|
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Zinger
February 8/2007
Writing in the aftermath of
the July War between Hezbollah and Israel, and the passage of
resolution 1701 by the Security Council this past August, this
writer opined the following:
“… Nasrallah said on Monday that the
Lebanese Army is “incapable” of defending the south, and he sure
would love to put this theory to the test. Cornered as he is between
international pressure and a weak Lebanese government still trying
to provide him with a fig leaf, Nasrallah might engineer the
“incident” needed to create new facts on the ground. Surrounded by a
loyal Shiite base and an otherwise subservient Lebanese population,
Nasrallah’s “victory” might certainly give him the idea that he
should be running Lebanon, rather than the Sunni, Druze and
Christian weaklings in the Lebanese government and political
establishment. That could serve as the platform for his evasion from
the international will to disarm him, and he could trigger a
confrontation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army. Better yet
from Nasrallah’s perspective, a confrontation between the Lebanese
army and Israeli forces would vindicate Nasrallah’s qualification of
the Lebanese Army as “incapable” and would also ensure the death of
resolution 1701.”
Today, and six months later, we
see that Hezbollah has unsuccessfully tried its hands at the first
scenario. Banking on his self-declared victory (or alternatively, to
placate his malcontent Shiite base that alone bore the brunt of the
cost of that ill-conceived war), Hassan Nasrallah has been trying
since last December to topple the Lebanese government with street
riots in which several Lebanese have died. He has now realized that
this endeavor has so far failed or, if he wants to push forward, its
success will have to come at such a heavy price as to make this
second victory moot. He did not bank on the backlash of the Lebanese
street, which threatened to take what Nasrallah thought will be an
easy ride down the abyss of renewed violence of which the Lebanese
have really really tired, and he also faced a strong Lebanese army
that refused to be dragged into taking sides.
Faced with a stalemate on his
street power grab, he has now gone back to what has worked in the
past: Hezbollah is, lest the Lebanese people forget, a “resistance”.
A Quixotic one, to be sure, against Israeli windmills and American
goliaths, but a “resistance” nonetheless that is better at planting
road side bombs and shooting from behind Lebanese Shiite women and
children than at street revolutions. So to make sure his Lebanese
compatriots are reminded that his “resistance” is still fighting the
Zionist entity, Hassan Nasrallah’s men planted 4 roadside bombs
behind the Blue Line over the weekend, even with 15,000 Lebanese
troops and another 15,000 UNIFIL troops serving as buffer between
Hezbollahland in the south and the Israeli border. Nasrallah’s men
have even been reported to have taken joy rides late last week along
the Israeli-Lebanese border, flying the vomit-colored flag of
Hezbollah in the face of Israeli soldiers. And yesterday, the
Lebanese Army reportedly shot at Israeli troops who crossed the Blue
Line from their side of the border under the pretext of wanting to
defuse more similar bombs. Israel also made claims earlier this week
that Hezbollah has been rearming with anti-tank missiles and rockets
coming in from Syria.
Hassan Nasrallah’s second
scenario may indeed consist in engineering another “run-in” with the
Israelis as a means to reasserting himself on the Lebanese scene
after the failure of his street power grab. This time, however,
there are 30,000 troops he has to contend with in triggering another
war with the Israelis. He also has to contend with the inevitable
wrath of a Lebanese population that no longer believes in the danger
of windmills or the romanticism of resistance. So, his strategy may
indeed be to cause a clash between the Lebanese army and the
Israelis or somehow drag the UNIFIL troops into yet another mess in
South Lebanon. Perhaps, the Security Council should seriously
consider, as many Lebanese have argued last August, placing UNIFIL
under Chapter 7 of the Charter to give it some teeth. Others, like
Etienne Sacre of the Guardians of the Cedars Party, have gone so far
as to suggest that there are really two possible solutions to the
Lebanese crisis: Ask the UN to manage Lebanon as it manages Kosovo
to shield it from all the regional actors and from the ineptitude of
the Lebanese themselves, or have the Lebanese Army take power,
declare the State of Emergency and take over until such time as a
return to democracy makes sense.
But the Lebanese Army
fractured in 1976 when the Lebanese disagreed over whether the
Palestinians (the PLO) should be allowed to fight Israel from South
Lebanon. The fracture then was between the Christians and the Sunnis.
Today, thirty years later, the Lebanese are still in the same spot,
disagreeing over whether Hezbollah should be allowed to fight Israel
from the Lebanese South, and this time the fracture, if it were to
happen, will be between the Sunnis and the Shiites.
The solution too, like the
problem, remains today what it was thirty or forty years ago:
Lebanon should declare its neutrality from all regional conflicts,
including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and turn its attention
internally to rebuilding its devastated economy, re-educating its
population, creating jobs to stem the skyrocketing emigration and
the brain drain, and resuming normal life (after a 40-year coma)
under a “Lebanon-first” policy that has successfully worked for many
Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt and Dubai. Indeed, Dubai announced
last week that an Israeli firm will be installing a camel milk
processing plant in the Emirate and not one Arab blinked. Why should
Lebanon, thanks to Hassan Nasrallah, continue to be the village
idiot of the Middle East?
Boston |
