Hezbollah An Emerging Political Force; "Open War" in the Middle East

*Inter Press Service*
http://DahrJamailIraq.com
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail

*LATAKIA, Syria, Jul 18 (IPS) - Hezbollah, a group often misunderstood
by Westerners, is a militant but also a political group.*

The Arabic name means 'Party of God'. Led by the charismatic Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Islamist Shia group was set up in 1982 to
resist Israeli occupation of Lebanon during the brutal civil war. The
group declared a political existence in 1985..

Hezbollah achieved their goal when Israeli troops withdrew from southern
Lebanon on May 25, 2000. The Israeli withdrawal followed sustained
Hezbollah attacks on its troops.

The political platform of Hezbollah calls for the destruction of Israel,
but the group has successfully transformed itself from a radical
extremist group into an effective political force which holds 18 percent
of the seats in the Lebanese Parliament.

The United States, Britain, Israel and other Western countries consider
Hezbollah a terrorist organisation that they say has received weapons
and also financial and political support from Iran and Syria. Both these
countries deny supplying arms to Hezbollah.

But both countries openly support the group politically. Iranian leaders
have produced angry rhetoric in support of Hezbollah. In Syria massive
demonstrations were held in Damascus, Latakia and several other cites.
Demonstrations in support of Hezbollah were also held in cities across
many Arab countries.

Throughout most of the Arab and Muslim world, Hezbollah is highly
regarded as a legitimate resistance movement. The group follows a
distinctly Shia Islamist ideology developed by the leader of the Islamic
Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In Lebanon the group had first hoped to transform the whole country into
a fundamentalist Shia state. But it has now abandoned that objective for
a more inclusive platform.

About 60 percent of the 3.8 million population of Lebanon is Muslim,
most of them Shia. This is where Hezbollah draws its support. The rest
of the population is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war between
Muslim and Christian groups ended in 1991.

The Shia movement in Iraq led by Muqtada al-Sadr is following in the
footsteps of Hezbollah. It has won broad support in Iraq from millions
of impoverished Shias there for similar reasons.

Hezbollah won the support of Shia Muslims by providing social services,
healthcare and welfare when the Lebanese government failed. Hezbollah
runs hospitals, news services and educational facilities for its
followers in Lebanon. It is behind a large number of economic and
infrastructure projects in the country.

The recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon destroyed the Hezbollah al-Manar
Television station. But the group continues to broadcast messages from
Nasrallah by other means.

Hezbollah has refused to integrate its forces into the Lebanese army
despite political pressure. It considers itself a legitimate resistance
movement in Lebanon that is also important to the entire Middle East region.

Hezbollah has long accused Israel of holding many of its members in
jail, some for more than 20 years, and continues to demand their
release. Hezbollah says it will continue to fight unless its prisoners
are also released.

Hezbollah became the most powerful military force in Lebanon after Syria
withdrew its troops last year. It now has a seat in the Lebanese cabinet.

During the civil war, which brought Lebanon to its knees, Hezbollah
became infamous for its suicide bombings and kidnapping of Western
hostages, primarily journalists.

The biggest Hezbollah suicide attack was the bombing of the barracks of
U.S. marines in Beirut in 1983. The attack killed 241 marines and led
then president Ronald Reagan to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.

The group is also widely believed to have carried out an attack on the
U.S. embassy, killing 63 people, and on the headquarters of the French
multinational forces, killing 58 French troops.

Hezbollah's political rise came substantially after the assassination of
former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Harriri in February 2005. In May of
that year Hezbollah won its biggest election victory.

Hezbollah was invited to join the government in July last year in hope
that the move would bring national unity to Lebanon as the country
struggled for stability and peace.

The current fighting between Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Israel has
left more than 200 Lebanese dead, along with several Israelis. Both
Hezbollah and the government of Israel have declared open war with one
another. International intervention has been lacklustre to say the
least, and the crisis looks set to deepen.

As through its chequered history, Hezbollah is again winning praise and
support from the Arab and Muslim world, while it is accused of terrorism
by the West. Hezbollah is about the most prominent division points at
present between the two worlds.

