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Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East by David Hirst
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Beware of Small States’ is an immensely absorbing and thoroughly researched book on Lebanon’s critically turbulent history which unavoidably evolves into the history of Middle East’s Arab – Israeli conflict. The author David Hirst, explains how Lebanon endured seemingly endless turmoil since its independence from France in 1943 and played an unwilling role, for the prevailing unrest in that part of the world all this while. The book is not an easy read by any means. This is history with all its ugly truths and some more.

Hirst based his arguments and analysis on real geo-political facts and the events that sowed the seeds of imminent conflict that caused the six Israel – Arab wars to date and the rise of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) resistant movement, to how Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini‘s militant group, Hizbullah started the Jihad to liberate Palestine from Israel’s grip. David Hirst documents these facts succinctly to show how all these complex elements are co-related and where the root-cause to the conflict lay.

For those as ignorant as I was on the conflicts that plagued Middle East, Hirst helps by underlining that the current state of affairs was born from the forming of the independent Jewish state called Israel on Palestine land shortly after the end of World War II. And this underlying issue became the thorn that caused Lebanon more than 40 years of turbulent existence which it had no hand in the making. Read More…