Lebanon’s Tripoli rises above lingering effects of war to revolt | | Mada Masr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2019/10/29/feature/politics/lebanons-tripoli-rises-above-lingering-effects-of-war-to-revolt
The road north from the capital to Tripoli offers a journey through Lebanon’s mass protest movement. In the suburb of Jal el Dib, a fifteen-minute drive from the main sit-in in downtown Beirut, a recently built bridge has been turned into an elevated protest space, with demonstrators chanting: “We finally know what the bridge is for.” With the main highway blocked, a fork in the road diverts traffic towards alternate routes north — one along the sea, the other through the mountains.
The journey passes through several cities and towns that are taking part in the uprising, including Zouk Mosbeh, Ghazir and Batroun — the hometown of Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil and a primary target of protest anger — before reaching Tripoli.
The demonstrations in Lebanon’s second-largest city, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, have a different feel from the rest of the country. The clarion call of the nationwide protests — “All of them means all of them” — that expresses a demand to rid the country of its entire political order has been changed in Tripoli to, “All of them means all of them … No, all of us means all of us”— a call for unity and for all Lebanese to band together, regardless of region, religion, or sect.