By Dahr Jamail
http://DahrJamailIraq.com
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

Tuesday 18 July 2006

"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why
the violence occurred in the first place." That one sentence (a
surprisingly rare example of a complete sentence spoken by Cheney
spokesman George W. Bush), taken on its own, would fully explain why the
Middle East is now on the brink of regional war. But of course, Bush
always finds a way to engage in Orwellian newspeak. At a news conference
with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, he managed to rewrite
history in the very next sentence by blaming Hezbollah for instigating
the violence by launching rocket attacks into Israel and capturing
Israeli soldiers. But then, George most likely has no idea where Gaza
is, let alone what has been occurring there for decades.

As puppet Bush goes on saying things like "Every nation has a right to
defend itself," referring to his favorite ally, Israel, his use of the
word "every" would of course exclude Lebanon, since their army is using
anti-aircraft guns against Israeli warplanes. And let us not forget the
Iraqi resistance - as it may never cross his feeble mind that they are
defending Iraq from the American invaders.

Most Arab leaders are refusing to back Hezbollah, although US-influenced
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II issued
the usual statements demanding "an immediate halt on attacking civilians
and vital infrastructure," saying that such attacks breach the
international humanitarian conventions. As if Israel will listen. As if
the US listens to any calls from countries demanding similar actions by
the occupation forces and Western contracting companies who are busily
raping and pillaging Iraq. As if any country in war ever abides by the
Geneva Conventions nowadays. And without a functional UN to actually
take a stand for human rights or real justice, why should they?

The typical response among the people here in the Middle East is to
scoff at their leadership - who continue to cower and bow to US interests.

Friday at the Lebanese/Syrian border, I spoke with a 50-year-old Kuwaiti
man, Emad, as he fled Beirut with his family. "It's very bad there, as
the Israelis are attacking civilians, bombing police and petrol stations
and even the fuel storage depots," he told me, "In fact, they have even
bombed the airport once again. I saw F-16's bombing and there is smoke
everywhere. This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

When I asked him what he thought it would take to end the fighting, he
promptly replied, "It looks like the Arab governments are not moving
their asses, so I am leaving."

Yet as consistently as the Arab governments fail to get busy "moving
their asses" toward something resembling a solution to this crisis, just
as consistently are the people repressed by those same governments
raising their voices.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Arab protestors hit the streets,
condemning the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and their actions in the Gaza
Strip. 5,000 angry protesters gathered at a mosque in Cairo carrying
banners that read, "Hey Arab leaders, you should be united." In Amman,
over 2,000 demonstrators gathered at a mosque after Friday prayers,
shouting "Zionists get out, get out!" and "Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan
are one people!"

Thousands marched in Gaza, waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, thousands of angry Iraqis marched, praising
Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, while denouncing Israel and
the US for the attacks. Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr hinted that he may
be prepared to put his Mehdi Army militia into action against the
Americans due to the Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza.

In an earlier piece titled "An Alliance of Violence
," I detailed
how violence perpetrated on the people of Palestine by the Israeli
military has immediate ramifications in Iraq. The same is now brewing
yet again.

In Kuwait, protesters rallied in front of the parliament building,
shouting "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!" Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti
lawmaker named Musallam al-Barrak lashed out at his and other Arab
governments when he stated, "Arab countries can do nothing but condemn."

There is a frightening undercurrent of rage among the people in the
Middle East toward their governments: The Arab world is on fire over the
injustice meted out against the Palestinian people, as well as to the
Lebanese. The Israeli people are deeply angered at their government for
failing to provide security (of course our corporate media would never
report on the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis oppose their
government's actions in Gaza and beyond) - instead, preferring peaceful
resolutions rather than brutal, unjust, failed occupation and ongoing
acts of aggression.

Predictably, the impotent UN Security Council goes about its
machinations of futility, holding emergency meetings while hoping for
resolutions - which rarely, if ever, change anything on the ground to
stop the needless massacre of civilians on both sides of the conflict.
Ah, the UN - where the US is responsible for eight out of the last nine
vetoes, seven of which had to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So why pin any hope on the UN, when the US has already vetoed a
resolution demanding that Israel stop its military offensive in the Gaza
Strip?

Meanwhile, the bloodletting continues as the situation escalates and
spins further into chaos while threatening to spread deeper into the region.

Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, hopes to completely
annihilate Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. They have now insured total,
unending war by demanding Hezbollah to completely disarm, leave southern
Lebanon and hand over the Israeli soldiers, demands which Hezbollah will
surely brush aside.

