The film starts with another ordinary day, two elderly men playing Backgammon, cars passing by, children playing in the street; scenes anyone anywhere in the world can relate to. Seemingly without warning, as the sun set on that ordinary day, the audience is taken on a perilous journey through war-torn Beirut. Born in Beirut is a thoughtful and poetic examination of war through the eyes of a child who lived through endless conflict in war-torn Beirut. The film examines the futility of war and the price paid in innocent lives.

John A. Warden’s theory the enemy as a system has been influential and attributed to large scale victories, such as Operation Desert Storm. It advocates offensive use of air power by parallel attacks on the enemy’s strategic center. While doctrines of small states are dependent and influenced by the military thinking of great power nations, its capacity and necessary priorities for the use of air power may differ. This study examines Warden’s theory through two cases, the Six Day War and the Second Lebanon War. Both relied on air power executed by a small state, Israel. The result show that Warden’s theory can partly explain Israelic victory during the Six Day War, but with substantial differentiations from the theory’s advocation of attacks on the enemy strategic leadership. The findings are ambiguous and neither strengthens nor weakens the theory. The analysis of the Second Lebanon War indicates that air power was insufficient in achieving strategic victory in the war against Hezbollah, even though the execution of the air operation had significant resemblance to Warden’s theory, thus weakening the theory.

Hezbollahs success during the second Lebanon war in 2006 caused a great stirr through the field of military theorists and analysts. The organization was by most numericals clearly out-gunned and out-numbered compared to the combat-experienced Israel defense forces. The Lebanese forces however managed to not only stifle the Israeli offensive actions but held their ground through the 34 days long war resulting in a stalemate and a United Nations resolution. Theories have evolved from or in ways of explaining this puzzling case. Dual approaches have been identified as some theorize that hybrid warfare is a completely new phenomenon where others state it’s a flavor of the month expression for the same old tactics seen many times before. This study seeks to further explore the complex nature of irregular conflicts and find whether a new theory of hybrid warfare ’Unrestricted warfare’ or a senior compendium’On guerrilla warfare’ best can explain this.The findings of this study concludes that neither theory can be out-ruled and opens for further research within the the second Lebanon war as well as on the theories ’On guerrilla warfare’ and ’Unrestricted warfare’.

La guerre du Liban (1975-1990) a vu émerger dès son commencement une littérature féminine caractérisée par le décentrement du regard et de la représentation, qui inspira le nom donné par Miriam Cooke aux auteures femmes ayant écrit la guerre à Beyrouth : les "Beirut Decentrists". Ces dernières sont à l’origine d’un corpus prolifique et hétérogène, dont les œuvres, pour la grande majorité hybrides et polyphoniques, se rejoignent dans une interrogation sur l’espace urbain comme protagoniste, et sur la place occupée par l’auteure dans un paysage en perpétuel devenir. Ce travail de recherche, qui s’inscrit dans la géocritique, se propose d’explorer les espaces investis par ces femmes pendant la guerre. Que peuvent-ils nous apprendre sur la ville en guerre ? Surtout, quelles Beyrouth(s) possibles peuvent naître après la tentative organisée d’un urbicide par la société de milices qui a contrôlé la ville pendant quinze ans ? Le corpus couvre la totalité de la durée de la guerre, mais il comprend aussi des textes écrits dans les années qui ont suivi, indiquant la prégnance de la guerre dans le temps de l’après-conflit. En quoi le point de vue des "Beirut Decentrists" peut-il contribuer à la construction de la mémoire dans un pays qui cultive l’amnésie tout en croulant sous un « excès de mémoire » ? Ces territoires traversés et transgressés où ville, écriture et expérimentation poétique s’entrecroisent, nous permettent de mettre en perspective les notions de frontières et les considérations binaires de centre et de périphérie. En proposant une lecture géographique des textes des Beirut Decentrists, nous espérons renouveler la perspective sur la guerre, sur les femmes dans la guerre, sur la perception de la ville et la façon de faire avec la mémoire de celles-ci. / When the Lebanese war broke out in 1975, many women scattered in Beirut started writing about their feeling of being decentered. Miriam Cooke called them the "Beirut Decentrists". Their texts about the war in Beirut experiment with a variety of literary genres and devices such as hybridity and polyphony, yet all intersect around one interrogation: urban space as a protagonist and the woman writer’s role in this ever-changing landscape. This research inspired by geocriticism explores the spaces wandered by these women during the war. What can we learn about the war-torn city? Moreover, is it possible for new Beirut(s) to emerge from a fifteen-year militia-lead organized urbicide? Our corpus covers the entire war along with texts written during the postwar years. The latter giving us precious indications of how war still influences the conflict’s aftermath. What contribution can the "Beirut Decentrists" unique perspective bring to the construction of a collective memory in a country where amnesia and an excess of memory still coexist? Urban landscape, writing and poetic experimentation intersect and blend in these traveled and transgressed territories, thus allowing us to challenge the notion of border and binary narratives of center and periphery. Through a geographical reading of the Beirut Decentrists’ texts, we wish to renew the perspective on the war, on women in war, as well as the perception of the city and the ways to deal with memory.

