James Stout

And spoilers, karma's going to show up in the best way possible.

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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 Beirut and 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 situation.

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 a little, maybe a little bit more now without this.

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, you know, relatively normal.

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.

We can talk about how the minutes leading up to April 16, when the ceasefire went into effect yesterday,