Mr. Sharif introduces the reader to Arafat in 1967. While Fateh battled over who should be their leader, Arafat slipped into the Occupied Territories to consolidate his status. Impressed by his daring and commitment, he was elected to the position. This is followed by an description of the early interactions between the author and Arafat–a period that included the events leading up to and including Black September. For those unaware of this time in Palestinian history, it was when Jordan attacked the Palestinian camps located inside their territory, unleashing a war that spread to Amman and set back the movement for years. Intertwined with this narrative is a history of the Palestinian people from 1948 on with the emphasis being the story of that history after the formation of the PLO.

This story is worth repeating. Attacks, diplomacy and all. Bassam Abu Sharif provides details known only to someone in his position about PLO hijackings, operations against the IDF, the Iranian revolution, the machinations leading up to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the eventual departure of the PLO fighters, the Oslo negotiations and the siege of Arafat’s house in the months before his eventual exile and death. It is a story of frustration, anger, patience, and unremitting recalcitrance of the PLO’s foe. It is a tale not unlike the stories of other nations and their struggle for independence yet unique to the unusual situation of the Palestinians. There is tragedy just as there is heroism. Fighting united against the common enemy and quarreling inside the organization, not to mention with the established Arab nations. Through the entire text, the reader sees Bassam Abu Sharif’s respect for Arafat grow along with an allegiance and friendship that placed him in the perfect position to write this history of Arafat and the movement he came to signify.

When Sharif expresses his opinion on an event or strategy he is describing, that opinion is in the context of his support for what he believed to be the best way forward for the Palestinian people. He writes about his opposition to suicide bombing and his belief that Saddam Hussein was tricked by Washington into attacking Kuwait in 1990. While discussing the Oslo negotiations, he makes clear his distrust of the Israeli government and suspicions about Washington. His description of the Israeli siege of Arafat’s home is laced with anger and concludes by voicing the suspicion that Arafat was poisoned.

Despite its largely uncritical nature, Arafat and the Dream of Palestine is an interesting and useful work, especially in the West where Tel Aviv’s version of events tends to have a greater grip on the popular imagination. A true journalist, Bassam Abu Sharif rarely embellishes the facts of his story, telling it in a straightforward yet compelling manner. Then again, it is a story that needs no embellishment. It is not only the story of Yasser Arafat. It is also the story of the last forty years of the Palestinian struggle. After reading Sharif’s account, it becomes even clearer why the Israelis and their US backers wanted him removed. His relationship to the Palestinian struggle is comparable to that of Ho Chi Minh’s to the Vietnamese people’s long war against occupation or Nelson Mandela’s to that of South Africa’s black population.

US tactics and strategy toward the region becomes relevant, only if we take account of the recent historical, economic and political changes in Latin America and the evolving political alignments.

A realistic assessment of US policy by necessity must go beyond policy pronouncements and Washington’s ‘projection of power’ to an analysis of its existing capabilities and the resources available to implement Obama’s agenda for Latin America. In evaluating Washington’s policy, the key is to analyze its coherence and feasibility in light of its political diagnosis of Latin America. This provides a basis for determining the compatibility or conflict of interests between the two regions. A basic question arises: How do the Obama regime’s policies, objectives, and available resources square with the development needs of different Latin American countries in a time of deepening world depression?

To answer that question, requires we examine the recent policies and political alignments in Latin America. It would be utterly foolish to over or underestimate the degree of US “hegemony” or Latin American “autonomy,” especially in light of major shifts in power relations over the past two decades, and continuing today.

Latin America’s relations with the US are decisively influenced by internal events, including class conflicts, which determine the correlation of political forces, as well as external events such as US intervention and outward expansion, and world market conditions. The shifts in Latin America’s political-economic relations can be divided into distinct periods, which provide an overview of the relative degree of hegemony and autonomy with regard to the US empire.

