www.nytimes.com Lebanon, once a byword for terrorism, is in the midst of a boom in tourism, real estate construction and development. The credit goes, officials here believe, to terrorism.

"After the 11th of September, everything changed," said Pierre Achkar, president of the Lebanese Hotel Association.

Achkar and others say this beautiful but battered country, not long ago the stomping grounds of hijackers, kidnappers and suicide bombers, has turned into the destination of choice for oil-rich families from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates, bringing in billions of dollars.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Lebanese officials and Arab visitors here say, many wealthy Saudis and Gulf Arabs no longer felt welcome on their customary trips to Europe and the United States because of harsh questioning at airports and suspicion on the streets. Further, many worry about political unrest and attacks inspired by Al Qaeda in their own countries and see second homes in Lebanon as a possible refuge.

"I used to go to the U.S. a lot, but after 9/11, no," said Alsamawal Joharji, a 34-year-old Saudi who studied at a technical school in Denver and loved the nearby skiing. "The visa was a nightmare. They ask so many questions, I feel like everybody's under investigation."

Now the coast and mountains that were bloody battlegrounds for rival militias in the civil war between 1975 and 1990 sparkle with new hotels filled with marble and luxury residential dwellings going up with names like Beirut Tower, Marina Tower and, not least, Platinum Tower. Marinas dock $60 million yachts.

For the first time in three decades, tourists to Lebanon numbered more than one million last year, and more are expected this year. Middle East Airlines, the national carrier, has turned a profit - $22 million - for the first time in years. Hotels are nearly all fully booked this month.

"The big change came after 9/11," said Joe Maatouk, the head of BEAR, a real estate development and consulting firm. "What unfortunately happened in the United States helped Lebanon a lot."

Since 9/11, the Arab people have come to look at this country as a refuge.

"This year was a real booming," he added. "Billions are passing through. August should be a holiday - we are working 14 hours a day."

In some ways, Lebanon is returning to its former role. Before 1975, Beirut was known as the "Paris of the Middle East." Lebanon's mountain resorts were the summer playgrounds of wealthy Arabs, and Beirut was the commercial, intellectual and banking center for the region. The civil war pushed much of this activity to Dubai, where Arab investors built, among other things, a luxury resort on an artificial chain of islands shaped like a palm tree.

Lebanon's billionaire prime minister, Rafik Hariri, almost single-handedly rebuilt the shattered downtown in the late 1990s with his own company.

"That was our hope," Maatouk said of the failed prospect of peace. "We were waiting for it, all the Lebanese. We bet on this. All our hope was built on this - and unfortunately it didn't come."

But when matters turned even more sour, with Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the past couple of years, Beirut's restored center and its newfound stability put Lebanon in a strong position. Gulf Arabs flocked to Lebanon to build and for vacation.

"In Saudi Arabia and the emirates they are in danger now, because of the security situation, the attacks on compounds, the kidnappings," Maatouk said, explaining the boom in luxury housing. "Some of these areas were empty for the last five years. If you go now, you'd think you were in Riyadh or Jidda."

On the reclaimed Beirut waterfront, Joseph Ghobril, the project manager of a custom-designed apartment building called 24 Park Avenue, showed off a $6 million apartment, with powerful electric generators, parking for 650 cars, a health club with a 25-meter, or 80-foot, pool and a downstairs sitting room for bodyguards and drivers.

"Many of our buyers have their own yachts," Ghobril said. "They are happy to have the marina nearby. More than 10 years back, I would not have expected this strip to be for the rich."

But it is. And nearly all of the new construction is at the highest end of the scale in a country of vast disparities, where much of the population is poor.

The new Movenpick Hotel, with terraces on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean and its swimming pools and yacht basin, appears to have surpassed the Inter-Continental Phoenicia in terms of four-wheel-drive vehicles. But it may be challenged by the upcoming Four Seasons. Up the coast is the Royal, with its own water park. The Metropolitan Palace hotel is a tower fronting on a roundabout decorated with fountains, to be connected by a bridge to a shopping mall. The Sannine Zenith aims to cover a mountaintop with three golf courses, theme villages and ski slopes.
 
Lounging at one such table, Baader Al-Khalaf, 30 years old, from Riyadh, said he had fond memories of Boston from his days as a student at Northeastern University. But he does not plan to return to the United States, even though his family had a large textile business there.

"I don't want to take the risk," he said.