One little observation about Beirut and the political crisis here. As one of my friends observed when we walked through the Hezbollah tent city, there is a remarkable politeness about the political struggle. There were a few posters still up for Gebran Tueni, who was assassinated (everyone believes it was by the Syrian state, for whose expulsion from Lebanon he had worked tirelessly), as also for Rafik Hariri, the inquiry into whose assassination is the proximate cause of the current crisis. (The Syrian-aligned parties don’t want any inquiry, because they know where it will lead.) What was striking was that none of the posters were defaced.
It’s strange to see that kind of civility, when everyone knows that under the surface there are plenty of AK-47s (not just the ones on Hezbollah’s flag) that could come out at a moment’s notice.
“It’s strange to see that kind of civility, when everyone knows that under the surface there are plenty of AK-47s”
An armed society is a polite society, the (somewhat inaccurate) saying goes.