The Changing Contours of US-Latin American Relations: 1990-2009

Any “general overview” of US-Latin American relations is subject to exceptions and variations in particular country experiences, even as it highlight ‘dominant trends’ in the region.

The first two decades from 1980-2000 establish certain parameters for recent policies particularly the conflicts and divergences of interests.

The period from 1980-1999 was defined for Washington and Wall Street as the ‘Golden Age’ in US-Latin American relations. The regimes accepted and promoted US hegemony, following the precise terms of the IMF, the Washington Consensus and a US centered model of capital accumulation.

This included the lifting of trade barriers, the privatization of public enterprises (including banks, oil wells, mines, factories and telecoms) and their subsequent denationalization or transfer to US and European multinational corporations (MNCs).

The US and EU took over these public enterprises at exceptionally favorable prices and terms, which led to the massive transfer of profits, interest and ‘rent’ payments to the MNCs and provided them with extensive leverage over the entire financial/credit-system and access to local savings in the Latin American countries.

On the political level, the incumbent regimes embraced and promoted the US sponsored free market ideology known as “neo-liberalism” and backed US diplomatic and political intervention in the region as well as overseas.

The plunder of public treasuries and private savings by the MNCs and the resulting concentration of wealth and political power polarized society and precipitated major political economic crises. This led to popular upheavals throughout most of the region during the period from 2000-2004. Latin America witnessed the ousting of several US client regimes, serious widespread questioning of the free market ideology and a growing potential for radical structural changes.

As a consequence of the new correlation of forces, US political power declined and its influence was largely confined to political and economic elites at the margins of governance and under political siege from mobilized movements and disaffected electorates.

The ‘third period’ reflected ‘hybrid regimes’, which spoke to the populist demands and critiques of ‘neo-liberalism’ (empire-centered economic structures and policies) without actually reversing any of the unpopular structural/property legacies imposed by the earlier client regimes. The rise and consolidation of a wide range of highly differentiated ‘center-left regimes’ benefited from world economic conditions, especially high commodity prices, which facilitated social welfare programs and economic recovery as well as the relative ‘decline’ of US political power. This decline was intensified by the US involvement in a series of prolonged wars in the Middle East and South Asia and its ‘global war on terror’.

The ‘third period’ featured an increase in the relative autonomy of Latin America aided by huge windfall profits from exceptional prices and expanding markets in Asia, and from the regional political-economic initiatives of Venezuela’s Chavez government.

The end of the primary commodity boom and the emergence of a world-wide depression mark the beginning of the fourth period. Two contradictory phenomena impacted on US-Latin American relations. Because the US was the epicenter of the world economic crisis and its financial and investment institutions turned insolvent, finance and investment fled or were repatriated, weakening the US presence in Latin America and its economic leverage in a region with huge foreign reserves. Secondly, the over-extension of US military forces in other regions (Middle East/Asia/Eastern Europe) lessened its capacity for military intervention in Latin America. While developments in the world-economic and military situation opened opportunities to exercise greater Latin American autonomy, the decline of export markets, the drying up of credit markets and foreign capital inflows exposed the vulnerability of the ‘center-left’ regimes with their dependency on ‘export strategies’. The contradictory features of the ‘fourth period’ shaped the framework for contemporary US-Latin American relations and define some of the key issues facing Latin American rulers and the Obama regime.

Rising Militarism, Financial Protectionism and Declining Trade

The policies of the Obama regime toward Latin America are negatively framed by its three top policy priorities. The Obama regime’s foreign policy builds and expands the military-driven empire building of his predecessors. Contrary to the hopes and expectations of many of his progressive and leftist advocates of peace, Obama has staffed his regime with committed militarists, Zionists and Cold Warriors.

The major difference between Obama and Bush’s policy is the diplomatic language, which accompanies empire building and the scope and depth of military activity. Obama has adopted a rhetoric of ‘reconciliation,’ ‘negotiation’ and ‘change’ as opposed to Bush’s overtly bellicose rhetoric of confrontation, even as Obama has accelerated and extended military activities beyond the Bush regime.

