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| 1 |
ID:
139144
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| Summary/Abstract |
The famine that befell Syria during the First World War was among the most tragic events in the region's modern history. The article argues that the 1915 locust attack, which is often neglected altogether or given terse treatment as one among a laundry list of causes of the famine, was a critical factor which drove many across the region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, to starvation beginning in late 1915. Given that the scale of the attack was far worse than anything Syria had witnessed in many decades, if not centuries; and that a huge percentage of the region's major foodstuffs and sources of livelihood, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, fodder and a small but not insignificant amount of cereals, were devoured by the locusts, it is suggested that many of the 100,00–200,000 people that died from starvation or starvation-related diseases in the year immediately following the attack – that is, from November 1915 to November 1916 – can be attributed to the locust invasion.
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| 2 |
ID:
177705
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Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon is one of the most controversial events in its history. It is considered the war of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, and hence a war of choice. One of the historical questions concerning that war revolves around its origins. The widespread assumption is that the roots can be found in 1981, the year in which Israel was on the verge of war with both Syria and the PLO. However, this article claims that the 1967 Six-Day War was the point of departure to the 1982 Lebanon War when the PLO settled in Lebanon. The issue of the origins of the 1982 war is not an exclusively historiographic matter. It has broader implications concerning the nature of the war. If the roots of the conflict can be found in 1967, then the war was a result of a prolonged process. Indeed, Israel started the war, but it was only after other options that it exercised had failed. Hence, it was not at all a war of choice.
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| 3 |
ID:
123256
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| 4 |
ID:
154705
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This article seeks to determine the correlates of Lebanese Muslims perceptions of the Islamic State (ISIS) which are measured using the hypotheses that commitment to political Islam, young age, education and occupational status would predict approval of ISIS. In view of the accentuated polarisation between Sunnis and Shiis along sectarian lines, it is proposed that dislike for the Shiis would enhance the level of support for ISIS. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey Lebanese Muslims (N = 302) administered during the fall of 2015.The suggestion is that adherence to the tenets of political Islam, sectarianism and educational attainment are major predictors of endorsement for ISIS.
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| 5 |
ID:
073479
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| 6 |
ID:
137717
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper assesses the role that analogical reasoning played in Israel's decision making during the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Hezbollah. Two analogies seemed to dominate internal deliberations: the “air power superiority” analogy which drew on more than a decade of developments in military theory and the air-based campaigns of the two Gulf wars and the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s and late 1990s; and the “Lebanese quagmire” analogy which drew on Israel's own traumatic experience of Israel following the its first war in Lebanon in 1982. The misuse of these analogies by the Israeli political–military leadership during the war produced a myopic approach which advocated an almost total reliance on air power rather than ground maneuver to win the war and refrained from using ground forces for fear of entering another bloody and unpopular war in Lebanon. The constraining power of these analogies prevented the consideration of alternative courses of action or the effective calculation of cost-benefit analysis during the war. Whereas previous studies of the war provided various explanations to singular decisions or episodes, this paper shows that the air power and quagmire analogies contained the conceptual boundaries of Israeli decision making during the war and thus best explain its attraction and limitations.
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| 7 |
ID:
183760
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| Summary/Abstract |
Syria and Lebanon were declared French mandates by the League of Nations just after the First World War at the climax of a global prohibition, especially in the United States. Contrary to North Africa, Levant was already a great land of wine and arak production, especially through religious congregations. In that context, especially during the 1930s crisis, the French authorities were asked to protect and sustain the Lebanese vineyards, and more generally the alcohol levant economy. However, at the same time the administrators were pressured by Muslim lobbies and the League of Nations to ‘improve the social situation’ in the territories they had to manage, which could mean a stronger control of alcohol consumptions. In that context, alcohol regulation was a part of the paternal Republicanism that, according to Elizabeth Thompson, characterized the social policy of France in the Levant. How could the authorities manage these two different stakes? To try to answer, I have analysed the Lebanon newspapers from the nineteen-twenties in Saint-Joseph University and special issues on alcohol control, from French security services of the mandate, at the French Diplomatic Archives of Nantes (CADN).
