Clashes between gunmen of rival Lebanese sects in the northern city of Tripoli have killed seven people since clashes flared earlier this week, security officials said Thursday.Judging from the ICRC paper about the laws of occupation, I think a serious argument can be made that Lebanon is occupied, today, by Syria/Iran under international law.
The latest round of fighting that began four days ago in Lebanon’s second largest city has wounded another 50 people, officials said. That comes as disputes from neighboring Syria’s civil war frequently inflame sectarian grievances in Tripoli.
The clashes pit gunmen from two impoverished Tripoli neighborhoods against each other, areas that are home to opponents and supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Bab Tabbaneh district is largely Sunni Muslim, like Syria’s rebels. The other neighborhood, Jabal Mohsen, mostly has residents of Assad’s Alawite sect, a Shiite Islam offshoot.
The latest bout of fighting began building after Oct. 14, when a Lebanese military prosecutor pressed charges against earlier this month against seven men, at least one whom from Jabal Mohsen, for their involvement in twin bomb blasts near two Sunni mosques in Tripoli on Aug. 23 that killed 47 people.
The definition of occupation in that paper allowed occupation by proxy, if the group that runs the occupied territory is a puppet for the occupier. Since Syria did occupy Lebanon from 1976 to 2005, and now Hezbollah (which is an arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards) effectively controls large parts of Lebanon as well as much of the government, that means that Lebanon is still occupied today, notwithstanding a few years when it was ostensibly free.
Syria of course does what Iran wants it to.