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Two Prophecies – One Down and One to Go!

June 5, 2007

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TIMES OF THE GENTILES TRODING DOWN JERUSALEM

Luke 21:24 – And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

The first part of this prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD – The second part was fulfilled in June of 1967. The prophecy involves Jerusalem – Titus, the Roman Prince, fulfilled the first part.

The Israeli Army fulfilled the second part.

FULNESS OF GENTILE AGE REPLACED BY ISRAEL’S REIGN

Romans 11:25 – For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

This prophecy will be fulfilled when the fullness of the Gentile Age cup of wrath overflows at Armageddon at the Second Advent of Messiah.

The Seminary from which I graduated did not have summer courses, and since

I was in a hurry to gradu ate as soon as possible, they allowed me to take a summer semester of Logic

at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and then two summer semesters of Western Civilization at Arkansas Tech University at Russellville. I will never forget what a young man named Rickey, who sat on the first row in our Western Civ class, said one day after we had just taken a painful examination.

His complaint involved me being in the class.

He stated to our instructor – It isn’t fair for Mr.

McElmurry to be in this class? The instructor asked him, Why? To which he replied, because he always sets the curve on all the tests you give us!

The instructor then asked, What is unfair about that, I don’t believe he is cheating on the tests – To which the young man replied – Oh No, my complaint is that Mr.

McElmurry was there when all this stuff happened, and he doesn’t have to study it because he lived

it.

Of course I wasn’t around when Germany surrendered in World War I, but I was when Hitler began to rise to power. And I was there when the six day war began and ended in June of 1967. I know a lot of things about the intelligence intercept from the six-day war that I will never tell on these blogs or on our web site, because it is all water under the bridge, and would merely start more phony conspiracies that lead many people down a garden path while it sells a lot of off-brand magazines and questionable newspapers.

Many say that history teaches us what we did wrong in the past, but with uncanny consistency, when the generation that made all these goofs in their days finally dies off, there always seems to be a majority of their descendants left who are fully capable of repeating the process for the umpteenth time.

I have been watching this process go into fast forward in this century.

I remember the movie “The Robe” and its sequel, which highlighted the seamless garment the Roman solders cast dice for at the foot of Christ’s cross. After Christ’s crucifixion, each time Richard Burton would come near the robe, he would go into a frozen appearance of horror, crying out, “WERE YOU OUT THERE,” over and over again. So for those of you who were not NOT “OUT THERE,” the following exsurps, from a variety of listed sources, were extracted from the Jerusalem Center for Public Information Daily Alert on June 5, 2007. I consider them to be an excellent comment on the war and the inner workings of the parties that participated in it. We all learned a lot about ourselves and national interest in those six fast moving days. I had participated in bloodshed in “Nam,” and now I was seeing it shed in the Holy Land – I was never the same again – It does something to you I cannot explain – but it puts a horrible fear in your heart, not for yourself, but for your children – that they may have to go through, and see, what you have seen – mangled bodies with exposed hearts still pumping. For a long time I would wake up screaming, and could feel my Colt 45 in my right hand, and my left hand clutching for my M-16, and my poor wife had to endure through all this after I came home.

We have slept apart now for a long time. I was a very serious person before these two wars, but I had to develop a happy-go-lucky outer personality in order to keep from sinking into deep depression, always joking and having a good time. Had I not had Christ living in me I would never have been able to face life again. I feel so sorry for the young men and women who go to war without Christ

Please take the time to read the four articles which follow.

Article 1

The 40th Anniversary of the Six-Day War

Remaking the World in Six Days

Michael Oren

In six intense days of fighting that began on June 5, 1967, Israeli forces saved their country from an imminent existential threat, defeated three major Arab armies and almost quadrupled the territory under their country’s control. Compare, for example, Israel’s diplomatic and strategic situation on June 4, 1967: The country was surrounded by Arab states bent on its destructi

on, utterly isolated and outgunned. Egypt alone had five times as many soldiers as Israel, and 10 times the tanks. Beyond the Middle East, Israel faced an inimical Soviet bloc that generously armed the forces of Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as the animosity of China and India. Though generally friendly, the United States still refused to sell weapons to the Israelis, who remained militarily dependent on France. Worse yet, on the eve of the war, the French concluded that they had more to gain from Arab oil producers and abruptly switched sides, imposing a total arms embargo on Israel.

