Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics)
by Augustus Richard Norton
from Princeton University Press
Most policymakers in the United States and Israel have it wrong. Hezbollah isn't a simple terrorist organization--nor is it likely to disappear soon. Following Israel's war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, the Shi'i group--which combines the functions of a militia, a social service and public works provider, and a political party--is more popular than ever in the Middle East while retaining its strong base of support in Lebanon. And Hezbollah didn't merely confront Israel and withstand its military onslaught. Hezbollah's postwar reconstruction efforts were judged better than the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina--not by al-Jazeera, but by an American TV journalist. In Hezbollah, one of the world's leading experts on Hezbollah has written the essential guide to understanding the complexities and paradoxes of a group that remains entrenched at the heart of Middle East politics.
With unmatched clarity and authority, Augustus Richard Norton tells how Hezbollah developed, how it has evolved, and what direction it might take in the future. Far from being a one-dimensional terrorist group, Norton explains, Hezbollah is a "janus-faced" organization in the middle of an incomplete metamorphosis from extremism to mundane politics, an evolution whose outcome is far from certain. Beginning as a terrorist cat's-paw of Iran, Hezbollah has since transformed itself into an impressive political party with an admiring Lebanese constituency, but it has also insisted on maintaining the potent militia that forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000 after almost two decades of occupation.
The most accessible, informed, and balanced analysis of the group yet written, Hezbollah is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East.
Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Nation Books)
by Robert Fisk
from Nation Books
From Beirut to Jerusalem: Revised Edition
by Thomas L. Friedman
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Foreign Affairs Columnist for The New York Times, drew on his extensive experience in the region to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook . . . an engrossing journey not to be missed." As the conflict in the Middle East continues unabated, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness.
A History of Modern Lebanon
by Fawwaz Traboulsi
from Pluto Press
Starting with the formation of Ottoman Lebanon in the sixteenth century, Fawwaz Traboulsi covers the growth of Beirut as a capital for trade and culture through the nineteenth century. The main part of the book concentrates on Lebanon's development in the twentieth century and the conflicts that led up to the major wars in the 1970s and 1980s. Lebanon in the twentieth century has seen turbulent times, the results of which we still see today.
This is a rich history of Lebanon that brings to life its politics, its people, and the crucial role that it has always played in world affairs.
"Skillfully weaving together social, political, cultural, and economic history, this deeply informed and penetrating study provides a rich understanding of [this] vibrant, tragic, but ever hopeful [country]. . . . Fascinating."
---Noam Chomsky
"Fawwaz Trabulsi [sic] puts Lebanon's long war into a context that makes it comprehensible and, perhaps, inevitable. Everyone who is curious about that beautiful and tormented country should read his history, one of the best yet."
---Charles Glass, author of The Northern Front and The Tribes Triumphant
The War on Lebanon: A Reader
from Olive Branch Press
Israel's 34-day bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006-in which more than 1000 Lebanese civilians lost their lives-is one of the most tragic events to take place in the Middle East this century. It was unleashed in the context of the continued Israeli assault on the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, as well as the US effort to "bring democracy" and redraw the map of the Middle East from Afghanistan to Iraq and perhaps to Iran.
What explains Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers and the scale of Israel's retaliation? Why did the US reject an early ceasefire, instead egging on Israel as it pummeled Lebanon and casualties mounted? Why did President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believe the Lebanese and other Arabs would welcome the "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East" designed by the US and Israel? And where will it all lead? Can the party continue to be both part of Lebanon's parliament and an independent resistance movement? Will Lebanon become a modern, non-sectarian state or will the confessional order be further entrenched?
These and other vital questions are addressed in this collection of essays by internationally respected scholars and experts from around the world who examine the ethical, legal and strategic issues of the conflict, and analyze the consequences facing the region and the world in the wake of the Israeli invasion. Ultimately, the solution for Lebanon is intricately connected to the wider issues of the Middle East, including the right of the Palestinians to independence.
Contributors include: Rashid Khalidi ¥ Noam Chomsky ¥ Fawwaz Traboulsi ¥ Asa'd Abukhalil ¥ Lara Deeb ¥ Georges Corm ¥ Stephen Zunes ¥ Irene Gendzier ¥ Azmi Bishara ¥ Yitzhak Laor ¥ Rasha Salti ¥ Elias Khoury ¥ Ziad Majed ¥ Rami Khouri ¥ Assaf Kfoury ¥ Richard Falk ¥ Phyllis Bennis ¥ Haneen Sayed ¥ William Hartung ¥ Fred Halliday ¥ Nubar Hovsepian ¥ Ghassan Tueini ¥ and others
Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict
by Sandra Mackey
from W. W. Norton
How the recent history of Lebanon provides insight into the many trials currently facing the larger Arab community.
