"Mission Accomplished" at Nahr el-Bared?

File under horrendous reality. Like I've said before, Christopher is there.

Do you wanna live like this? Just asking.

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon — Wassim al-Hagehussein was worried. The Lebanese soldier was twitchy, suspicious as he stalked through the dark and powerless grocery store where Wassim worked. It was a day after Prime Minister Fuad Siniora had declared an end to the war over the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared, during which fanatical jihadists had fought off an Army onslaught for 106 days. And now, today, the fighting had started up again and the grocery store was in the crossfire. A company of soldiers was pinned down by an unknown number of Fatah al-Islam fugitive fighters.

“Are there any Palestinians in here?” the soldier asked the owner, Rabieh al-Masri, who was a boss and a friend to Wassim. The soldiers had just arrested another Palestinian in front of the store and taken him in for questioning.

Al-Masri deliberately didn’t look at Wassim. “No,” he said. “There are no Palestinians here.”

He was lying. Wassim was a Palestinian from Nahr el-Bared.

Via Christopher.