's Martyrs Square to mark the fifth anniversary of his father's assassination -- even though nobody is quite sure whether the younger Hariri's March 14 alliance has a future.
The rally, in the shadow of the Mohammed al-Amin mosque, has become an annual event in Beirut in the five years since Rafiq Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb. Television news reports say the crowd was smaller than in previous years -- but it still numbered in the tens of thousands.
Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri made some remarks about Hizballah in an interview with the BBC that are getting a lot of attention in the Israeli press.
As I wrote Tuesday night, I don't think another Israel-Hizballah war is imminent: Both sides are preparing for a war, but neither wants to start one. That said: If another war does start, it will almost certainly involve Syria.
Israeli and Arab media have been abuzz for months with stories of Syrian involvement in Hizballah. We mentioned a few of them on Tuesday: The report in Qatar's Al-Watan that Syria pledged to support Hizballah, and the recent rumors that Syria has mobilized thousands of reservists.
The headlines from Israel and the Arab world over the last few weeks seem to suggest that another Israel-Hizballah war is just around the corner. Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Jan. 6 that Syrian officials were worried about Israeli maneuvers along the Blue Line; the Syrian government pledged to attack Israel if it invaded Lebanon. On Friday, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported (عربي) that Syria had mobilized army reservists.
The Israeli military did in fact conduct exercises along the border, and deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon warned on Sunday that Hizballah is stockpiling missiles north of the Litani River.
Abolishing sectarianism in Lebanon: It's an attractive and healthy idea with next to zero chance of getting approved, at least for now. But that doesn't stop the concept from bouncing around in Lebanese politics every once in a while, and Nabih Berri's recent campaign is only the latest incarnation.
As far as I can tell, Berri, the Shia speaker of Lebanon's Parliament, announced his new push in a press conference more than a week ago. That prompted a flurry of criticism, but Berri is sticking by his guns.
Three people were injured today in a bombing in Kfar Fila, a Lebanese town about 15km southeast of Sidon.
Lebanese news sources aren't saying much about the blast so far. Al-Manar, the Hizballah-run television station, says the blast happened outside a house (عربي) owned by Hussein Hamdan. Lebanese security forces are investigating the explosion.
The Israeli government wants to convince the rest of the world not to send weapons to the Lebanese army:
According to government sources, the position Israel is trying to impress on countries that support Lebanon is that the Lebanese army and Hizbullah are virtually indistinguishable. As such, Israel is calling on countries that provide military aid to Lebanon to rethink the matter.
U.S. officials already have this concern, as we reported last month: They're worried about weapons falling into Hizballah's hands, and reluctant to bring Lebanon closer to any kind of parity with Israel (not that their armies are on anything close to an equal footing right now).
Nonetheless: While this might produce short-term gains for Israel, ultimately, the Jewish state needs a stronger Lebanese army. There's no way to disarm Hizballah, or incorporate it into the LAF, until the latter is stronger than the former.
If you just woke up from a year-long sleep and wanted to know the current state of the Arab-Israeli "peace process," these three quotes -- from three Israeli ministers -- pretty much sum up the situation.
Israel's foreign minister, Yuval Steinitz, said today that Israel doesn't need loan guarantees from the United States -- the same loan guarantees at the heart of George Mitchell's purported (and now, denied) threat to cut off foreign aid to Israel if the peace process remains stalled.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas member based in southern Lebanon, told reporters (عربي) that yesterday's mysterious bombing in Beirut targeted a group of offices owned by Hamas. The bomb was placed underneath a car belonging to an unnamed high-ranking Hamas official.
Hamdan identified the two Hamas members killed in the blast as Bassil Ahmed Juma, age 26, and Hassan Saeed al-Haddad, age 21. They were buried today in a refugee camp near Tyre. Hamdan identified them as "fighters," suggesting both men are lower-level members of the organization.
Israel's Army Radio quoted an unnamed Hamas official who blamed the blast on Israel. "We must not rule out the possibility that the Zionist enemy is responsible for this act of cowardice," he said.
A mysterious bombing killed three people last night, including two Hamas members, in a Hizballah-controlled suburb of south Beirut.
Hamas hasn't identified the victims; nobody has claimed responsibility yet, and officials from Hamas, Hizballah, and the Lebanese security forces say it's too early to identify a culprit. Authorities can't even say whether the bomb was hidden in a car or a building, though An-Nahar reports that it was a car bomb hidden in a garage.
A friend of mine just forwarded me this video of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri delivering a speech to parliament on Dec. 12. Two weeks old, I know, but too funny not to post -- even if you don't speak Arabic, you can tell Hariri is totally unprepared to deliver his speech.
At one point, the camera cuts away to Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker, who asks if Hariri wants someone else to finish the speech for him.
Hariri's speech is interspersed with clips from El-Eyal Kibret, a 30-year-old Egyptian film that I had the pleasure of watching early one morning on a bus back from Dahab. The main character, as I recall, is a lout unsuccessfully trying to pass himself off as a Western-educated sophisticate.
Saad Hariri is back in Beirut after his 23-hour jaunt to Damascus to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. It was his first official contact with Syria since his father's assassination in 2005 -- and while it produced no concrete results, many Lebanese are hailing the visit as an important step towards reconciliation with Syria.
The question, particularly for supporters of Hariri's March 14 movement, is whether the two countries will reengage as equals -- or, as one Lebanese columnist put it, whether their relationship will be "as brothers, or as parent and son."
Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri is in Damascus today for talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Hariri landed a few hours ago; he was met by a presidential envoy and then motorcaded to Tishreen Palace, the presidential residence, for a meeting with Assad.
The Associated Press reports that Hariri was "greeted warmly" at the palace. He will attend a dinner banquet hosted by Assad, and the two men will hold several meetings over the course of Hariri's two-day visit to Syria.
Hariri has had no official contact with the Syrian government since 2005, when his father, Rafiq al-Hariri, was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut.
A couple of news items in the past two days demonstrate the ways in which technology and mathematics are increasingly playing a role in 21st century warfare and, incidentally, how some reporting might misunderstand some technical - but important - details. Today, the Wall Street Journal broke a story about how insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have "hacked" into U.S. Predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf technology and "intercepted live video feeds" from the Predators' cameras.
Only, I don't see how that's actually possible. The three-member WSJ reporting team led by Siobhan Gorman only mentions one program, the Russian-made SkyGrabber, and although their wording suggests other software might be in play, SkyGrabber doesn't seem capable of intercepting and relaying live video feeds.
Andrew Exum returned from semi-retirement on Tuesday to pan Hizballah's new policy platform for its close-mindedness. Today, I found that Michael Totten has also re-posted some push back, courtesy of the Israel-based Global Research in International Affairs Center.
(Side note: Totten is really starting to grate on me. Exhibit A: This obnoxious post on Gaza.)
The GLORIA piece, written by senior research fellow Jonathan Spyer, doesn't really have a thesis - it's mostly a lot of vague, threatening rumblings. Spyer seems intent on making us all afraid that Hizballah is gaining power. But there are enough flaws in his short essay to render the argument highly unconvincing.
Andrew Exum came out of his semi-retirement to post some thoughts on Hizballah's new policy platform. He makes some points which are narrowly correct but sorely lacking in context, and I think he gets too hung up on the parts of the document where Hizballah says mean things about America.
