Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Related: Iran’s Road To Tel Aviv Runs Through Beirut

Related: Hezbollah overruns West Beirut

Debka:

At least 11 people were killed Friday, May 9, Day 3 of fierce clashes between Hizballah and pro-government forces, the worst since the 1975-90 civil war. At noon, Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s units entered Beirut to support Hizballah’s advancing occupation of Sunni West Beirut districts.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that Thursday night, army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman refused to obey prime minister Fouad Siniora’s order to declare a state of emergency for the crisis created by Hizballah’s declaration of war against the government. The general warned that if the government enacted an emergency, he would order the troops to return to barracks.

The SSNP is a Greek Orthodox arm of Syrian military intelligence.

Hizballah and fellow Shiite Amal fighters were thus able to seize control of most of pr-government Sunni West Beirut in clashes that have spread to other parts of the Lebanon while the government was left unprotected.

The urban warfare shut down Lebanon’s port and all but closed the international airport, with burning barricades on major highways in Beirut.

The army has only interfered in extreme situations. Friday, soldiers rescued the anti-Syrian majority leader Saad Hariri and allied Druze leader Walid Jumblatt when their mansions were surrounded and attacked by Shiite forces, but they did not make the assailants move out. The Lebanese army, half of whose members are Shiites, thus permitted Hizballah and Amal clinch their control of the Sunni neighborhoods.

The Lebanese army also took over the pro-government Future TV station and newspaper owned by Hariri after they were blown up. The army agreed to keep the station off the air.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the United States, France and Israel are watching passively as Lebanon falls to Iran’s surrogate terrorist group Hizballah. Since the 2006 Lebanon war, prime minister Ehud Olmert has insisted improbably that the conflict had left Hizballah seriously weakened.
Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Thursday night that the only way to stop the violence was for the “black gang” ruling the government to withdraw its decisions to close his military telecommunications network and restore Hizballah loyalists to key positions at Beirut international airport.

Haaretz:

Lebanese troops began taking up positions in some Sunni neighborhoods abandoned by the pro-government groups and taken over by Hezbollah and its allies. The army, though, did not intervene in the clashes, which had largely tapered off into sporadic gunfire by early afternoon. Some of the gunfire was celebratory in the air by the militants.

A senior security official said the army began deploying on some streets with the end of the clashes and would soon take over the Sunnis’ last stronghold of Tarik Jadideh.

Hezbollah took control of Muslim west Beirut on Friday, tightening its grip on the city in a major blow to the U.S.-backed government.

Shi’ite opposition gunmen seized control of several Beirut neighborhoods from Sunni foes loyal to the United States-backed government, in street battles that left 11 dead and 30 wounded, security officials said.

In some cases Hezbollah handed over newly won positions to Lebanese troops, presumably after having made clear to everyone its strength ahead of the next round of negotiations with opponents over the country’s political future.

Hezbollah’s power was demonstrated dramatically Friday morning when it forced the TV station affiliated to the party of Lebanon’s top Sunni lawmaker, Saad Hariri, off the air. Gunmen also set the offices of the party’s newspaper, Al-Mustaqbal, on fire in the coastal neighborhood of Ramlet el-Bayda.

Lebanon’s army, which has stayed out of the sectarian political squabbling that has paralyzed the country for more than a year, only intervened after the building was set ablaze. Troops provided cover for firefighters, who eventually extinguished the flames.

The army also evacuated employees from the TV station, but only after gunmen massed near it and threatened to destroy it, said Nadim Mounla, the station’s chief.

With top leaders Saad Hariri of the Sunnis and Druse leader Walid Jumblatt besieged in their residences in Muslim western Beirut, officials of the pro-government majority called an emergency meeting of legislators in a mountain town in the Christian heartland northeast of Beirut, said LBC TV, a pro-government Christian station.

Lebanese political commentators have branded the violence an attempted military coup.