Having begun the conflict with Arab guns pointed at all of its cities, Israel concluded the war with its own troops in artillery range of every neighboring Arab capital – an achievement that convinced Arab leaders of the impossibility of destroying the Jewish state by conventional means. Israel, as a result, was eventually able to reconcile with Jordan and to trade territory captured in the 1967 war for a peace agreement with Egypt. Most significantly, the U.S., which previously regarded Israel as a friendly country but one that impaired its relations with the Arab world, suddenly realized that the Jewish state was in fact a regional superpower, forging an alliance with Israel that has remained robust ever since.

The writer, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center, is the author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. (Los Angeles Times)

Article 2

Arabs Planned to Destroy Israel in ’67

Steve Linde

Those who call the Six-Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory overlook the fact that Israel wasn’t destroyed, historian Michael Oren said Monday. Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel. “The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn’t facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all,” said Oren. (Jerusalem Post)

Article 3

How the Six-Day War Reshaped the Mideast

Fouad Ajami

The great irony of the Six-Day War of 1967 was that it began with a hoax – a piece of faulty Soviet intelligence given to the Egyptians. On May 13, the Soviet ambassador to Cairo informed the Egyptians that Israel was massing “10 to 12 brigades” on the Syrian border in preparation for a big push against the radical regime in Damascus. In response to that Soviet report, Nasser mobilized his troops on May 14 and dispatched them into the Sinai. The casus belli would come on May 22, when Nasser announced the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.

Euphoria gripped the Arab world; Nasser hadn’t fired a shot, but great gains had come his way.

On May 30, King Hussein of Jordan rushed to Cairo to place his army under Egyptian command.

At the remove of four decades, we should not overdo the importance of that Soviet report about the phantom Israeli brigades.

At the heart of the war lay the willful Arab refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy and statehood. Israel’s victory in 1967 delivered a message: that the state that had fought its way into the world in 1948 is there to stay.

The writer is Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. (U.S. News)

Article 4

Lessons of the Six-Day War

Ariel Cohen

Today the world will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. Forty years later, however, Israel’s very existence is challenged again. Now more than ever, Israel is the proverbial canary in the Middle East coal mine, the litmus test of Arab and Muslim attitudes to the world beyond the Land of Islam. It is not the “Israeli occupation” but the rise of extremist Islamist forces that constitute a global threat and are central in Middle East destabilization. Israeli, European and U.S. policymakers and generals still think in terms of nation-states and conventional armies. The global jihadi movement, its political leaders, paymasters, recruiters and propagandists recognize no national borders. The writer is senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

(Washington Times)

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Fear of a Two Front War this Summer!

June 5, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I have included my comments on this Haaretz article at the end of the Blog.

Begin Haaretz Article

IDF: No Gaza Operation due to fear of war with Syria

June 1, 2007

By Amos Harel and Avi Isaacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents

The main reason the Israel Defense Forces is not currently recommending a major ground operation in the Gaza Strip is fear that war might break out with Syria this summer, IDF sources say.

This argument is rarely mentioned publicly, in part because intelligence analysts are still uncertain about whether Syrian President Bashar Assad intends to start a war or is merely trying to pressure Israel to resume peace talks. But Syria has clearly been preparing for the possibility of war, both through troop training and major arms deals.

As a result, the IDF believes it must also be ready for this possibility, and excessive activity on the southern front would undermine its capabilities in the north.

From the army’s perspective, Syria is the biggest threat; the Palestinian front is secondary.

The army is also concerned that miscalculations of the enemy’s intentions, on either side of the border, could lead to war between Syria and Israel even if neither side wants it. Precisely this scenario was the subject of a major military exercise last month.

End Haaretz Article

Begin Comments on Haaretz Article

The final war of this age will be the best planned the Islamic nations have ever carried out against Israel, and it will be the first they will win initially, only to lose the final battle of Armageddon some three and one-half years later.

