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Hello, everyone, and this is It Could Happen here. My name is Dana Al-Kurd. I'm a researcher and

analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I'm joined by Justin Salhani, who is a non-resident fellow at the

Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and a writer and journalist based in Beirut. He has worked

with Al Jazeera Digital and has contributed to a number of different outlets in the past and has

been reporting on the region since 2011. Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me.

So since you are, you know, based in Byrdam, so intimately knowledgeable of what's been going on,

I thought we could start by just kind of laying out what conditions are like in Lebanon right now.

So right now, as we speak, we're in the midst of kind of a tenuous, fragile, incomplete, we can call it ceasefire. In Beirut proper, there still is occasionally, you know, a drone overhead, this kind of infamous drone that buzzes incessantly and keeps everyone constantly on their toes. But there's been almost two weeks or maybe a little bit more now without an attack on

Beirut.

Basically, we had that day, April 8th, which is being called locally Black Wednesday,

where around the country, I think the numbers are now over 350 people were killed.

And many of those were in Beirut, in areas

that came without warning. You know, there is this kind of dynamic now where the Israeli military

will at times announce warnings for certain areas, though many attacks come with no warning.

And they brought down buildings without warning in some cases as well in central Beirut.

So the conditions right now are relatively, I guess we can call it quiet here.

Of course, that's vastly different in the south where there was an intensification, particularly

yesterday.

There wasn't really any cessation of hostilities.

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