An eruption of violence in Beirut and spectrum of black years in Lebanon

Events organized by Shiite Hezbollah and Amal movements against the Explosion survey of the Port of Beirut made six deaths in the heart of the capital, where the spark of the war had sprung in 1975.

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Columns of the Lebanese army are posted around the Carrefour of Tayyouneh, along the road that delimits the Christian majority district of Ain El-Remmaneh of that of Chiyah, by Shiite majority, in the heart of Beirut.

Dozens of young men turn to scooter and immortalize the stigma of the clashes that have opposed, a few hours earlier, Thursday, October 14, the two neighborhoods where a proletariat of workers and small traders live. The impacts on cars, the debris of the windows that exploded under the balls and the remains of rockets: on each side of the road, became a border like at the time of the civil war (1975-1990) when she drawed the line of Starting between Beirut-West and Beirut East, the inhabitants work to erase these traces.

The eruption of violence, which made six deaths from Shiite and thirty-two wounded, terrorized the children of the surrounding schools and makes entire families flee, revived the memory of the black years. In the collective unconscious, the district of Ain El-Remmaneh is the place where the spark of the war had sprung, on 13 April 1975. Community reflexes and political polarization have been revived since 2019, as and when that Lebanon sank into the economic crisis, then with the explosion on the port of Beirut, in August 2020. So much so that some fear that the escalation orchestrated by the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal movements around the investigation of This drama is the prelude to a new bellicose cycle.

The Shiite tandem had called to demonstrate, Thursday, before the Beirut Palace of Justice to denounce the “politicization” of the investigating judge, Tarek Bitar. Suspected not to be stranger to the presence of explosive substances on the port, Hezbollah is on the defensive. His chef, Hassan Nasrallah, shrugged on Monday, faced with the stubbornness of the judge to question senior officials, including two former ministers of Amal. Shiite ministers threatened to resign if the government did not intervene to remove the magistrate. “There is a deliberate desire to make a coup against the judicial system. They fire all wood. It seems clear that something worries them in the investigation, they want to control all the wheels”, Karim Bitar analysis , Director of the Department of Political Science at Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

Do not yield to “intimidations”

The day before the manifestation, Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese forces (FL), a party from a former Christian militia, had called not to yield to “intimidations” of the powerful Shiite movement. The Christian community keeps the belief that the explosion of the port was an attack on them, whose Hezbollah bears the responsibility. The prospect that supporters of the Party of God cross his neighborhoods, lived as a provocation, has attarated the fears. On social networks, messages beat the reminder of Christian factions to prevent the way forwarding to Beirut-Est.

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/Media reports.