A systematic analysis of the Obama regime’s policies reveals the overriding emphasis on projecting military power as the main instrument for sustaining the empire throughout the world.

South Asia

The Obama regime has increased US military forces in Afghanistan by over 40% — by 21,000 troops added to the current 38,000 — and increased financing for doubling the size of the Afghan mercenary army and police to over 200,000. Washington has extended the field of warfare in Pakistan, escalated its bombing attacks in the Swat Valley on a daily basis and increased cross-border commando operations. The Obama regime has formally extended the US war-zone deeper into Pakistan territory and extended its reach into Pakistan intelligence institutions.

Despite Obama’s intense pressure on the European Union and its allies and clients around the world, few countries have pledged combat forces in support of Obama’s military strategy. Just as during the Bush era, Obama unilaterally pronounces a major military escalation and then expects his allies to follow. The Obama military and intelligence apparatus has moved even more intrusively into Pakistani institutions with the clear intent to purge nationalist officers and select officials who will more aggressively repress the communities, organizations and leaders opposed to US intervention in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Iraq

The contrast between Obama’s diplomatic rhetoric of military withdrawal and military escalation is most blatant in the case of Iraq. The Obama regime has extended the time frame of US military occupation and increased funding for permanent military bases and related infrastructure. His military strategy envisions a massive mercenary Iraqi army and police force to control the population and repress any nationalist resistance. Obama will double the number of Iraqi mercenaries spread throughout the country under the Pentagon’s command.

Iran

The most striking policy adopted by the Obama regime toward Iran is his adding new and even harsher sanctions to the existing economic embargo. Obama continues to threaten Iran with a pre-emptive military assault in line with the contingency war plans developed by top Pentagon officials held over from the Bush regime. In pursuit of this saber-rattling posture, Obama appointed two of the most bellicose Israeli-American ideologues, includng Dennis Ross, as chief emissary to Iran and Stuart Levey to the Treasury in charge of imposing economic sanctions. Washington is making a major diplomatic effort to isolate Iran, through negotiations with Syria, Russia and China. In the face of these ‘facts on the ground’ Obama’s public rhetoric about offering Iran a ‘new policy,’ is blatant propaganda stunt. The massive US air and naval armada off the coast of Iran continues to threaten Teheran with a blockade or even massive air and naval strikes. The Obama regime continues to fund and train terrorist groups to infiltrate Iran from their bases in Iraq and Pakistan and to attack Iranian government facilities and officials. Israeli military threats to strike Iran are made more probable with the Obama regime’s transfer of new military technology, including the most advanced anti-missile system and ‘bunker-buster’ bombs designed to destroy underground Iranian government facilities.

Palestine/South Lebanon/Syria

The Obama regime’s military policy is clearly evidenced in its unconditional backing of Israel’s murderous military assault on Gaza, its selective assassination of Palestinian activists in the West Bank and its threats against Hezbollah.

The Obama regime, together with both houses of Congress, has backed every Israeli act of war– including its brutal economic blockade of Gaza and the systematic eviction of Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Obama administration is deeply infested with prominent pro-Israel Zionists at all levels precluding any change in Washington’s robust military ties even with the far right militarist Netanyahu-Lieberman regime.

East Africa

Obama’s regime continues to pursue a confrontational policy toward Muslim Sudan by funding the armed separatists in South Darfur and by a recently reported air attack on a Sudanese military convoy. In the face of its failed military intervention in Somalia by its Ethiopian proxy, Washington has opted for a new Somali client coalition backed by African mercenaries from Uganda.

