As Lebanese seek ‘accountability,’ gunfight serves as a warning

The lethal gun battle in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut that lasted only a few hours did more than leave seven people dead and create mounds of broken glass.

Pointedly, it erupted in response to a sometimes-violent Shiite march protesting a tough judge’s attempts to investigate last year’s explosion in the Port of Beirut.

For many Lebanese, the impact of the heaviest violence in more than a decade was twofold, and bluntly political.

It served as a time machine back to the dark days of the 1975–90 civil war. But it was also a stark warning about where the country’s surging sectarian tensions and chronic lack of accountability can lead once again.

Indeed, raising those fears may have been the intention on both sides of the fight, say analysts who described the violence as a bid by the country’s disgraced political elite

“October Revolution”A principle, in the breachPrecedent of impunityLebanon’s “collective ‘we’”