The offices of the al-Mustaqbal newspaper, affiliated to Hariri’s Future Movement, in the coastal neighborhood of Ramlet el-Bayda were also set ablaze by gunmen and white smoke could be seen billowing from the building. The army subsequently took over the area and firefighters extinguished the blaze.

Lebanese troops were also evacuating the staff of the TV station’s terrestrial and satellite studios in the Kantari area of western Beirut, said Nadim Mounla, the station’s chief. He said gunmen massed near the station and asked through the army to close down or it will be destroyed.

The army has largely avoided getting involved in the street battles, preferring to remain above the political fray for fear of being dragged into the conflict. The institution could break up on sectarian lines if it takes on Hezbollah’s powerful militia or any major party.

A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the fence of the heavily protected residence of Hariri in the neighborhood of Koreitem in Muslim western Beirut, security officials said. Hariri is believed to be in the residence.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said Friday a total of 11 people have been killed and more than 20 wounded. On Thursday, they had reported four killed and eight wounded, suggesting most of the casualties occurred in clashes overnight.

The crackle of gunfire and occasional explosions continued to reverberate across the western, largely Muslim, sector of the city.

Shi’ite gunmen roamed unopposed through the deserted streets of neighborhoods once dominated by supporters of Hariri and the government. Dozens of cars and shops had been damaged by the fighting.

About 100 Hezbollah gunmen in identical camouflage uniforms wearing baseball caps and black flak jackets marched down the Muslim sector’s main commercial Hamra Street and took up positions on corners and sidewalks. They stopped the few cars braving the empty streets and checked their trunks.

Dozens of fighters from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a Hezbollah ally, also appeared in the streets off Hamra, some masked and carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Shops in the normally bustling commercial district were closed save for a few pharmacies and grocery stores.

“We entered Karakol Druse. There is no Jumblatt and no Hariri here,” a Shi’ite gunman in another Beirut neighborhood told Associated Press Television News, referring to the top Sunni leader and his ally, Druse leader Walid Jumblatt.

“We entered the neighborhood. They threw away their weapons and ran,” said another gunman as one of his colleagues tore down a poster of Hariri. The scenes were a grim reminder of Lebanon’s devastating 1975-90 civil war in which 150,000 were killed and parts of the city wrecked as it was carved into warring sectarian enclaves.

The gunbattles exploded in parts of Beirut Thursday afternoon after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Lebanon’s Western-backed government of declaring war on his Shi’ite militant group.

Hariri went on television later urging Hezbollah to pull its fighters back and save Lebanon from hell.

Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia called on Arab foreign ministers on Friday to meet urgently to discuss the escalating crisis in Lebanon.

The unrest virtually shut down Lebanon’s international airport for a third day and barricades closed major highways. Hezbollah first blocked roads in Beirut on Wednesday to enforce a strike called by labor unions, but confrontations quickly spread across the city.

In his speech, Nasrallah warned against trying to disarm Hezbollah and said his fighters would retaliate swiftly if attacked.

Those who try to arrest us, we will arrest them. Those who shoot at us, we will shoot at them, Nasrallah said in a news conference via video link from his hiding place.

Later, Hariri made a televised appeal to Nasrallah seeking to calm the conflict.

“My appeal to you and to myself as well, the appeal of all Lebanon, is to stop the slide toward civil war, to stop the language of arms and lawlessness,” said Hariri, son of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005.

Hariri proposed a compromise that would involve the army, one of the sole national institutions respected by Lebanon’s long deadlocked political factions.

Opposition-affiliated television announced late Thursday that Hariri’s offer had been rejected and the fighting continued.

The clashes are the latest turn in a test of wills between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. The U.S.-backed government has only a slim majority in parliament, and the two sides have been locked in a 17-month power struggle that has kept government at a standstill.

The fight could have implications for the entire Middle East at a time when Sunni-Shi’ite tensions are high. The tensions are fueled in part by the rivalry between predominantly Shiite Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah, and Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.