Ahmad Fatfat, a March 14th minister, was being interviewed on al-Arabiya and paraphrased the famous line describing the PLO in Lebanon during the Civil War:حزب الله يعتبر ان طريق تل أبيب يمر من بيروت : “Hezbollah thinks the road to Tel Aviv passes through Beirut”. According to LBC, there’s currently SSNP militia around Clemencau (forgive the spelling, since I don’t speak French and am transliterating from Arabic), and West Beirut, including the commercial Hamra district is generally under control of Hezbollah and Amal gunmen. Since the al-Mustaqbal newspapers offices and satellite station was burned to the ground, most of the March 14th members (I’m watching a Junblatt interview now at his house in Clemencau) are on LBC and al-Arabiya, and are calling for an emergency meeting of the March 14th politicians and describing the events as an Iranian occupation of West Beirut. LBC is reporting that 11 people have died so far.
However, at least today is much quieter than yesterday. Interestingly, RPGs sound to my untrained ear like thunder, and I could have sworn it was raining late last night since there were also lightning-like flashes (I don’t have a good view of the city since I’m not on an upper-level floor). The Druze, Christian, and Sunni leaders on TV all seem to be on the same page politically, while on al-Manar (the Hezbollah channel) they were only showing old resistance music videos; However, NBN (literally, the Nabih Berri network, the leader of Amal), was showing “victory” footage of the burned al-Mustaqbal offices.
I’ll try to keep updating as the events unfold, especially since I’m stuck indoors.
