Alagha 473making unfounded accusations about the prime minister that were tan-
tamount to branding him with treason. MP Pierre Gemayyel—the min-
ister of industry, the son of ex-president Amin Gemayyel, and a member
of a leading Maronite Phalangist cadre—said in reference to Hizbullah’s
one-week ultimatum that he and compatriots would not allow those who
determine war and peace to have the final say in state building.
e symbolic day of 11 November, Hizbullah’s “Martyrs’ Day,” saw Th
the resignation of the five Shi‘i cabinet ministers. After a few days, an ally
of President Lahoud, Jacob Sarraf, the Greek Orthodox minister of the
environment, followed suit.^52 The resignation of the six ministers did not
lead to the collapse of the Sanyura cabinet since eight ministers would
have needed to resign for this to take place. In the wake of these tensions,
Pierre Gemayyel was assassinated on 21 November 2006. After that ten-
sions reached a new high.
n spite of earlier I^53 dangerous precedents, which demonstrated that
no one could guarantee the security of the street, on 1 December 2006,
Hizbullah, the FPM, and other members of the Lebanese opposition took
to the streets in downtown Beirut—completely filling Martyrs’ Square
and Riyad al-Solh Square—to demand the formation of a national unity
cabinet and one-third veto power. Prime Minister Sanyura admonished
Nasrallah to not waste Hizbollah’s military accomplishments and victories
versus Israel in Beirut’s alleys. In response, addressing the demonstrators
from a large screen, Nasrallah delivered a promise: “We will defeat the
Lebanese government like we defeated Israel in the 34-days war.”^54
n the early days of the protests and sit-ins, frontline Hizbullah fol-I
lowers besieged the headquarters of the cabinet in downtown Beirut.^55
On 23 January 2007, after 53 days of sit-ins, the Hizbullah-led opposi-
tion crippled the country through a general strike coupled with the block-
ing of main roads, tire-burning, and so on. Three people died and 150
were wounded. Two days later, a Sunni-Shi‘i confrontation erupted in a
populous Sunni neighborhood in Beirut. This resulted in 4 dead and 300
wounded, including 13 Lebanese Army soldiers, and 216 arrests. There
were dangerous scenes reminiscent of the civil war: sniping, automatic
weapons, burning cars, and destruction of property. After these bloody
confrontations, Hizbullah labeled the Sanyura cabinet as “the government
of the armed militias.”^56