An article in El Pais recently attracted my full attention. Similar articles can be read every other day, but that´s precisely what disturbs me the most. People may not die, but individuals are deprived from their basic rights, and that´s also a kind of war for me: ongoing instability and fear haunting the legitimate inhabitants of a territory. And the situation is getting worse: clashes between Palestinians and settlers have increased in the West Bank in recent months, with a radical fringe of Israelis (settlers armed with guns and other kind of weapons!) attacking Palestinian property, including olive trees (according to OCHA, approximately 100,000 Palestinians are economically dependent on these trees olive) and cars. Couldn't that also be considered by the ICC as a war crime? Food for thought...
I would never dare to think I have enough knowledge so as to freely talk about this issue and produce a meaningful article, but I will try to write down what I have understood so far (I already had to edit as I misunderstood some facts, thanks Louis!). Lebanon and Syria have always been deeply interconnected. Both countries were part of the Ottoman Empire, both countries were under the dominance of France's colonization, both countries share an extremely complicated ethnic/religious division, and both countries political scenes still depend on the other's. More recently, Syria was a key player in the brokering of the 1989 Taif Accords putting an end to Lebanon's civil war, and its troops (and many authorities) stayed in the country (allegedly guaranteeing the non resumption of violence) until 2005, when the country's population unanimously demanded their retreat. It all started in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, next to the country's northern borde...
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