Michael Karam

The Lebanese tourism ministry has just released visitor figures for 2015. It appears that despite ongoing security concerns, nearly 2 million Syrians pushing Lebanon’s infrastructure to breaking point and an ongoing environmental emergency, we welcomed 1,517,927 visitors last year, an increase of more than 10 per cent on 2014.

But I’m not convinced that our tourist industry is doing that well. It is widely known that business travellers are included in the numbers, as are the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who carry foreign passports and who may be coming here for reasons other than relaxation or sightseeing. I also imagine that many of those Iraqis who we are told make up the biggest number of Arab visitors are en route to a better life in Europe.

Samir Moqbel Lebanese Defense Minister AP, Lebanon’s defense minister is urging the European Union to speed up assistance for the huge number of refugees from war-ravaged Syria that his country is now harboring. Samir Moqbel says he has appealed to Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades to convey the message to other EU member states to speed […]

Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: For the 11th year running, thousands gathered to commemorate the assassination of Rafik Hariri, on Valentine’s Day in 2005. Hundreds of thousands watched on television screens though only MTV, Al-Jadeed, Future Television and LBC carried the commemoration live. OTV, TeleLiban, NBN and Al-Manar broadcast regularly scheduled programmes.

Speaking at the Biel Conference Centre, the fallen martyr’s son, former prime minister Sa’ad Hariri reiterated his commitment to his father’s memory. He repeated that no one stood above the state.

Reuters

2005

February 14: Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is killed, along with 22 others, by a huge truck bomb in Beirut, triggering international pressure on neighboring Syria to end a 29-year military presence in Lebanon.

April 26: Last Syrian soldiers leave Lebanon.

June 16: An international investigation into Hariri’s killing begins.

June 19: Lebanese parliamentary elections end in victory for anti-Syrian alliance led by Hariri’s son Sa’ad Hariri.

October 20: In a report to the UN Security Council, the preliminary findings of the international investigation implicate high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese officials in the Hariri killing. Syria denies any role.

Halim Shebaya

I recall time stopped at noon on the 14th of February 2005. I was driving down to Hamra when I saw two friends, one of whom incidentally worked for Solidere, the company founded by Rafik Hariri to rebuild downtown Beirut. Due to Lebanon’s lax traffic rules, we stopped at the side of the highway and agreed to have lunch in Bliss Street.

Marwan went to his office in Biel while I drove towards the American University of Beirut, along the same road Rafik Hariri took as he left Parliament Square and drove towards his mansion in Qraytem. I was less than 100 meters ahead of his convoy when the blast rocked Lebanon’s coast.

The hours following the attack remain vivid in my mind. I remember the initial fear that Marwan and Joseph were caught up in the blast. They had the same fear for my safety. We all barely escaped. Thoughts then turned to all my friends and family members who took the Saint George coastal road to work or to university.

Peter Feely, Special to Guides

Beirut was chosen to be among the New 7 Wonders of Cities on 2014

Beirut’s often in the headlines for the wrong reasons. From refuge collection to refugee crises, the former Paris of the Middle East is usually portrayed as politically divided and chaotic. Art and culture however remain integral to life in the fervid Lebanese capital. Multi-million dollar redevelopments have seen galleries popping up across the city and last October’s re-opening of the iconic Sursock Museum indicate that the artistic heart and soul of Beirut refuses to be curtailed by political infighting and adversity. Here are five reasons why Beirut hasn’t relinquished its cultural mojo.

Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: As the 17-member International Syria Support Group (ISSG) meeting in Munich agreed on a putative plan to usher in a ceasefire in Syria next week, Prime Minister Tammam Salam met with the UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura to discuss how best to protect Lebanon.

Salam, who is in Germany to attend the three-day Munich Security Conference (MSC) that has gathered senior officials from around the world, wanted to know whether the just agreed upon deal included provisions to look after the estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The affable prime minister faced this conundrum a week ago in London when a donors conference raised the question indirectly, although he expressed some satisfaction that no senior official spoke of “naturalising the refugees”.

Armin Rosen

The 2016 edition of The Military Balance, the Institute for International and Strategic Studies’ (IISS) definitive annual report on the state of the world’s various armed forces, has some encouraging and not-so-encouraging news about global-defense spending.

On the one hand, growth in military spending is slowing down in the volatile Middle East and is even contracting in Latin America thanks to plunging oil prices.

But at the same time, two countries that often take an adversarial stance toward the US and its allies were responsible for over one-third of last year’s increases: Russia and China.

By Shaun Hurrell

Once thought locally extinct in Lebanon, immediate action was taken by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon for the conservation of this Endangered species when a pregnant female was found dead.

In March 2015, a seal was found dead trapped in fishing nets on the coast of Beirut, Lebanon. When post-mortem confirmed that seal was pregnant, this was a saddening event on its own. But a group of conservationists were further compelled to action when they realised this was a Mediterranean Monk Seal – believed to be the world’s rarest species of pinniped (seals, sealions and walruses).

Bachir El Khoury slate.fr

Ce mouvement chrétien venu d’Orient qui bénéficie désormais d’une Église indépendante reconnue par le Saint-Siège veut faire fructifier son nouveau statut sur le sol français.

Les maronites célèbrent chaque 9 février à travers le monde la fête de leur St. Patron, Maroun, un moine chrétien syriaque ayant vécu à Brad, en Syrie, au début du V^e siècle. Cette fête, inscrite au calendrier des jours fériés officiels au Liban, rassemble chaque année à Beyrouth l’ensemble des représentants des courants politiques et religieux du pays ainsi que les ambassadeurs des principales puissances. Une tradition qui découle de la place historique qu’occupe cette communauté au sein du pays du Cèdre et à son poids politique sur l’échiquier local.