Is It Safe?

I get that question all the time when I tell people I'm spending the summer in Beirut. I guess Jihad Jibril would say that the answer is "no". Except that, as of yesterday, he's not saying anything.

The only significant question surrounding the assassination of the second-in-command (and son of the first-in-command) of the Syrian backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command is whether it was Israel or a rival Palestinian group. Israel is the prime suspect, but it's not unreasonable that another Arab group resentful of Syrian dominance in Lebanon might have knocked off this Syrian puppet. However, as an arms smuggler, etc, he had much more to fear from Israel, and as Ha'aretz points out, Israel has a history of this sort of thing:

Israel has never claimed responsibility for most of the assassinations, which tended to reignite the cycle of bloodshed, with the punishment, revenge, deterence and prevention all combining to incite the other side into its own vengeance.

Other perspectives on the attack are non-commital; ArabNews mentions it, the NYTimes and London Times don't, or at least I couldn't find a story on either today.

I guess one more significant question remains: Am I scared? No. If Mossad wants me, they can come and get me here. Assassinations aren't like senseless killings or random gunfire; until I have name recognition outside of Bates Road I'm really not scared.