The areas surrounding two autonomous Palestinian cities on the bluffs east of the coastal cities

of Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Haifa, will play a major role in the future attack of a confederation of Arab nations against Israel. Approximately 70% of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the coastal zone to the west of these bluffs, with most of that being concentrated in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Netanya.

About 80% of Israel’s industrial productivity is also in this area, as well as many important military installations. These high elevations, surrounding the two Palestinian controlled cities of Tul Karm and Kalkilya

(Qalqilya), str atigic

ally dominate the coastal zones from a military standpoint, sitting on the Sharon bluff of the western Samarian and Judean Mountains.

The Palestinians have been sneaking in thousands of katyusha rockets through tunnels under the Egyptian border.

The rockets then pass through the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip, and eventually end up in the areas around Tul Karm and Kalkilya. I expect the IDF to eventually raid these areas, but with only limited success.

The Palestinians have also been smuggling some katyushas across the Jordan River at night. They move them westward through the dendritic openings of the eastern Judean and Samarian Mountains. They eventually pass through the highlands around Jenin, Nablus, and south of Afula. Some are hidden in the caves around Jenin for launching against Israel forces that would come north through the Jordan Valley to repulse the Syrian attack from the

north.

But the main weaponry smuggled into these areas consists of antitank and antiaircraft shoulder launchers, which have been concealed in these zones in countless numbers from Afula to Jenin to Nablus to Ramalla. Thousands of kayusha rockets are well hidden in the karst topography east of Tul Karm and Kalkilya. The numerous limestone caves in this area often have narrow openings that cannot be identified from the air, and they also can be cleverly concealed from surface detection. The Palestinians can rapidly recover these rockets in the event of an all out war. They can be quickly installed on the rear of a long based truck, where their mobility will increase the difficulty of detection by Israel’s aircraft. Katyusha rockets do not have a long range potential, but are relatively accurate at short range.. The air distances of Tul Karm and Kalkilya from Haifa, Netanya, and Tel Aviv varies from as little as 20 miles, to as much as 60 miles, which is within the range of relative accuracy for the katyusha rockets.

When the future surprise attack is carried out against Israel from Syria and Lebanon, thousands of these rockets will shower down on the coastal population from Tel Aviv to Haifa.

This quick surprise attack by a confederation of Islamic nations will be greatly aided by the well coordinated internal attack of the Palestinians, and will make it possible for Israel to be driven into the Negev south of Beersheva. I believe it is likely that this attack will occur only after Israel has been lulled into a false sense of security.

I am persuaded it is likely to occur at some point in time after 2008 begins, and before 2012 ends.

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Ahmadinejad has pushed the wrong Button!

Ahmadinejad thought he was pushing the button which would start counting the Days until Allah would destroy the Zionist Regime! But in reality he pushed the wrong button, for it is God who is counting the Days until he destroys Islam forever.

June 4, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The series of Scriptures, which follow, interlink to form a picture of God dealing with the past, present, and future of Israel, the apple of his eye.

It covers the time of his dealing with man through the promised Seed of Genesis 3:15, the Messiah Jesus Christ, to his Millennial reign.

Israel is indeed the eternal apple of God’s eye from Egyptian Bondage through the Millennium.

Genesis 3:15 – And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Deuteronomy 32:7-12 – Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

[8] When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. [9] For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. [10] He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. [11] As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: [12] So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.

Psalm 17:7-13 – Shew thy marvellous lovingkindness, O thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from those that rise up against them. [8] Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, [9] From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about. [10] They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly.

[11] They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth; [12] Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a young lion lurking in secret places. [13] Arise, O Lord, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:

Zechariah 2:8-11 – For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. [9] For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me. [10] Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord. [11] And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people: and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto

thee.