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| 8 |
ID:
100750
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article discusses Israel's ambiguous policy towards Lebanon since the late 1960s and early 1970s and assesses its long-term impact on Israeli-Lebanese relations. Its main argument is twofold: first, Israel reacted to the gradual decline of Lebanon's effective sovereignty in the Lebanese-Israeli border area in the late 1960s and early 1970s by adopting an ambiguous policy, which, while recognizing Lebanon's formal sovereignty, sought to "make up" for its lack of effective sovereignty in the Israeli-Lebanese border area by stepping up Israel's involvement there; second, Israel's ambiguous policy towards Lebanon, together with other factors, such as the armed activities of Palestinian and Lebanese factions in and from South Lebanon, has been a major factor for the continuous violence in the Lebanese-Israeli border area, most recently the war between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006. I conclude with suggestions of how to put an end to the cycle of ambiguity and conflict in Israeli-Lebanese relations.
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| 9 |
ID:
102594
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
During the 17th century Christian missionaries began to arrive to the region of the Ottoman Empire especially to Syria, Lebanon, and the Holy Land, in order to work among the Eastern Christians and among the Muslims, including the religious minorities such as the Druze and the Nusayris/?Alawis. Their main target was to convince them to convert. The American Protestant missionaries were the main missionaries who worked among the Nusayris. Due to their extreme beliefs, the Nusayris were mistreated by the Ottomans, and the region in which they resided was much neglected. The Protestant missionaries took advantage of this opportunity and began to build schools in the region so that Nusayri children could be taught the Bible and be induced to convert. The Ottomans grasped the danger of the missionary activity in the Empire and tried to win the Nusayris back by building schools and mosques to 'Sunnify' them. After 60 years of working amongst the Nusayris the success of the missionaries was very limited.
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| 10 |
ID:
130243
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
I'll never forget my brief and ill-received show of American patriotism as a young expatriate in Beirut. It was the summer of 2010, and the city was teeming with convoys of Lebanese youth honking and waving flags to celebrate their favorite teams' victories in the World Cup. After an exciting win by the US, I joined a group of Americans in a street celebration. But cruising down the main thoroughfare of West Beirut, our procession of stars and stripes was met with disapproving looks. The image that remains with me to this day is that of an older man standing silently with his shoe in his hand. The tattered sole was pointed directly at us, an expression of disrespect in Muslim culture. We recognized the gesture's meaning only because a similar shoe had been thrown at the American president's head a year earlier.
Today's generation of young Americans, known as the millennials, has come of age at a time when America has been humbled on the world stage. Many of them have traveled extensively at a young age and experienced this diminished reputation firsthand. Their parents and grandparents believe that America has been a remarkable force for good in the world and that the country should not lose sight of its responsibility to shape events globally because of mistakes made in the last decade. But millennials seem more fixed on the limits of American power and disenchanted with ideas of American exceptionalism.
Because of these reservations, the millennial generation is often described as declinist or isolationist. I disagree. Young Americans care more than any other age group about what happens beyond our borders. Millennials tend toward multilateralism and the cautious use of force, and perhaps would be more selective in committing US resources overseas. But far from an abdication of global leadership, this prudence may prove to be the silver lining to millennials' crisis of confidence in America's role as, in President Obama's words, "not just a place on a map, but the light to the world."
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| 11 |
ID:
066598
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| 12 |
ID:
111592
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Contrary to expectations, the Arab League has emerged as an active player in the Middle East region over the past decade. The League's roles in negotiations to end the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War and in the brokering of the 2008 Doha Agreement between warring Lebanese factions present two instances of 'partial' and 'direct' contributions to success in resolving major extra-systemic and minor internal conflicts. These developments are part of a global trend of the regionalization or decentralization of security in the post-Cold-War context.
