Sylvie Groult-Beyrouth

Menée par le Hezbollah chiite, l’opposition libanaise s’apprête à manifester vendredi pour faire chuter le gouvernement pro-occidental de Fouad Siniora, nouvelle étape d’une dangereuse escalade qui a creusé ces dernières semaines la fracture entre camps pro et anti-syrien.

Le chef du Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah a appelé les Libanais à «participer massivement» à une manifestation «pacifique» vendredi à 15 h (10 h HNE) dans le centre de Beyrouth, pour obtenir la formation d’un gouvernement d’union nationale, préalable à des élections législatives anticipées. (Lire la suite…)

Quatre démineurs ont été blessés par des mines antipersonnel au Liban sud posé par Israël lors du dernier conflit.

BEYROUTH (AP) — Une agence des Nations unies a accusé samedi Israël d’avoir posé des mines antipersonnel au Liban durant le conflit entre Tsahal et le Hezbollah cet été. L’ONU affirme que l’Etat hébreu a usé d’armes à sous-munitions durant ce conflit, mais il s’agit de la première accusation concernant des mines.
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Ghassan Makerem, an intellectual and activist in Beirut, provides context and an overview of initial reaction to the assassination of Lebanese Cabinet Minister Pierre Gemayel:

An interview with Ghassan Makarem on Gemayel Assassination: A view from Lebanon

For information on the Lebanese situation, you can go to:

• The Daily Star
• Al Jazeera

By Anthony Shadid-Washington Post Foreign Service

BEIRUT, Nov. 22 — The neighborhood of Ain Rummaneh was quiet Wednesday, its shops shuttered and streets empty a day after the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician from one of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian families. Nayef Mazraani took a break from washing his car and pointed down a shaded street.

There, he said, was where Lebanon’s civil war began in 1975, when Christian militiamen massacred 27 Palestinians on a bus after an attack on a church. He gestured in another direction. There, he said, was that war’s front line, which remains a barrier of sorts between two Beiruts and two Lebanons, pulling ever further apart.

“The war has never stopped,” he said. “It started here, in 1975, in Ain Rummaneh, and until now, it hasn’t finished.” (Lire la suite…)

The latest assassination in Lebanon has bolstered the US-backed government and weakened Hizbullah and the opposition

Charles Harb
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese cabinet minister and scion of a ruling Christian Maronite family, in Beirut on Tuesday has sent shockwaves through the country’s establishment and is shaping the political feud raging throughout the country. Given the timing, location and method of the killing – a sophisticated shooting in the heart of Christian east Beirut at the height of a political crisis – there is already rampant speculation as to the identity and sponsors of the assassins. That will doubtless remain the case even after the criminal investigation is complete. The consequences of this for Lebanon and the wider Middle East are already starting to become clear.

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Beirut, 20 November – Even as the country prepared for mass street protests aimed at changing the composition of the government, activists in Beirut held a spirited protest in solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza and against the presence of UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon.

Around 30 people staged the sit-in outside the headquarters of the European Union (EU), many of whose countries have contributed troops to the enlarged UNIFIL presence in southern Lebanon.

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Helem keeps up counseling and publishing efforts, but legal and media advocacy take back seat for now

By Paige Austin
Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

BEIRUT: Helem has undergone a subtle transformation in recent months. Lebanon’s pioneering gay and lesbian rights organization has scaled back its advocacy efforts in quiet acknowledgment of politicians’ preoccupation with other issues – and its own potential for igniting backlash. Helem’s full-time coordinator, Georges Azzi, says the shift is in part a reflection of the political turmoil in Lebanon in the aftermath of this past summer’s war with Israel. (Lire la suite…)

Présentation de HABBOUBA AOUN du Landmine Resource Center de Beyrouth sur les bombes à fragmentation israéliennes et leurs conséquences sur la population libanaise…

VENDREDI 24 NOVEMBRE à 20 heures
Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal [CCMM]
3300, Crémazie Est, coin Saint-Michel
[Métro Saint-Michel]
Les dons sont bienvenus.

Joignez-vous à l’Association Al Hidaya de Montréal et à Tadamon! pour une présentation interactive de diapositives et un exposé par HABBOUBA AOUN du Landmine Resource Center de Beyrouth.

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US prosecutor charges 2 for helping air Al-Manar

NEW YORK: Two men have been charged with terrorist offences in New York for allegedly providing access to a television station banned in the United States and linked to Hizbullah, prosecutors said Monday. Pakistani-born Javed Iqbal, 42, and US citizen Saleh Elahwal, 53, are accused of conspiring to provide viewers with satellite broadcasts by Al-Manar, considered the mouthpiece for the Lebanese resistance party.

They face a sentence of up to 110 years in jail if convicted on the charges of providing material support or resources to a foreign “terrorist” organization. (Lire la suite…)

Jeremy Harding – London Review of Books

Shatila is a short car journey out of Beirut and a few minutes on foot down a street full of market stalls. You pass a refuse heap where goats browse and small children smash up polystyrene packaging, duck into any of the narrow alleys to your right and enter one of the oldest refugee camps in the world. It was established by the Red Cross in 1949 on behalf of Palestinians herded from their villages the previous year. About 700,000 people were evicted in 1948 and of these perhaps 100,000, many of them peasants and smallholders from the hinterland of Haifa, fetched up in Lebanon.

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