Lebanon Prepares for Gulf Tourists Amid Unstable Security
Despite the unstable security situation prevailing in Lebanon, many Kuwaiti tourists plan to spend an official holiday in the country, writes Jean Aziz.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sitting in his spacious office on the second floor of the Grand Serail in the heart of Beirut, Prime Minister Najib Mikati told me with obvious enthusiasm that the Kuwaiti authorities had informed him that around a dozen planes full of tourists would arrive at the Beirut airport daily. For a period of more than a week, these airplanes would bring in Kuwaitis coming to spend an official ten-day holiday in Lebanon.
Mikati, who had moved from the world of business and finance to politics, explained how he had asked the minister of tourism to take special care of these tourists since they are the vanguard of Gulf tourists visiting Lebanon, after a near boycott from other Gulf countries for political reasons masked with security pretexts.
However, the Lebanese scene outside the Serail seemed decidedly more bleak. Some go as far as to suggest that the Lebanese state has begun to erode and disappear. Throughout last weekend, the security situation in different parts Lebanon struggled to bear the heavy burdens brought on by three exacerbating and interrelated factors.
The first is the Syrian civil war and its repercussions in Lebanese border areas. The environs of these areas have been made into battlegrounds for the most violent genocidal wars and fanatic “jihadist” violence seen in decades. As Al-Monitor writers have predicted in recent weeks that the Syrian war would eventually draw in Lebanon, the past weekend witnessed violent clashes between armed men on both sides of the border, both in Hermel in the northeast and Akkar in the north.