How do states perceive threats? Why are material forces sometimes more prominent in shaping threat perception, whereas ideational ones are key in other instances? This study aims to move beyond the task of determining whether material or ideational factors offer a more plausible explanation by arguing that threat perception is a function of the interplay between material factors and state identity, the influence of which can run both ways. Based on ‘analytical eclecticism’, I develop a two-layered conception of security as both physical and ontological, in which the interaction of ideational and material forces can be analysed. Ontological security is intimately connected with identity; its pursuit, therefore, requires distinctiveness and differentiation from the ‘Other’ as well as a coherent and consistent identity narrative at the domestic level. Physical security, on the other hand, involves the identification of threats that constitute a danger to the survival of the state. While ontological and physical security spheres have distinct dynamics and processes, they constitute two interrelated layers. Accordingly, I argue that states can suffer from ontological insecurity while their physical security remains intact, and vice versa. In some instances, physical security and its corresponding material forces condition identity narratives while in other instances the causal arrow points in the other direction. To illustrate these processes, I present a ‘structured, focused’ comparison of Syrian and Saudi threat perceptions during three major wars in the region: the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the 2006 Lebanon War, and the 2009 Gaza War. While providing novel insights for explaining the dynamics of threat perception in the Middle East, this study contributes to the broader IR literature by proposing a conceptual framework that links the literature on Self/Other relations, ontological security, and realism in IR theory. This study thus demonstrates the potential utility of bringing IR theory and the Middle East as an area study into closer dialogue.

This research examines the establishment and expansion of Hezbollah. It uses a policy perspective in explaining the growth of this organization. Moreover, it focuses on Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Lebanon as a major cause behind the very existence of Hezbollah. The analysis of Israeli policy will be done by examining three separate conflicts as case studies. These events are: the 1982 (Peace for Galilee) invasion of Lebanon that helped to create Hezbollah, the 1996 (Operation Grapes of Wrath) Hezbollah-Israeli conflict which served to bolster Hezbollah in Lebanon, and finally the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war which solidified Hezbollah as a military force in the region. The first part of the study analyzes the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to dismantle PLO bases and the resulting vacuum filled by Hezbollah. In an effort to eliminate Hezbollah, Israel again invaded Lebanon in 1996 allowing Hezbollah to expand its power based in Lebanon by providing a number of services including healthcare, financial services, and construction among others. In 2006, Israel again invaded Lebanon resulting in an increase in weapons shipments and funding to Hezbollah from Syria, Iran and a number of other countries, further increasing danger to Israel. These invasions have served to bolster Hezbollah in Lebanon. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the repercussions of Israeli military invasions in Lebanon

Thesis titled "The Change of Media image of Israel in Czech Press at the Turn of 80's and 90's" deals with the construction of the media image of Israel in the Rudé právo and Mladá fronta dailies using examples of news about the Lebanon War in 1982 and the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. The findings are then compared with media image of Israel in the Mladá fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny dailies and weekly newspa-per Respekt during the Gulf War in 1991 and the signing of the Israeli- Palestinian peace treaty in Oslo in 1993. Research is focused on vocabulary of the news and on historical and political context of Czech-Israeli relations in the eighties and nineties. There is also description of researched newspapers and Czechoslovak media environment and jour-nalistic production in this period. The research method used is qualitative content analy-sis. Media images comparison is based on the selection of specific excerpts from news-paper articles, with the emphasis on a wide range of thematic coverage in the examined periods. List of all researched articles is attached. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This thesis aims to study how Hezbollah acted just or unjustly in the 2006 Lebanon War to conclude if their warfare was just or unjust. That leads to a better understanding of Hezbollah's warfare in the 2006 Lebanon War and if they thereby have culpability in the war. If Hezbollah want to be taken as a serious and legitimate force in war, they should be held accountable to the same standards of warfare as states and be shown that there are consequences for their actions. The theory that will be used in order to do so, is the Just War theory. It is divided into two categories: Jus ad Bellum, the right to go to war, and Jus in Bello, the right conduct in war. Hezbollah seemed to have failed to meet the criteria of Jus ad Bellum, by failing to fulfill the criteria just cause, right intention, the proportionality of ends, and a reasonable prospect of success. They only managed to fulfill the criterion of right authority and mostly the last resort criterion, due to their constitutional right to wage war and their prior intents of a prisoner exchange. The organization also failed to meet the criteria of Jus in Bello: proportionality of means and discrimination. They had no proportionality regarding the goal, nor did they differentiate between military goals and civilians. It was therefore concluded that Hezbollah acted unjustly in the 2006 Lebanon War, by not having the right to go to war, but also because the conduct in the war was unjust as well. That contributed to the more significant understanding of Hezbollah's warfare in the 2006 Lebanon War including its culpability, and the importance of holding them accountable for their actions in war. / Krishantering och säkerhet

The thesis "Framing of the conflict in the Middle East in Czech Daily Newspapers" explores how Czech print media report on the conflict in the Middle East through the analysis of Mladá fronta Dnes and Právo news coverage of the Second Lebanon War (2006) and the Gaza war (2008- 2009). The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the role of the media in times of war and focuses mainly on the popular even though somewhat fragmented concept of media framing, which became the basis for the analysis of the above mentioned newspapers. The research draws on the extensive literature on media framing as well as foreign research on framing of the Arab- Israeli conflict, combining quantitative and qualitative analytical tools. The aim of the quantitative part of the analysis was to obtain hitherto missing data about the framing of the conflict in the Middle East by Czech media that could be compared to similar data that are already available for foreign media. Quantitative analysis also focused on news sources and topics used while referring about the Middle East conflict. The purpose of the qualitative analysis was to gain a deeper insight into the problem and generate a list of specific frames used to interpret the conflict in the Middle East by Czech print media.