Five months after being nominated as prime minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikati, a Sunni supported by Hizbullah, at last got parliament to vote him formally into office.

Tunisia’s interim government said that ousted dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali will stand trial in absentia on charges ranging from corruption to drug-trafficking.

A party created by the Muslim Brotherhood agreed it would form a front together with the Wafd, an old liberal secular party that used to cooperate with the previous regime, to compete in Egypt’s general election scheduled for september.

Scores died in Syria as security forces suppressed anti-regime protests, particularly in Latakia and Deraa. President Bashar Assad said he would lift the 48-year-old state of emergency, but did not say when.

Following weeks of violent protests, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered to transfer his powers to a caretaker government while retaining the presidency until elections are held. Protesters declined the offer.

Sectarian relations in the Middle East soured after Nuri Al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister and a Shia himself, praised the Shia protesters in Bahrain and criticised Sunni Saudi Arabia for helping to suppress them. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah, Lebanon’s Shia party-cum-militia, also aroused anger among Sunni governments by praising the Bahraini protesters and likening the Bahraini ruling family to Libya’s Gaddafi.

At least 55 people were killed in Tikrit, Iraq, after suicide bombers thought to be linked to Al-Qaeda to a score of hostages, including several members of the local council, prompting government forces to storm the building.

Large demonstrations were also seen in Sana’a, Yemen, demanding that Ali Abdullah Saleh step down as president. He too has been in power for three decades.

A fragile transitional unity government in Tunisia struggled to restore order, as riots continued throughout the country.

Najib Mikati, a self-made telecom billionaire, becames Lebanon’s prime minister with the backing of Hizbullah. The United States, France, Israel and Saudi Arabia were all worried.

Leaked discussions between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were made public on Al-Jazeera. The leaks put both sides in a bad light. The Palestianian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas is portrayed to truckling to the Israelis by offering more generous concessions than was publicly admitted.

Lebanon’s coalition government collapsed after Hizbullah withdrew its support, allegedly because the Prime Minister Saad Hariri refused to convene an emergency session to take a stance on the UN tribunal investigating the assissination of his father Rafik Hariri in 2005. Hizbullah is likely to be blamed for the killing.

Tensions rose in East Jerusalem as bulldozers began demolishing parts of a hotel in a district inhabited mainly by Arabs, to make way for buildings for Jews. The Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as their future capital.

Wikileaks has embarrassed several Arab leaders. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon’s prime minister Saad Hariri both urged the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Leading figures in Qatar and Bahrain, who remain neutral in public, expressed deep hostility towards Iran in private.

Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, insisted that Palestinian negotiators must first formally accept that Israel is a Jewish state before he would consider extending a freeze on building settlements in the West Bank.

Mohamed El Baradei, a former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, called for a boycott of the polls of the presidential elections in Egypt in November. El Baradei had openly aired his intention to run for president, but now says the elections cannot be fair.

A few days after the official departure of US combat troops out of Iraq, five suicide bombers killed at least 17 people including themselves, in attacks against Iraqi army facilities in Baghdad.

Lebanon’s parliament passed a law which allows Palestinian refugees to work legally. The law gives 400,000 Palestinians the same rights as other foreign workers and ends years of discrimination which limited them to the most menial jobs.

Dubai’s DP World, a large operator of ports, said recovering world-trade volumes has boosted its first-half profits by 17% to $219m.

Clashes broke out on the border between Israel and Lebanon when Israeli troops tried to cut down a tree that both sides claimed was in their territory. Four people were killed. The UN Security Council expressed “deep concern” over the worst border clash since 2006.

At least 45 Iraqi Shia pilgrims were killed during a series of bombings in Baghdad. Most of them were on their way to a shrine.