Russia/Eastern Europe

Under Obama, the provocative military encirclement of Russia continues via the recruitment of new client NATO ‘members’ among the former Soviet Republics and the building of bases on the very frontiers of Russia. Obama combines a double discourse of diplomatic conciliation while building new military bases, missile sites and advanced radar stations from Poland southward toward Ukraine and Georgia. Washington’s ‘diplomatic overtures’ to Russia are driven by its logistical needs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and especially its war preparations toward Iran. The Obama regime is demanding that Russia provide logistical support for the US/NATO Afghan-Pakistan war and occupation while demanding Russia cancel its sale of advanced missiles as well as its nuclear power plant contract agreement with Iran in exchange for US ‘good will’…

China

Although the Obama regime is acutely aware of its dependence on China’s continued financing of the US economic deficits, it has nevertheless engaged in a high risk naval confrontation in China’s off shore economic zones. Recent Pentagon reports on Chinese military preparedness are laced with lurid Cold War rhetoric designed to inflate China’s ‘threat’ to US dominance in Asia and its ‘lack of transparency’. Once again, the Obama regime presents the double discourse of friendly diplomacy and aggressive militarist policies.

China faces a US military encirclement along an arc of US bases from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, to South Korea, as well as a new military doctrine labeling China a ‘threat’ to be ‘contained’ in Asia.

Obama’s Latin American Policy

To decipher the real content of the Obama regime’s policy to Latin America one needs to look at the foreign policy priorities, the allocations of financial resources and public policy commitments and ignore its inconsequential diplomatic rhetoric. The first major pronouncement, in line with its global military policies, was to militarize the US-Mexican frontier, allocating nearly one-half billion dollars in military and related aid to the right wing Calderon regime. The entire focus of White House policy toward the Mexican and Colombian regimes over the problem of narcotics and narco-violence is the military ignoring its socio-economic structural roots:

Millions of young Mexican peasant and small farmers driven into bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty by the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA), created a large pool of recruits for the narco traffickers.

The expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrant workers from the US and the new militarized borders has closed off a major escape for Mexican peasants fleeing destitution and crime. In contrast to the formation of the European Union, which provided tens or billions to the less competitive countries, like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Poland, entering the European Union, the US has provided Mexico with no compensatory funds to upgrade its productive competitiveness and provide needed employment for its people.

The highly militarized Colombian regime, notorious for its violation of human rights, is currently the biggest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. Under Plan Colombia, the US financed counter-insurgency program, Bogota has received over 5 billion dollars, the most advanced military technology and thousands of American military advisers and sub-contracted mercenaries. The Obama’s support for the right-wing Colombian regime is his response to the emergence of democratically elected populist and radical governments in Ecuador and Venezuela.

Obama’s policies toward Latin America are driven by his extension of the military defense/priorities of the Bush Administration, including the economic embargo of Cuba and its virulent hostility toward Venezuelan nationalism. There are no new economic initiatives. Beyond the rhetorical support for free trade, Obama upholds past quotas and tariffs on more competitive imports from Brazil, even adding new protectionist measures against Mexican trucks and truck drivers.

Obama’s relentless pursuit of military-driven empire building while in the midst of an ongoing and deepening domestic economic depression forms the basis for understanding Washington’s contemporary relation with Latin America today. His regime’s military approach to Latin America is reflected in his inability or unwillingness to allocate economic resources and underscores his concern to sustain two major US clients, Colombia and Mexico through military aid programs. Obama’s limited interest and sparse commitment of economic resources to Latin America reflects the very low foreign policy priority it has in the current White House. Latin America is a fifth level priority after the US domestic economic depression, the Middle East and South Asian wars, coordinating economic policies with the European Union and formulating economic strategies and military relations with Russia and China. With these priorities, the Obama regime has little time, interest, or programmatic offerings to help Latin America cope with the onset of the economic recession.

At the most basic level the Obama regime is following a three-fold strategy of (1) retaining support from rightist regimes (Colombia, Mexico and Peru); (2) increasing influence on ‘centrist regimes’ (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay); and (3) isolating and weakening leftists and populist governments (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua).

