The crowds had been out in downtown Beirut for nine days straight without much trouble. “Thawra!”, or revolution, they have been chanting, and “all of them means all of them”, in a rejection of the entire political class.
But on Friday night hundreds of Hizbollah supporters took exception to the inclusion of Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia group’s chief, who is seen as both a political and religious leader and beyond recrimination.
The supporters, who had come out to listen to a speech from Nasrallah warning protesters of the potential for chaos, threw rocks and flags at the crowd and tried to drown out their chants.
They were quickly pushed back by the police and booed out of the square.
But the…
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