Position of Lebanon in the 2006 Lebanon War had made comments on television saying that Israel should consider a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. On 13 July, a prominent Lebanese Druze member of parliament, Walid Jumblatt, criticized Hezbollah in an interview with the French daily "Le Figaro": "Hezbollah played a very dangerous game by kidnapping these two soldiers. ... Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon. These kidnappings took place outside our country's borders. Hezbollah is raising the stakes, with the support of Iran and Syria, which in the past year has become a satellite state of Tehran. … Hezbollah will have to explain itself to the Lebanese. ... [We need
History of the Jews in Lebanon after similar movements in Italy and Germany, and Franco's Phalangist movement in Spain.) and played an instrumental role in the establishment of Lebanon as an independent state. During the Greater Lebanon period, two Jewish newspapers were founded, the Arabic language "Al-Alam al-Israili" (the Israelite World) and the French "Le Commerce du Levant", an economic periodical which still publishes (though it is now owned by non-Jews). The Jewish community of Beirut evolved in three distinct phases. Until 1908, the Jewish population in Beirut grew by migration from the Syrian interior and from other Ottoman cities like Izmir, Salonica, Istanbul, and Baghdad.