Beware of Small States
Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East
David Hirst
March 2010
ISBN: 1568584229
"Beware of small states," wrote the Russian anarchist Michail Bakunin, for they are the victims of greater states, yet a source of danger to them, too. Lebanon—a country half the size of Vermont—might almost have been designed to be the "small state" of the Middle East. It is the battleground on which the region's greater states pursue their strategic, political and ideological conflicts—conflicts that sometimes escalate into full-scale proxy wars.
In this magisterial history of Lebanon, from the end of the Ottoman rule to the Hizbullah and Hamas wars of today, David Hirst, the acclaimed and fiercely independent Middle East journalist and historian, charts with extraordinary skill and lucidity the intricate interplay between Lebanon and its geopolitical environment.
This history of Lebanon is also a history of the whole Middle East and above all, of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Several states from inside the region and beyond have impinged on Lebanon throughout its history, invading, attacking and occupying it, but none has done so more strenuously and disruptively than Israel. Hirst, who has been banned from traveling in six Arab states and was kidnapped twice during Lebanon's civil war, takes an unsparing look at Israel's role, providing extraordinary accounts of the invasions of 1982 and 2006, as well as Israel's "shock and awe" attack on Gaza in early 2009. Hirst warns that only serious diplomatic action from the new Obama administration can prevent the next "proxy war" spiraling into a conflict that engulfs the entire region.
What readers are saying
"A brilliant analytical mind."
—Robert Fisk
"Hirst is writing with a plain purpose, to counteract the way in which Western, particularly American, opinion, prejudiced and ill-informed, has automatically tended to accept the Zionist side of the story, and his lucid, angrily told account is worth reading on those terms."
—Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Washington Post
"Massively documented, this book will make uncomfortable reading for many who will no doubt do what they can to discredit him. But they will find it difficult to challenge the integrity of this quizzical and caustic reporter who has an unrivaled record of offending Arab governments and being banned by them."
—Financial Times
"A first-rate, beautifully written book."
—Roane Carey, The Nation
"An epic tale told relentlessly well...a serious account of Zionism and a sobering view of Israel's new role as conqueror and occupier."
—Christopher Hitchens
"A lifelong sympathizer with the Palestinian tragedy and a first-rate reporter who has devoted his life to living in and writing about the Arab world."
—Edward Said
About the Authors
David Hirst was for many years the Middle Eastern correspondent of the Guardian. He contributes to The Christian Science Monitor, the Irish Times, the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, The San Francisco Chronicle and the Beirut Daily Star. He is the author of Sadat, a study of the late Egyptian president who once denounced him over the airwaves. His seminal work on the Arab-Israeli conflict, The Gun and the Olive Branch has been in print for 30 years.
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