Category: The Middle East

Børre’s nightmare

 http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/350/355/july-war/20070304/20070304-images.html We left Beirut at 9 yesterday and were back 12 hours later. Drove to Sidon and checked in with the army to get permission to enter the occupation zone evacuated by the Israelis in 2000 and which is finally under Lebanese Army control. Then straight to Tyre, Jouwaya, Tibnine and Bint Jbeil. We saw …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/03/07/b%c3%b8rres-nightmare/

Pray for the little ones

The concluding paragraph of Fisk’s end-of-year summary: If Lebanon survives into next year, it will be the only “democracy” in the Arab world to have done so. Afghanistan is crumbling, Iraq is already a mass grave. The Palestinians face their own inter-factional catastrophe. But desperate for the help of Syria and Iran to ease his …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2006/12/29/pray-for-the-little-ones/

Olive harvest

My childhood friend Yusif Makhoul harvested his crop in Mieh-ou-Mieh, just east of Saida a couple of weeks ago. He said they had a bumper crop, but that they were small. They spent a week harvesting compared to the two days it took us when I was with them in ’97. (I guess olive trees …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2006/11/01/olive-harvest/

Shock & awe

Shocked!  World leaders are “shocked” by the outcome of the Palestinian democratic elections.  Cable TV’s faux news experts are breathlessly analyzing “what it all means” when people half a world away won’t vote the way we want them to… Let’s  see if we can break it down:  With great fanfare and general acclamation (by those same …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2006/02/05/shock-and-awe/

Lines, lines, everywhere lines

I noticed the other day that the border between Israel and the Sinai is not a straight line.  About halfway across, between Gaza and Aqaba, the border has a couple of protrusions into the Egyptian side (there are other places, but these are the most noticeable).  Does anyone know the history of how this border …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/12/10/lines-lines-everywhere-lines/

The dead and the mutilated

From Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter’s December 7 lecture:  The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment.  They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way.  The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives.  So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/12/09/the-dead-and-the-mutilated/

Border forts

It’s interesting how news about the war in Iraq dribbles out. Today’s local paper has a front-page story about a James Vandenberg, a Little Rock architect who serves in the Civil Engineering Corps, U.S. Navy Reserve Seabees. He recently spent 10 months in the Al Anbar region of Iraq. Here’s the part of the story …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/09/29/border-forts/