Mohamad Bazzi, Council on Foreign Relations fellow on the ground in Beirut, held a media conference call to discuss the events this week in Lebanon. He said that on Saturday Hezbollah was accused of spying on the Lebanese state with a camera on a Beirut airport runway, and also of using a private communication network to communicate with each other through their own infrastructure. He said that on Monday night the Lebanese government held a meeting, and condemned what Hezbollah had done. He said Hezbollah and other opposition parties used a strike planned by labor unions on Wednesday as a vehicle to express their displeasure with the government’s decisions. (more…)

Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Mohamad Bazzi describes how he woke up today to gunfire, as Hezbollah fighters moved methodically through the streets. He says they took over offices and media under the Sunni leader, Saad Hariri, but then turned them back over to the Lebanese army. He says by midday Hezbollah was able to exert control over pretty much all of West Beirut. (1:06)

 

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Mohamad Bazzi, Council on Foreign Relations fellow on the ground in Beirut, says that the recent outbursts of violence caught most people in Lebanon by surprise. He says that the violence over the last four to five days is rooted in events that transpired over the weekend, when Hezbollah was accused of spying on the Lebanese state with a camera trained on a runway of Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport. (0:59)

 

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