Psalm 17:8 – Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,

Matthew 23:37-39 – O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gat hered thy children toget

her, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! [38] Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. [39] For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Micah 5:3,4 – Therefore will he give them up, UNTIL the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. [4] And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Ahmadinejad: Destruction of Israel close

Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST

June 3, 2007

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said the world would witness the destruction of Israel soon, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon showed “for the first time hegemony of the occupier regime (Israel) collapsed and that pushed the button counting the days until the destruction of Zionist regime,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

“God willing, in near future we will witness destruction of the corrupt occupier regime,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has lost public support after Israel failed to achieve its goals during last summer’s 34-day war with Hizbullah guerrillas in Lebanon – freeing two captured soldiers and crushing the militant group.

The war was sparked after two IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah militants in a cross-border raid. The fighting ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire that called for deployment of UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

Ahmadinejad has made anti-Israel comments in the past.

In October 2005, he caused outrage in the West when he said in a speech that Israel’s “Zionist regime should be wiped off the map.”

His supporters have argued Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated and should have been better translated as “vanish from the pages of time” – implying Israel would vanish on its own rather be destroyed.

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Hizbullah and Fatah Splinter Radical Terrorist Groups want their own Country – Namely Lebanon!

June 4, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

In our previous Blog titled: “Syria’s Answer to the UN decision to convene a Tribunal on former Lebanese PM Hariri’s Assassination,” we included the following paragraph.

“[If the Lebanese Army fails to win this battle, then it is likely it will mark the beginning of a steady decline in the Lebanese government. It will cause other radical terrorist groups in the Palestini an

Refugee Camps sprinkled through Lebanon to rise up and take control of the camps. As the end result, Lebanon’s pro-Western officials and their government will be subdued by whatever terrorist leader becomes the ruler of the entire terrorist wolf pack.]”
It now appears the earliest stage of this development is already in progress,

Begin DEBKAfile Article

DEBKAfile: Second Palest inian refugee camp

in Lebanon, Ain Hilwa in the south, explodes in violence Sunday. UNIFIL contingents in South in peril

June 3, 2007, 9:58 PM (GMT+02:00)

Fighting broke out in the southern Ain Hilwa camp June 3 between pro-Syrian groups close to al Qaeda and Lebanese forces.

DEBKAfile’s sources report the Islamist Jund al Sham (Army of the Levant) prepared its offensive by building fortifications and evacuating Palestinian families from battle arenas.

The Lebanese army has been battling stiff resistance in the northern camp of Nahar al-Bared near Tripoli for more than two weeks from Fatah al Islam boosted by pro-Syrian groups, such as Ahmed Jibril’ PFLP-General Command.

Spearheaded by two commando units, Lebanese troops have inched forward 400m into the camp, to a loss of some 50 men. Saturday, backed by heavy fire from tanks, artillery, helicopter and gunboats, they seized and destroyed several Fatah al-Islam positions on the camp’s outskirts

The spread of anti-government, Damascus-fomented clashes to the southern Lebanese Palestinian camp is a very serious development.

It places the Palestinian refugee camps of the capital, Beirut, next in the line of fire – likewise the United Nations contingents policing

the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Al Qaeda elements among the Palestinians have repeatedly threatened the international force with attack.

In the southern Ain Hilwa camp, our military sources report Lebanese troops must take on a coalition of radical Palestinian groups linked to al Qaeda and pro-Syrian terrorist factions, copiously armed with weapons and ammo from Damascus and its Lebanese supporters, including Hizballah.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report Syria has lined up an anti-Lebanese government front of Palestinian and Islamic radicals for an orchestrated campaign of violence to derail the UN Security Council resolution establishing an international tribunal for prosecuting the suspected murderers of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

They are under orders to sow mayhem across the country against

the pro-Western Fouad Siniora in Beirut and mark down UNIFIL and northern Israel as additional targets.

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from which we extracted it.

Syria’s Answer to the UN decision to convene a Tribunal on former PM Hariri’s Assassination!

June 3, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The DEBKAfile Article, which follows, gives a good account of the fight being waged between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam radicals imbedded in the Palestinian Nahral-Bared.

If the Lebanese Army fails to win this battle, then it is likely it will mark the beginning of a steady decline in the Lebanese government. It will cause other radical terrorist groups in the Palestinian Refugee Camps sprinkled through Lebanon to rise up and take control of the camps. In the end, Lebanon’s pro-Western officials and their government will be subdued by whatever terrorist leader becomes the ruler of the terrorist wolf pack.

