Shaping Lebanon's Borderlands

Regional struggles, wars and local confrontations have marked the south of Lebanon since the end of the 1960s. They have transformed this marginalized and rural region into a battlefield and redefined the relationships between international, regional and local actors. The most recent of these actors the Palestinian refugees and their armed resistance, the Islamic Shi i movement Hizbullah, and the UN local mission (UNIFIL) have marked and shaped the place, and in turn operating in this borderland has affected their identities. Based on Daniel Meier s extensive fieldwork in the region, this book offers interviews with militants, his own observations of this conflict-ridden and dangerous region as well as incisive political analysis concerning the armed militias operating in the area. It is through this in-depth examination of the southern borderlands of Lebanon that Meier sheds new light on some of the major Middle Eastern confrontations of the last half a century."e;