Beirut is alive. Lebanon’s capital – with its rehabilitated business center, lively party districts, enthralling historical sites, and pockets of Levantine charm – is in the news again. Bullets and bombs have long defined this city, and this country, in the Western eye, but Lebanon seems to have returned to its ‘Golden Age.’
Once littered with stories of a fifteen-year-long civil war, periodic violence between Lebanon and Israel, and the resurgent political unrest that has plagued Lebanon since 2005, newspapers, wire services, and websites now breathlessly fawn over Beirut’s revival as a regional – indeed, global – tourist destination.
Lebanon has already seen more than one million tourists this year and, though the number is dominated by expatriates and inflated by a number of Syrian transients, the Ministry of Tourism hopes to double that number by the end of the year.
Yet, as the Lebanese dance, their leaders continue to gamble.
Two months after peaceful and free elections saw the March 14 coalition expand its parliamentary majority (Walid Jumblatt has since complicated things, but the elections stand alone for our purposes here), a caretaker cabinet continues to govern. Whatever the local reasons for this delay – some blame the Free Patriotic Movement, while others blame the majority – it is clear that the regional situation favors, or at least tolerates, this stalemate in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Israel and Hizbullah continue to trade jabs. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has stated that Israel will hold Hizbullah responsible if ‘an Israeli diplomat or Israeli citizen is harmed abroad.’ The Israeli government has also warned that the next war will see strikes against all of Lebanon, without regard to which communities or areas support Hizbullah.
In turn, Hizbullah’s Secretary General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, upped the ante at a massive rally marking the end the 2006 war, stating that the Shiite party would strike at Tel Aviv if Israel bombs either Beirut or Dahiyeh (the capital’s Hizbullah-dominated southern suburb) during the course of another war.
Perhaps the Lebanese are partying because they know that trouble looms ahead. After all, as the Japanese say, ’we’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.’
Having survived the first brutal winds battering their nascent independence – political assassinations in 2005; war in 2006, paralysis in 2007; and internal strife in 2008 – the people of Lebanon may be dancing in the eye of the storm. One can only wonder how long they have before the next wave hits.
The Silent