Jun 24, 2014

It did not take too long for the violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to reach Beirut. Last week, this column warned of the potential for further terrorism in Lebanon following the ISIS advances in Iraq and a string of supposedly isolated security incidents in the country. There was a car bombing late on June 23, a suicide attack, the arrests of dozens of alleged ISIS affiliates, news about terrorist networks and plots for major political assassinations and coup attempts.

Nevertheless, the hysteria caused by the fear of this terrorist group on the one hand, and the calculations of some to invest in this fear to serve political interests on the other — besides the multiple Lebanese and international parties following up on this issue — required a thorough examination to know exactly what happened in Beirut in the past few days.

The ISIS storm started to blow on Beirut on June 17. On that evening, Lebanese security forces, in cooperation with members of Hezbollah, shut shown a number of roads to some well-known hospitals in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The next day, sources close to Hezbollah told Al-Monitor that these measures were taken following information received by two Lebanese security services, that ISIS was plotting an attack against a hospital affiliated with Hezbollah, where some members of the party were believed to be under treatment for injuries sustained while fighting in Syria. The same source told Al-Monitor that Hezbollah learned that ISIS was probably digging tunnels to attack areas where Hezbollah was deployed, starting from the ISIS centers in some Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut’s southern suburbs that are close to the areas where Hezbollah is deployed as well. The same sources told Al-Monitor that the two security services that reported this preliminary information to Hezbollah, confirmed having received these reports from Western security services.

The following day, the tunnel story turned out to be untrue, and none of the hospitals were struck. Nevertheless, the rumors caused some roads to be more or less permanently closed at night, and led to the arrest of around 10 suspects, later released, after it turned out that they were not involved in any illegal activities.

The ISIS storm did not blow over at this point. Three days later, on June 20, US Ambassador David Hale set a meeting with Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil at the ministry's headquarters in Ashrafieh, in the heart of Beirut, at 11 a.m. Shortly before the meeting, Hale told Bassil the meeting was canceled, because it was impossible for him to leave the embassy for security reasons.