This year’s Arab Spring is an astonishing moment. Yes, somewhere on the calendar of the next decade’s history a fall of lowered expectations will occur and a winter of cold disappointment — but the hopes and passions powering it will not disappear.
Michael Totten’s new book, “The Road to Fatima Gate” (Encounter Books, 2011), provides a first-person look at Arab Spring’s immediate predecessor, Lebanon’s Beirut Spring of 2005. Totten then moves to a detailed discussion of Hezbollah’s increasing power within Lebanon, followed by a compelling, on-the-ground look at the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war (the July War, in Lebanese parlance). Totten portrays the war as an Iranian-Israeli war, with Hezbollah as Tehran’s proxy.
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