Daniel 7:24,25 – And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

[25] And he shall speak great words agains

t the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

Begin DEBKAfile Article

Lebanese army-Fatah al Islam showdown in northern Lebanon threatens to spread to Palestinian camps in South

June 2, 2007, 11:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile reports: After two weeks of fighting, the Lebanese army is still stalled in its effort to break through to the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp and rout the Fatah al-Islam radicals holed up there. Two tough obstacles have not been overcome – even with the help of a US-Jordan-UAE airlift of military aid in the last ten days or the mobilization of Lebanese army commando units.

1. Fatah al-Islam are not fighting alone; they are backed by elite units of the Iranian-Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian-General Command, which is commanded by Ahmed Jibril. These Palestinian units are highly trained in urban guerrilla warfare by Syrian commando battalion officers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards and have better skills than the Lebanese commandoes.

2. The radical fighters are getting as many guns and as much ammo as they need to ward off a Lebanese commando incursion into the camp.

To avoid tipping its hand, Damascus is holding back the pro-Syrian militias in northern Lebanon from direct involvement in the fighting. But they were heavily armed beforehand and are now diverting to the Fatah Islam everything they need to keep on fighting.

In the south, Islamist militants of Jund al-Sham (Al Qaeda in the Levant) went on maximum alert at the Ein al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, ready to rise up if the Lebanese army overwhelms its fellow- radicals in Nahr al-Bared.

DEBKAfile notes: The failure of the Lebanese army to quell the Islamic group’s uprising would have grave consequences in Lebanon and outside.

Prime minister Fouad Siniora would be shown to be helpless to impose his government’s authority in the rest of Lebanon.

Because he is afraid to complain to the UN about foreign interference on the side of the Fatah al Islam, the Lebanese army is left looking as though it is no match for a mere 350 al Qaeda-linked radicals.

Another pro-US leader who looks bad is Mahmoud Abbas. He and his Fatah organization are formally responsible for security and law and order in the Palestinian refugee camps. A radical win in the Lebanese camp will further undermine Abbas’ position in Gaza and the West Bank and magnify the threat facing Israel.

The Hariri tribunal

1 June 2007

LEBANON continues to be the theatre where the region’s conflicts and bitter political enmities find centre-stage. As the UN prepares to set up a tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a new round of domestic and regional friction is set to commence.

It will feature yet more estranged Lebanon-Syria relations, increased internal pressure on the Siniora administration, more prominent splits in the bickering government and further strains on the complex web of religious and political diversity that is found nowhere else in the region.

Syrian anger, condemning the tribunal as “against the interests of the Lebanese people and Lebanon as a whole”, was the first foreseen reaction, as was

the inability of the Lebanese parliament to ratify the tribunal, given the crucial pro and anti-Damascus representation.

And since Lebanon’s pro-Syria president and anti-Syria prime minister are unlikely to bridge the gap by UN’s June 10 deadline, the international body will go ahead with an independent tribunal on the lines of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Beyond this point, though, meaningful progress will be difficult. The UN investigation preceding the tribunal found ‘probable’ common cause in the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agencies for Hariri’s assassination. But with Bashar al-Assad having already ruled out extradition, the UN’s initiative will run the risk of falling short of actually trying the suspects after having re-ignited region-wide political and social bitterness.

Of course, that is not to play down the importance of bringing Hariri’s killers to book. The self-made billionaire that leveraged his reach into the West’s financial institutions and Saudi princes to restore Lebanon’s erstwhile reputation as the Levant’s Switzerland deserves a fair and sincere investigation from the government he headed and seemed about to again. Also, for a region where unpunished political assassinations have long shaped the larger political direction, the tribunal will set a needed precedent.

In death, the former PM has already been able to evict the Syrians from Lebanon. Set to raise more tensions, the tribunal looking into his killing will nevertheless have the potential to usher in a new era of reformation in the polity, if, as his son pointed out on live TV, the people are able to unite. The most serious care will be needed to keep positive developments at least abreast of the downslide

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