8 May 2008

Is this the day the (new) Lebanese Civil War started? And, more importantly, the day Abu Muqawama's plans to move back to Beirut this summer were wrecked?

Abu Muqawama can't find a link to the English-language text of Nasrallah's speech today, so he's stuck reading the Arabic, which you can find here. Apparently idiots are firing RPGs at one another. Now that's keeping it real.

One thing to watch if unrestricted fighting breaks out: Hizbollah can probably beat most of its adversaries within Beirut, but just as Hizbollah can block the roads to the airport, M14 can surely block all roads leading from Beirut to the Hizbollah strongholds of the Bekaa and the South, no?

Update: Abu Muqawama has just skimmed the text, and a few things jumped out. One, Nasrallah called Hizbollah's secure command and control system its greatest weapon during the 2006 war, which Abu Muqawama found interesting. Second, he qualified the whole "declaration of war" bit by calling the government's decision a "declaration of war" by "the government of (Druze leader) Walid Jumblatt." Smart, picking on the leader of Lebanon's tiny Druze community, but it doesn't appear as if the Sunni have considered themselves exempted from the declaration. Although if Abu Muqawama is correct, (Jumblatt's Druze ally) Marwan Hamadi remains the minister for telecommunications, true?

Update II: Walid Jumblatt agrees with Abu Muqawama. He apparently just said on Kalam an-Nass, "If he (Nasrallah) wants to occupy Beirut, he can do that militarily. But then what?"