I wasn't able to post a comment on the English version of the story, which i just read (Comments disabled?). So I am posting it here: Wow! What a great piece! This was well worth the wait!!!! It's a shame you don't want to publish this more openly. I personally believe it's worth being out there, but you have your reasons, I expect. One "correction" I feel compelled to make: Bashir Gemayel was never PM. He was elected President of Lebanon in 1982 and was assassinated before he could take office. There are countless small nuggets I could comment about in this story, but really, they all stand very well on their own. The one bit that I found interesting, because I think you hit on a particularly overlooked aspect of Lebanese politics is the observation you made about the feeling that there was a bit of class-struggle in the whole Hezbollah tent city vs. Middle Class Beirutis. That is a very insighful observation that often gets lost in all the political rhetoric in Lebanon. But the shia sect (which is mostly based in South Lebanon) sees themselves as having been persecuted and oppressed by the more wealthy Sunnis and Christians in the big cities, and having been tormented and neglected both by the government and by various foreign occupations (The PLO, then the Israelis) over the decades. There is a very strong current of mistrust towards the government, towards the Sunni and the Christians and towards the West (which Hezbollah piggybacks on) that has been there for decades and which makes for a lot of their current mentality and paranoia about the legimitate government, the power struggles, the "American and Zionist project" and so on. I point this out because a LOT of people (and a lot of media story) tend to focus on the current stance of the Shia and Hezbollah, without really bothering to delve deeper into what has made your average Ali Shia what he is today.