Lebanon

The most notorious television station in the Middle East mixes straightforward news and entertainment with equally straightforward calls for the destruction of Israel.

Radical Islamic groups in Lebanon draw a distinction between their cause and that of Iraq or al-Qaida.

Usamah Hamdan is a soft-spoken man who pads around his office in socks and a pullover sweater, more like a university professor than the Lebanese representative of what the United States calls a major terrorist organization.

The Palestinian leader of Islamic Jihad in Lebanon says that his group will remain focused on Israel, its primary enemy, regardless of what the United States does in Iraq.

Getting an audience with a senior official at the militant Muslim organization Hezbollah is routinely a matter of multiple requests, patient follow-through and the navigation of multiple armed-guard checkpoints at the complex of nondescript office buildings that form the headquarters for the self-styled "party of God."

A key figure in the suicide-bomb attacks in Israel over the past two years says the United States should prepare for similar treatment if it attempts a military occupation of Iraq.