Lebanon and Syria

Martin Kelley — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:26:09 +0000

The resignation of the government is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democracy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and others are reporting that “Syria is about to announce its withdrawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How wonderful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thirty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civil war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause turmoil. David Hirst, writing in the guardian, wonders whether the upheaval threatends to “destabilize Syria and turn it into another iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the example of elections, however flawed, in occupied iraq and Palestine, has come this new, unscheduled outbreak of popular self-assertion in a country [Lebanon] where a sister Arab state, not an alien occupier, is in charge.”
For the latest news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s special report on Syria and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Nonviolence Board’s thread on the “resignation of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297

Nonviolence Board - Quaker Ranter

Lebanon and Syria