The Muslims and the Christians, and the Muslims and Israelis have been at each other's throats calamitously for many years. Now, the violence, now Muslim on Muslim, is reaching a new crescendo. If anyone wants to know what a "Palestinian state" would look like, read on. One wonders how anyone, in their right mind, could wish for this.Excerpts of New York Times article below (link to article):
Hezbollah Ignites a Sectarian Fuse in Lebanon
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NADA BAKRI
Published: May 18, 2008
MENIEH, Lebanon — For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him.
Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals and insulted him with sectarian taunts, he could hear the chatter of gunfire and the crash of rocket-propelled grenades outside, where Hezbollah and its allies were taking control of the capital.
He returned to this northern village only after family members won his release just over a week ago by threatening the kidnappers with retaliation. By that time Mr. Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, had gained a whole new way of seeing his Shiite countrymen and his native land.
“We cannot go back to how we lived with them before,” he said as he sat with relatives and friends at home here. “The blood is boiling here. Every boy here, his blood is boiling. They push us, they push us, they push us.”
Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the civil conflict in Iraq.
Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut led to brutal counterattacks in northern Lebanon, where Sunni Muslims deeply resented the Shiite militant group’s display of power. The violence energized radical Sunni factions, including some affiliated with Al Qaeda, and extremist Sunni Web sites across the Arab world have been buzzing with calls for a jihad to avenge the wounded pride of Lebanese Sunnis.
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A Terrifying Ordeal
Mr. Obaid was one of many Sunni men who drove to Beirut after hearing that Hezbollah was attacking the offices of his political patron, Mr. Hariri. On arriving in the city, he stopped at a checkpoint, where militiamen asked him where he was from.
He barely had time to answer, he said, before the men — who recognized him as a Sunni from his northern accent — opened fire on the car, riddling it with bullets and killing Mr. Obaid’s young nephew, Abdo.
Mr. Obaid got out and tried to run, but the men caught him and took him to a warehouse, where he endured two and a half days of torture. He took off his shirt to show a reporter the fresh scars.
“They gave me a hard, hard time, brother,” said Mr. Obaid, who speaks English with a strong Australian accent, a legacy of 13 years he spent in that country.
“They did not even ask for my ID card, they just hear my voice,” Mr. Obaid said. “They treated us like animals, like animals.”
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[ 25 May 2008: Message edited by: ch11lawyer ]
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posted 25 May 2008 06:40 PM