It is crucial to the interests of the West to grasp the complexities of the Arab world. In this clear, concise volume, Sandra Mackey provides a unique view of this tortured and tortuous region through the lens of Lebanon.
A small, fractured country at the gateway of the Arab east, Lebanon signals the challenges that the Arab world poses to itself and to the West. As Mackey vividly demonstrates, the Lebanese have experienced every issue currently roiling the Middle East: borders contrived by others, a weak state housing weak institutions, a Palestinian presence, civil war, resistance to societal and political change, Sunni/Shia sectarianism, occupation, militant Islam as a political ideology, conflict over the common identity essential to turning a fragile state into a viable nation, a troubled democratic tradition, and war perpetrated by forces inside and outside its borders. Lessons learned from these conflicts will ease understanding and resolution elsewhere.
How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam
by Gil Merom
from Cambridge University Press
Gil Merom argues that modern democracies fail in insurgency wars because they are unable to find a winning balance between expedient and moral tolerance for the costs of war. Small wars are lost at home when a critical minority shifts the balancing element from the battlefield to the marketplace of ideas. This minority, representing the educated middle class, abhors the brutality involved in effective counterinsurgency, but also refuses to sustain the level of casualties resulting from fighting in other ways.
Merom argues that modern democracies fail in insurgency wars because they are unable to find a winning balance between expedient and moral tolerance to the costs of war. Small wars are lost at home when a critical minority mass shifts the center of gravity from the battlefield to the market place of ideas. This minority, from among the educated middle class, abhors the brutality involved in effective counterinsurgency but also refuses to sustain the level of casualties resulting from fighting otherwise.
Lebanon: A House Divided
by Sandra Mackey
from W. W. Norton
With a new introduction by the author, a seminal study of Lebanon's past, present, and future.
With the West's economic and security interests increasingly at stake in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore Lebanon—a nation in all ways divided and tormented by the interplay between the West and the Arab world. Sandra Mackey delineates the multifarious culture that is Lebanon; carefully stripping away the complex stigmas of Lebanese politics, she brings each component into focus, priming readers on the conflicts between Sunni and Shia, Maronites and Druze, Christian and Muslim, Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Lebanon and Palestine, and Syria and Lebanon.
Covering Lebanon's history through the civil war of 1975-89, and with a new introduction on recent developments, Mackey lays the groundwork needed to comprehend this often ill-understood country—offering insight into its role as the gateway between West and East, and bringing clarity of focus to the schisms that serve to divide and define Lebanon.
A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered
by Kamal Salibi
from University of California Press
Today Lebanon is one of the world's most divided countries. But paradoxically the faction-ridden Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims, have never shown a keener consciousness of common identity. How can this be? In the light of modern scholarship, a famous Lebanese writer and scholar examines the historical myths on which his country's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation. He shows that Lebanon cannot afford this divisiveness, that in order to develop and maintain a sense of political unity, it is necesary to distinuish fact from fiction and then build on what is real in the common experience of both groups.
Salibi offers a major reinterpretation of Lebanese history and provides remarkable insights into the dynamic of Lebanon's recent conflict. In so doing, he illuminates important facets of his country's present and future. This book also gives a masterly account of how the imagined communities that underlie modern nationalism are created and will be of interest to students of international affairs as well as Near Eastern scholars.
Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage
by Sanford Holst
from Cambridge & Boston Press
This is the most complete history of the Phoenicians to date, including new research contributed by leading scholars of the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians of Lebanon became masters of rich sea trade, brought us the alphabet, purple cloth, Carthage and Hannibal. That much everyone knows. But there was much more to their story. Their cities of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos were intimately involved with the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians in many of the epic events of the Mediterranean. Egyptian records show Phoenician cedar being brought to the Nile while the Great Pyramid was being built. These sea-traders supplied the Minoans on Crete, and competed with the Mycenaeans of Greece. Phoenician cities survived the Sea Peoples' destruction, then spread westward to plant colonies as far as Spain and Morocco. Their great colony at Carthage became a metropolis of over 500,000 people. Yet their lands in Lebanon fell to Alexander the Great, and Carthage fell to the early Romans in fiery battles. The author presents detailed research and sources behind this work in on-going academic papers. This book is a more readable form of that information, freshened with many maps and pictures. It shows the Phoenicians as resourceful people who emerged from the cedars of Lebanon, experienced the desperation of numerous defeats and the euphoria of many triumphs, and whose descendants and accomplishments still live today. Sanford Holst is widely regarded as one of the leading experts on the Phoenician people. Antoine Khoury Harb is a highly respected professor of history and archaeology in Lebanon.
+++
