Abstract

Letter From Lebanon

In November 1999 the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish made his first appearance in Beirut, Lebanon since fleeing Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion. The great poet's visit to the city he once called home was nearly as charged with symbolism as Yasir Arafat's return to Palestine, and it seemed to herald a new chapter in Lebanese-Palestinian relations. Some of the demonstrations have provoked confrontations with the police, notably the rally on April 2, when protesters surrounded the American Embassy. These clashes were dutifully noted by a US media obsessed by the mythical "Arab street." But what has captured the Lebanese imagination is the spontaneous explosion of grassroots youth activism on a scale not seen here in three decades.