It's been a while since I recalled hearing rumours that all lebanese internet traffic is routed to "certain" destinations (outside leb, and you know where that is) for the purpose of monitoring.

I did do some thinking, and find that it would be hard to achieve, since all the "cable" providers have their downloads coming straight to them via satellite, even though their uploads have to go through local ISPs. But still that means whoever is listening, is getting half the "conversations", so their sniffing is asymmetric at best.

I have honestly not investigated this seriously, but I am very curious to hear what others have to share. Is this just a silly rumour or is it grounded in something real ?
The different ISPs route their international connections differently. Terranet uses a satellite downlink, so that cannot be sniffed by the gouvernement. I dont know about other ISP... but I personally think that this is a rumour.
If you look at traceroutes from different ISP, I'm pretty sure that you wont find common IP's between them.

Now they could be sniffing at the ISP level... you never know!
I think it would be much more feasible to install "black boxes" at all of the nation's ISPs, instead of re-routing all traffic somewhere else completely. Much less of a hassle, and much more effective :)
So yeah, I think it's just a rumor as well.