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| 13 |
ID:
100074
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the lack of adequate attention to the Arab Security Sector and its complex political and social roles in the Arab States and presents the contours of a new research agenda for this topic. First, the authors demonstrate the insufficient scholarly attention accorded to the Arab Security Sector in several academic publications in the fields of Middle East Studies and Security Studies in the period 1990 -2005. Second, they focus on three major areas where recent theoretical and comparative advances in the study of civil-military relations have not been paralleled in the study of the Arab Security Sector: (1) the role of the Arab Security Sector in the process of state formation; (2) informal connections between actors within the Arab Security Sector and actors operating in the political system; and (3) the role of the Arab Security Sector in reflecting and reinforcing patterns of intersectoral relations in the Arab States.
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| 14 |
ID:
125685
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Taking Walid Sadek's fi annani akbar min bikasu [bigger than picasso] as its starting point, this article examines relations of art and politics in post-civil war Lebanon. A tiny and inexpensive paperback related to Picasso unfolds into a work of art that raises questions about the place of art and political dissent. After situating bigger than picasso in the context of contemporary book art and artistic practices of the postwar generation in Lebanon, the article focuses on the juxtaposition of text and image. By placing narratives of art vandalism next to the image of a monument dedicated to the late Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad, bigger than picasso playfully and provocatively breaks with political taboos at a time when the silence about the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90) and about Lebanese-Syrian relations was met with increasing anxiety. At the same time, the work makes room for aesthetic inquiries, exploring new possibilities of art at the margins of cultural production. The article concludes that bigger than picasso brings to the fore the discrepancy between public monumentality and artistic practices, which in finding ways around political violence and censorship have recourse to ephemeral and private spheres, and holds unexpected meanings in ever-changing political circumstances.
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| 15 |
ID:
153219
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A decade after the end of Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon, I spotlight the hitherto under-researched literary portrayals of the conflict. Following an overview of the immediate and (then-) innovative media tools and techniques used to capture its momentum—blogging, video-making, and online comics—and of Arabic-, French-, and English-language literary writings referring to the war, I focus on how literature, which requires time for its “contents” to be distilled into a form removed from emotional immediacy, succeed not only in reflecting it but also in reflecting on it through various fictional(izing) prisms. I do so by comparing the methodologies adopted by Nada Awar Jarrar's A Good Land and Abbas El-Zein's Leave to Remain: A Memoir, both published in 2009, and by arguing that they share a sense of guilt and hence exhibit an ethical exigency by incorporating particular discourses to mediate and mediatize this war as crisis: the social/humanitarian in A Good Land and the visual/photographic in Leave to Remain.
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| 16 |
ID:
181871
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Druze, despite being a small minority faith group, have long survived in a challenging region, thanks in part to a doctrine of deference to whatever state they live in. In the past few years, however, the three largest Druze populations—in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria—have each faced some of their most difficult challenges yet, from a downgrading of their citizenship status to economic collapse and civil war. An increasingly active diaspora has emerged as an important advocate for Druze interests worldwide.
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| 17 |
ID:
081392
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| 18 |
ID:
061381
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| Publication |
May-Jun 2005.
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| Summary/Abstract |
If the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri sought to make an example of him for his defiance of Syria, the aftermath of the crime has mocked them. For a generation, Lebanon was an appendage of Syrian power. But now the Lebanese people, in an "independence intifada," are clamoring for a return to normalcy. The old Arab edifice of power has survived many challenges in the past, but something is different this time: the United States is now willing to gamble on freedom.
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| 19 |
ID:
097152
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| 20 |
ID:
125356
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As Hizbullah's fighting forces undergoes expansion, the number of its training facilities for urban operations is also increasing. Nicholas Blanford examines the group's use of these centres and the effect they are likely to have on its tactical capabilities.
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