Noora’s Story - 36

On May 25, 2000, the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from most of the territory in southern Lebanon that they had occupied over the course of their multiple wars on the country. 

Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who had ruled Syria since 1971, died shortly thereafter on June 10, 2000. Power passed to his son, Bashar al-Assad, the current dictator of Syria.

The second intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, erupted on September 28, 2000 in occupied Jerusalem in response to the failures of the peace process and the ongoing Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land.  

In this context, new Leftist organizations had begun forming outside the Lebanese Communist Party, part of a dissenting opposition that had been growing within. The main divergences between the old guard and the new had to do with opinions vis-à-vis the Syrian regime’s hegemony over Lebanon after the civil war and its role in suppressing public and private liberties. Al-Nizam al-Amni al-Lubnani al-Souri took an active role not only in banning all political parties opposed to it, but also in helping coopt the General Labor Union in Lebanon.