Let us not forget that both Israel and the US announced in January that
the Palestinian people would be punished for voting the wrong way by
electing Hamas to power. That unjust act, which began the chain of
events leading to our current crisis, may well be marked as the match
that lit this hellish bonfire. Because it certainly seems, judging from
their actions in Gaza and now in southern Lebanon, that the aim of the
Israeli government is to wipe out the Palestinian people, in addition to
Hamas and Hezbollah.

So we naturally have open war in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Israel
declared it by their act of bombing and invading Lebanon, then bombing
Nasrallah's Beirut offices. Nasrallah, unhurt by the attack, promptly
appeared on television announcing "open war" against Israel.

On Hezbollah's TV channel in Beirut, he said, "You wanted an open war
and we are ready for an open war." He announced, "Look at the warship
that has attacked Beirut [referring to an Israeli warship off the coast
that was lobbing shells into Lebanon] while it burns and sinks before
your very eyes."

The ship was heavily damaged and four of its 80 soldiers on board went
missing after being attacked by an explosive drone launched by
Hezbollah, the first time such a weapon has been seen from their arsenal.

"Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that
has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at
it burning," Nasrallah mocked, in his address that aired late Friday night.

In footage aired by the same channel, dozens of Lebanese danced in the
streets of Beirut to celebrate the announcement of the attack on the
Israeli ship. This, of course, contradicts Israel's goal in pressuring
Lebanon: Israel hoped that by punishing the Lebanese they would force
the country to pressure Hezbollah. Despite the propaganda of the dancing
Lebanese aired by Hezbollah TV, reaction thus far is mixed in besieged
Lebanon.

Deepening the crisis, Nasrallah threatened to attack deeper inside
Israel, "beyond Haifa."

And Saturday the bloodshed continued as the Israeli Air Force bombed
bridges, fuel storage tanks, petrol stations in southern and eastern
Lebanon. At least four people were killed in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and
more bridges south of Beirut were destroyed.

The same day, at least 15 Lebanese villagers, including women and
children, were killed by an Israeli air strike on their vehicles as they
fled their village of Marwahin in southern Lebanon after being ordered
to evacuate by the Israelis.

Leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft over Beirut warned the Lebanese not
to back Nasrallah. Yet, giving further evidence to the Lebanese army's
outwardly opposing the Israelis, after the leaflets were dropped they
were promptly collected and taken away by Lebanese security forces.

Underscoring this, Saadeddine Rafik Hariri, majority leader in the
Lebanese Parliament and the son of the assassinated former prime
minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, told reporters in Kuwait on Saturday:
"The Lebanese people must remain united. We must not allow Israel to
divide us. The enemy is Israel."

Here in Damascas we're on pins and needles. The mood is one of both high
anxiety and seething anger at the Israelis' war against both Lebanon and
Hezbollah. Like anywhere else, nobody here supports collective
punishment or attacks against sovereign countries.

As Israeli jets pound the mountains in Lebanon near the Syrian border,
striking radio and satellite antennas, the concern that Syria will be
drawn into the conflict grows daily.

The day before, Reuters reported that the ruling Ba'ath party in
Damascas announced that they and the "Syrian people"... "are ready to
extend full support to the Lebanese people and their heroic resistance
to remain steadfast and confront the barbaric Israeli aggression and its
crimes."

The war is even widening in Lebanon, as Israeli warplanes, also on
Saturday, bombed an area in Tripoli, their most northern strike thus
far. After Israel placed an embargo on Lebanon and shut down their main
seaport in Beirut, 95% of the trade was rerouted through the port at
Tripoli. Today, three bombs were dropped by Israeli war planes on that
port. Other Lebanese ports now shut down include Jounieh, Amshit and
Hamat, as the Lebanese economy has ground to a nearly complete standstill.

At least 79 civilians have been killed and over 250 wounded since Israel
began its attack against Lebanon on Wednesday.

Civilians dying aren't only in Lebanon. Over a dozen rockets were fired
by Hezbollah into several towns in northern Israel, in addition to over
90 fired into a total of 15 towns in Israel thus far, killing at least
four and wounding scores.

Thus, both Hezbollah and the Israeli government have their "open war."
As usual, while the politicians and the UN wring their hands and twiddle
their thumbs, those bearing the brunt are the civilians on both sides,
whether they live in Israel, Lebanon or Palestine.