Renewed Fighting in or near Hamra

After a lull in fighting for most of the late morning and early afternoon, we are hearing bursts of gunfire up the hill in or near Hamra again. I spoke with a friend who has some inside sources and she confirmed that Hezbollah has basically taken over most of West Beirut except for a few pockets of resistance, among them, MP Walid Jumblat's residence in Clemenceau (just to the east of Hamra) and Hariri's residence in Qoreitem (south of Hamra). She also confirmed that once they take over a neighborhood, Hezbollah has been handing control over to the armed forces.

Strangely, Christian East Beirut has been completely silent and uninvolved with these clashes over the past few days. I hope it stays that way but a student of mine said yesterday that he thinks that will be the next step for Hezbollah--to start moving into the Christian neighborhoods. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Christians are split more or less between the governing March 14th coalition and the March 8th opposition. But when the opposition Christian leader, Michel Aoun called for his followers to take to the streets and topple the government two days ago, very few, if anyone heeded his call, suggesting that there is not much impetus among even the opposition Christians to get involved in the current conflict.