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My daughter and Lebanese son-in-law have been actively monitoring what is going on in Beirut, and none of it is good.
The 10-ton elephant in the room is Hezbollah. The group is deeply unpopular with just about everyone in Lebanon, but is also the most well-funded party in the country and is armed to the teeth.
Hezbollah has had free reign to do whatever it wants because the politicians and leadership of the country are cowardly, and because it is easier and more profitable to just go along with Hezbollah and get all the graft they can. The whole system is viewed as completely corrupt.
Hezbollah is seen as the main culprit of the blast. No one is saying that the blast was deliberate. Rather, at a minimum, Hezbollah's interference with the smooth working of the government kept the warehouse from being dealt with all these years.
There are also dark rumors that the fertilizer in the warehouse was "weapon's grade"--that it could easily be converted for use in war--and that Hezbollah has been siphoning off fertilizer from the warehouse for years to make weapons, which was why the place was unguarded.
Meanwhile, all of the foreign aid sent to Beirut thus far has been stolen before it even reached the country, and is openly being sold on the shops of Beirut for a profit.
The situation has turned the city into a powder keg. There have be multiple demonstrations in the streets--some met by gunfire. Yet, the demonstrators are not taking this lying down. They pushed a police captain down an elevator shaft, for example (he didn't survive).
And now they are tying up hangman's nooses around the city, openly saying that they intend to string up everyone in the political class for allowing things to get this way.
