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Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon

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The modern state of Lebanon that Rougier presents in this book is one that is at the heart of all that currently bedevils the peace process in the Middle East. In this small country to the immediate north of Israel, the lines have been drawn between Christian, Jew and Muslim in such a way as to defy any potential for peaceful co-existence. As Rougier so aptly describes this multifaceted conflict of entrenched interests within Lebanon, it has reached the explosive point of turning brother against brother, preacher against politician,nationality against nationality, and settler against camp dweller. Rougier spends a fair bit of time define the various lines of opposition in this neck of the world. While the two traditional opponents driving this whole crisis happen to be Shi'ite-backed Hezballoh and Zionism, there are numerous other parties in the mix. They include the Maronite Christians who have been big players in Lebanon ever since its inception and the Sunni Muslims, the devout ones, who make up the dispossessed Palestinian refugees living in camps in the northern parts of the country. In a nutshell, the Shi'ite cause, with the help of Syria and Iran, has succeeded, over the last couple of years, in taking over the Lebanonese government in Beirut and marginalizing the Sunnis by penning them up in camps and taking away their civil rights. They have now made a move on dividing the Palestianian organization in the disputed territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Overarching all this is the ever-growing threat that civil war could easily break between these two Muslim factions within Lebanon. Jihadism is alive and flourishing in the camps where thousands of young men are being recruited to join in a war against the perceived enemy, which justs happens to be any western country supporting Israel's right to exist as a nation at the expense of the Palestinians. Rougier goes inside a number of these camps to find out how its occupants are responding to being hemmed in on both sides by the Hezbollah and Israel in an attempt to maintain their hegemony. The book contains a number of very revealing comments from clerics and militants who advocate desperate measures for desperate times. What makes this book so compelling a read for me is that it strives to provide both a complete and a balanced view of where the faultlines really lie in this whole dispute. Syria, as one of the big backers of Hezbollah in the region, are definitely committed to destabilizing Israel's borders with Lebanon by forcing the Palestinian refugees to look to the Israelis to the south as the real enemy. Rougier's extensive analysis of the problem makes me wonder if a peace settlement involving all parties is ever possible with differences that run so deep as to combine religion, politics and history in a Gordian knot.