A warm welcome

The BBC is reporting that a UN convoy has been hit by a roadside bomb in southern Lebanon. Earlier today it said that rockets fired from inside Lebanon had hit the Israeli coastal town of Shlomi. Luckily neither incident has caused serious injuries.

It may be that these two attacks are not connected with each other, but it looks as if the timing of both may be connected to the arrival of the US President, George W Bush in Israel tomorrow.

Hotel review

The Al-Fanar Hotel in Tyre wins 3 UN stars

Someone wiser than me once told me that you can tell the quality of a hotel in a warzone by the number of United Nations 4x4 vehicles parked outside. They are like mobile Michelin stars - they show where the richest arrivals in the neighbourhood like to eat and stay. I first saw this phenomenon in Axum in Ethiopia (the Remhai Hotel, if you are interested), close to the contested border with Eritrea, where the car-park was a sea of blazing white. Just over a fortnight ago, I was reminded of its accuracy in southern Lebanon.

The British Foreign Office advice on going to southern Lebanon is unambiguous.

"We advise against all travel south of the Litani River. There remains a serious risk from unexploded bombs remaining from the 2006 conflict between Hizbollah and Israel [many of which were dropped in the final days of a war that the British government refused to condemn- JB] and a risk [of] violence near the Israel/Lebanon border (the Blue Line). You should heed local advice in areas that have not been declared safe from unexploded ordnance."

But I wouldn't let that put you off, unless you are a rambler wanting to assert the "right to roam". Ever since the Bali bombings in 2002, the Foreign Office has realised that its published advice hangs like a millstone round its neck. So, fearing being quoted in the newspapers, it has warmly embraced the precautionary principle and discouraged British travellers from going anywhere they might end up in trouble that it could conceivably have foreseen. My experience is that the roads in southern Lebanon are quite safe (barring the driving - still the most dangerous factor), and the people are wonderfully hospitable. Just do beware the Israeli drone that buzzes miles overhead.

The Al-Fanar hotel, next to the rusting lighthouse in Tyre, south of the Litani River, is delightfully quiet. Promisingly, outside, when I arrived, were three UN 4x4s. It is, quite simply, the most tranquil hotel that I have visited in the Middle East. It is bang on the seafront, as its name suggests (it's Arabic for lighthouse), and has large, simple rooms that look out over the Mediterranean. I can't remember the cost, but it was cheap. There's an excellent seafront bar, and you fall asleep to the waves lapping against the stony beach. It is just perfect. But please don't trust my judgement: rely on the photograph above.

Unspoilt by progress

Tyre

Since the discovery and exploitation of oil in the 1920s the Middle East has changed dramatically. Once flat skylines are now interrupted by towerblocks; cars and buses, rather than donkeys, are the usual form of transport. But now and then you spot ways of life that are utterly unchanged. That was the thought that made me take the photograph above, last Friday. It shows fisherman on the shore in the ancient city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Many of them carried on far after dark.

Tension in Lebanon

Hezbollah's flag, flying high at the infamous Al-Khiam detention centre, near the Israeli border

Early this year I wrote a piece about the Kalashnikov Index: the changing price of an AK-47 depending on supply, and demand due to perceived changes to security. In Iraq, where security appears to be improving, the Index should be falling, though I have seen no recent price data.

One nearby country where the Index has surged is Lebanon. There, says this report, the cost of buying an AK-47 has recently trebled to $1,000 a weapon. Rising expectations of violence lie behind the rise. Lebanon's politicians are currently deadlocked over the choice of a successor to replace Emile Lahoud, the Syrian-backed president of the country. A replacement needs to be found by 23 November when Mr Lahoud's term ends, but as the Index suggests people are pessimistic that an acceptable compromise candidate will be found.

I got back from a short visit to Lebanon this morning, and my impression was that the country, though outwardly calm, is close to the abyss. Having given the Israeli army a bloody nose last year, Hezbollah is reputedly preparing for trouble. Its distinctive green on yellow flags (depicting a forearm clenching an AK-47) were flying everywhere that I went, south of the River Litani and up the Beqaa valley, where souvenir sellers offering Hezbollah t-shirts congregate outside the famous ruins at Baalbek. It is clear that the spectacular damage to the country's infrastructure done by Israel (and supported without demure by Britain and the United States) during last year's war, let alone the deaths the war caused, has only reinforced Hezbollah's support. And I watched a procession of cars of another pro-Syrian faction, streaming down the main road from the Syrian border towards Beirut, flapping their disconcerting, rather fascist-inspired, red, black and white banners from the windows. Despite the signs of wealth and renovation of Beirut's battered city-centre there seems to be a fatalism among the few Lebanese I spoke to about their ability to influence events, and even a certain ambivalence towards the current, if uneasy, peace. Perhaps this has always been the case. This was my first visit to Lebanon and I have nothing to compare it with.

A force to be reckoned with

It's now been twelve days since crowds massed outside the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fuad Siniora's office in Beirut, the Ottoman Saray, to demand his resignation. Hezbollah, which has stage-managed this confrontation from the start, has cleverly turned it into a tug-of-war between itself and the Lebanese and western governments, whose vocal support for Siniora has easily been portrayed as interference. The more the western governments now back Siniora, the more he looks like their puppet and is bound to fall.

It is hard to believe that Hezbollah would have had the power or confidence to orchestrate this uproar if the war this summer had not happened. Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon this summer was sparked by Hezbollah's ill-advised snatch of two Israeli soldiers patrolling near the border, inside Israel. Hezbollah's aggressive defence of Lebanon, in the face of US and British support for Israel and silence over the civilian casualties in Lebanon, has won it widespread support, not just from its Shia base, but from other Lebanese, including Christians, and beyond. When he visited Damascus this summer my friend Richard Spring was struck by the Hezbollah flags he saw flying in the Christian quarter of the old city. The solidarity Hezbollah has generated is formidable.

It is a mistake to see Hezbollah simply as an agent of the Syrians or Iranians. Sure, Hezbollah could not survive without their backing. But Hezbollah is also satisfying a long-held appetite in Lebanon for Arab, and latterly Lebanese, independence. In 1884 the political activist Jamal al-din al-Afghani (bear with me here) who opposed European colonisation of the Islamic world sent more copies of his influential periodical Al-Urwa al-Wuthqa to Beirut than any other Middle Eastern city save Cairo, where he was based. The Ottomans knew that Beirut was a hotbed of Arab nationalist feeling. In May 1916 they hanged 14 nationalists in Beirut - twice as many as in Damascus, as a warning. But Ottoman rule ended two years later, helped considerably by Arab opposition. While Hezbollah can portray itself - with some justification - as the guardian of Lebanese independence it is a political force to be reckoned with.