486 Resisting Publics
67.erri’s initiative on the occasion of the twenty-ninth anniversary of the B
disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr seemingly eroded the opposi-
tion’s demand for the formation of a national unity cabinet even “half
an hour before the presidential elections” and apparently shelved such a
demand till the election of a new president, as 14 March Trend had repeat-
edly requested. (See Lebanese daily newspapers of 1 September 2007.)
Unfortunately, this was a tactical move and not a genuine policy shift.
68.e tenure of outgoing President Lahoud ended on 24 November 2007, Th
with parliament having failed to elect a new president during the consti-
tutional period between the 24th of September and the 23rd of November.
Before the election of President Michel Sulayman on 25 May, the Speaker
delayed the vote nineteen times.
69.Walid ‘Ido was assassinated on 13 June by a car bomb in West Beirut, MP
the Muslim sector of the Lebanese capital. On 19 September, a powerful
explosion ripped the eastern sector of Beirut, killing the Phalangist MP
Antoine Ghanem. Hizbullah vehemently condemned both killings. As it
had for previous politically motivated assassinations, which all targeted
anti-Syrian politicians, 14 March pinned the blame directly on the Syrian
regime.
70.ccording to the Lebanese minister of defense, after the Lebanese Army A
took total control of the Nahr al-Barid camp on 2 September 2007, at least
150 Fatah al-Islam militants were killed and around 300 were arrested,
while 170 Lebanese soldiers were killed and more than 1000 were wounded.
Also, a total of 32 Palestinian and 10 Lebanese civilians died, killed by rock-
ets that the militants fired on nearby villages.
71.12 December 2007 al-Hajj, the chief of military operations and the On
presumed successor to the Lebanese army command, was killed by a car
bomb in Ba‘bda, a Christian area of Beirut where the presidential palace
and many Western embassies, as well as Yarzé, the headquarters of the
Lebanese Army, are located. Al-Hajj had headed the ground operations at
Nahr al-Barid. Fatah al-Islam also targeted UNIFIL three times with road-
side bombs, fatally injuring three Spanish soldiers on 24 June 2007 and
damaging a U.S. Embassy reconnaissance vehicle on 15 January 2008.
72.l-Safir A 10876, 29 August 2007, 4. In this, Fadlallah was echoing the late
Gebran Tuéni’s father, Member of Parliament Ghassan Tuéni, the 80-year-
old veteran politician and journalist, who had depicted the sixteen-year