A Whose-State-Is-It-Anyway Update. “Hezbollah rocks eastern villages,” from the BBC, May 11:
Control of several villages loyal to Lebanon’s pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has been handed to the army after an attack by Hezbollah.
The group’s fighters used heavy weapons and small arms to attack the mountain settlements south-east of Beirut.
A truce was called after the Druze capitulated to avoid bloodshed, a BBC correspondent reports.
It follows four days of fighting in which Hezbollah stormed west Beirut, raising fears of a return to civil war.
The clashes have pitched the Syrian-backed Shia Islamist movement Hezbollah and its allies against the governing Western-backed Sunni, Christian and Druze alliance.
Beirut was quiet on Sunday, after control of areas seized by Hezbollah was handed to the Lebanese army, but clashes took place overnight in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli. […]
The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut reports that Sunday’s battle began in earnest after some skirmishing and provocations, with a string of Druze villages caught in a barrage of fire.
Mr Jumblatt knew Hezbollah, by far the strongest power in the land, could easily storm his entire mountain enclave, so he asked a Druze rival allied to Hezbollah to broker a deal to hand the whole area over to the Lebanese army, he adds.
“I tell my supporters that civil peace, coexistence and stopping war and destruction are more important than any other consideration,” Mr Jumblatt told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.
A ceasefire was arranged, and it seems to be generally holding, our correspondent says. […]
On Sunday many roads in the capital remained blocked, including the airport road, as the Shia group continued a campaign of civil disobedience.
In Tripoli, Sunni supporters of the government have reportedly been fighting members of an Alawite sect loyal to Hezbollah with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
At least one person was killed over the weekend and thousands are believed to have fled their homes.