Lebanese await outcome of prisoner swap deal

In the past few days, Lebanon’s security scene witnessed significant developments. It started with a double suicide attack in a prominent Alawite neighborhood of Tripoli, continued with a crackdown on Islamist prisoners in Lebanon's largest prison and ended with terrorist organizations threatening official Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah. These three developments pose more than one question on what happened and what might happen in the coming days in Lebanon.

The first development took place in Jabal Mohsen, the Alawite neighborhood in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second most populous city after Beirut. On the evening of Jan. 10, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a street where a number of cafes are found that are frequented mostly by Alawite customers. From the way the blasts took place, it was clear that the objective was to cause the highest number of civilian casualties. The first suicide bomber walked into a crowded cafe and blew himself up. The second suicide bomber waited until people had gathered to help the injured, joined the crowd and blew himself up, too. This incident killed nine and injured nearly 40.

This terrorist attack raises several points. The first was that this was the first suicide attack in Lebanon that targeted civilians since March 16, 2014, when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a car in Nabi Osman, in the northern part of the Bekaa Valley, killing four and injuring 16.

Following that attack, many other suicide bombings took place, but they all targeted military positions or checkpoints of either the Lebanese army or Hezbollah, such as the suicide car bomb on June 20 at the Dahr al-Baidar police checkpoint, which is on the main road between Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. The attack killed one police officer and wounded 32 police officers and civilians who were passing through the checkpoint.