وصف الكتاب:
Throughout its eventful history since it was founded in 1984, the Center for Lebanese Studies (CLS) has provided a spirited forum for enlightened debate and timely advocacy on behalf of Lebanon. Its defining agenda, pursued zealotry, is to safeguard the country from being further beleaguered by the disquieting residues of internal instability compounded by unresolved regional rivalries and global uncertainties. This one-day event, in the wake of the sudden and unprovoked “July War” which mercilessly devasted the country’s infrastructure, undermined its proverbial resilience and collective consciousness and reawakened symptoms of paranoia and fear, was intended to alert the aroused public opinion of the international community about the unsettling predicament Lebanon was again beset with. It was this alarming and dreaded setting, fraught with unforeseen misgivings, which prompted the CLS to take immediate measures to convene this instant outcry, as it were. There was clearly no time for a gathering of laborious and dispassionate scholars and pundits to debate their measured and ponderous reflections on the impending crisis. Instead, what was more compelling was the display of prompt and keen readiness, to offer caveats and flash points by way of weakening regional and global actors- opinion-makers and political entrepreneurs – empowered to translate the conjectures into modes of remedial interventions. Hence the symposium had to call upon not only spattering of informed academics but also prominent politicians, activists, journalists and representatives of public and private foundations.