Lebanon, historically a country of cohabitation among 18 different religions, has been suffering from a civil war since the year 1975 when a group of gunman killed about 26 Palestinian passengers in a bus crossing an area of Beirut populated by Christian citizens. It was a counter-attack on the same day’s assassination of 4 members of a Christian Lebanese party (the Phalanges) believed to be performed by a Palestinian armed group. Since then, religious beliefs and ideology laid the basis of the creation of Lebanese political parties as well as armed militias of one religion (or sub-religion) each, thus raising the tension among the different Lebanese groups and serving as the constant basis for the long civil war all around the country (about 30 years).
On the 8th of May a grenade detonated in “Taynal” Mosque in Tripoli (the main city of North Lebanon) and a second grenade was luckily found there by the armed forces before it explodes. Soon after the incident of the mosque, the Sheikhs of Tripoli conducted a reunion on the same day followed by a press conference in which they assured their stance with the Syrian people in their pursuit of freedom, as if those religious leaders understood the message they received in the mosque in the direction of terrorizing them to prevent them from rallying against the Syrian neighboring regime and its allies in Lebanon.
One week after, a Lebanese soldier was killed at the extreme of the same North of the country by the fire of the Syrian army from the other side of the common border during the fleeing of Syrian citizens from “Talkalakh” in Syria to the village of “Wadi Khaled” in Lebanon.
On the same day, at about 200 Km to the south in “Maroun El Ras”, the last point in the Lebanese territory on the border with Israel, hundreds of Palestinian refugees and activists from Lebanon as well as other countries organized a protest against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory on the 63rd memory of “Al Nakba” (the forced exit of Palestinians by Israeli troops causing them to seek everlasting refuge in Lebanon). About 10 protesters were killed and more than 100 injured by the fire from the Israeli side of the “blue line” (an imaginary line separating Lebanon from Israel considered the current border between the 2 countries). The Israeli army started the fire when some protesters tried to cross to their side. It is not unknown that the aforementioned protesters are supporters of the Syrian regime, a fact which lead some leaders from the Lebanese as well as from the Israeli side to consider the incident as an act requested by the Syrian regime to reduce the tension on its territory created by the 2 months continuous protests of the Syrian citizens against their leaders. The postulate was supported with an unprecedented protest in the Golan Heights of Syria, an area occupied by Israeli troops since 1967, where problems have never occurred. The pro-Syrian leaders and their supporters in Lebanon as well as the Syrian regime disagree and consider the action of the protesters in South Lebanon as uncalculated and driven only by the anger of the youth participating in the revival of a highly moving memory and that it has no geopolitical connection to Syria.
Wherever the truth lies, whether it is going to get discovered or not, people were threatened, injured, and killed in Lebanon by bordering countries from North to South and the situation on the borders is on the verge of an explosion. In the absence of a Lebanese government, who is going to make the necessary decisions to prevent the country against falling into another civil war, and what will the Lebanese army do to protect the country on the borders?
On the 8th of May a grenade detonated in “Taynal” Mosque in Tripoli (the main city of North Lebanon) and a second grenade was luckily found there by the armed forces before it explodes. Soon after the incident of the mosque, the Sheikhs of Tripoli conducted a reunion on the same day followed by a press conference in which they assured their stance with the Syrian people in their pursuit of freedom, as if those religious leaders understood the message they received in the mosque in the direction of terrorizing them to prevent them from rallying against the Syrian neighboring regime and its allies in Lebanon.
One week after, a Lebanese soldier was killed at the extreme of the same North of the country by the fire of the Syrian army from the other side of the common border during the fleeing of Syrian citizens from “Talkalakh” in Syria to the village of “Wadi Khaled” in Lebanon.
On the same day, at about 200 Km to the south in “Maroun El Ras”, the last point in the Lebanese territory on the border with Israel, hundreds of Palestinian refugees and activists from Lebanon as well as other countries organized a protest against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory on the 63rd memory of “Al Nakba” (the forced exit of Palestinians by Israeli troops causing them to seek everlasting refuge in Lebanon). About 10 protesters were killed and more than 100 injured by the fire from the Israeli side of the “blue line” (an imaginary line separating Lebanon from Israel considered the current border between the 2 countries). The Israeli army started the fire when some protesters tried to cross to their side. It is not unknown that the aforementioned protesters are supporters of the Syrian regime, a fact which lead some leaders from the Lebanese as well as from the Israeli side to consider the incident as an act requested by the Syrian regime to reduce the tension on its territory created by the 2 months continuous protests of the Syrian citizens against their leaders. The postulate was supported with an unprecedented protest in the Golan Heights of Syria, an area occupied by Israeli troops since 1967, where problems have never occurred. The pro-Syrian leaders and their supporters in Lebanon as well as the Syrian regime disagree and consider the action of the protesters in South Lebanon as uncalculated and driven only by the anger of the youth participating in the revival of a highly moving memory and that it has no geopolitical connection to Syria.
Wherever the truth lies, whether it is going to get discovered or not, people were threatened, injured, and killed in Lebanon by bordering countries from North to South and the situation on the borders is on the verge of an explosion. In the absence of a Lebanese government, who is going to make the necessary decisions to prevent the country against falling into another civil war, and what will the Lebanese army do to protect the country on the borders?