What is most striking about the supposedly “progressive” Obama regime’s policy for Latin America are the continuities with the previous reactionary Bush administration in almost all strategic areas. These include:

   1. Latin America’s very low priority in US global policy;
   2. The US emphasis on military (“security”) drug enforcement collaboration over any long term socio-economic poverty alleviation and drug addiction treatment programs;
   3. Its close collaboration with the most rightwing regimes in the region (Mexico and Colombia);
   4. The continuation of the US economic embargo of Cuba, despite the loss of its last two Latin American backers;
   5. Obama’s double discourse of talking free markets while practicing protectionism;
   6. The US financing and strengthening the role of the IMF as an instrument of imperial expansion;
   7. The US policy of driving a wedge between ‘centrist regimes’ (Lula in Brazil, Fernandez in Argentina, Vasquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile) and ‘left and center-left nationalist regimes’, (Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador and Ortega in Nicaragua) and
   8. Its support for separatist regional elites’ actions to destabilize center-left governments operating from their traditional far right-wing bases in Sta Cruz (Bolivia), Guayaqul (Ecuador) and Maracaibo (Venezuela).

In other words the Obama regime has embraced overall the strategic agenda of the Bush Administration essentially intact, while making several secondary changes having to do with adaptations based on the decline of US power. In addition, Obama has facilitated a few major negative changes, which go further than the Bush administration in harming Latin America’s financial and trading position. While reiterating the anachronistic demands for Cuba to convert to capitalism (dubbed a “democratic transition”) as a condition for ending the US embargo, Obama has slightly eased travel restrictions for US-based Cuban families to visit relatives in Cuba and send them money. The State Department relies less on confrontational diplomatic language and has made overt gestures to centrist regimes, including White House meetings with Lula Da Silva (March 2009) and Vice President Biden’s attendance at a meeting with centrist Presidents (March 27-28, 2009) in Chile. Obama’s resort to “soft power”, which is not backed by any new economic initiatives and which continues the basic policies of his predecessor has not gained him new allies.

However, there is one set of ‘changes’ resulting directly and indirectly from the US depression and Obama’s gigantic deficit financing, which has a very negative impact on Latin America’s economic recovery. The Obama regime is absorbing most of the Hemisphere’s credit to aid the financial bailout. This policy makes it difficult for Latin American exporters to finance their sales. Moreover, the Obama regime’s demands on the financial sector to expand their capital reserves and to direct their lending to the American domestic market has led banks to repatriate capital from their Latin American subsidiaries at the expense of Latin American borrowers — extending and deepening the recession in Latin America.

The Obama regime’s diplomatic and linguistic changes and affirmation of free trade have little substance: the White House continues the double discourse of talking up “free trade” while introducing a new and more virulent financial protectionism. In addition to the twenty billion dollar subsidies to agricultural exporters, the Democrats have pushed the “Buy American” provisions in Federal procurement policy and multi billion dollar subsidies to the auto industry.

Latin America faces a rising tide of US protectionism as the Obama regime reacts to the domestic economic depression by forcing Latin America to seek new trading partners, to protect their internal markets and to seek new sources for trade and credit.

Latin America Faces the World Crisis

Throughout Latin America, the economic depression is wrecking havoc on the economy, the labor market, trade, credit and investment. All the major countries in the region are headed toward negative growth, and experiencing double digit unemployment, rising levels of poverty and mass protests. In Brazil in late March and early April, a coalition of trade unions, urban social movements and the rural landless workers movement convoked large scale demonstrations — including participation from the union confederation, CUT, which is usually allied with Lula’s Workers Party.

Unemployment rates in Brazil have risen sharply, exceeding 10%, as massive lay-offs hit the auto and other metallurgical industries. In Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, strikes and protests have begun to spread in protest over rising unemployment, the increase of bankruptcies among exporters facing world-wide decline in demand and unable to secure financing.

The more industrialized Latin American countries, whose economies are more integrated into world markets and have followed an export growth strategy, are the ones most adversely affected by the world depression. This includes Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. In addition, countries dependent on overseas remittances and tourism, like Ecuador, the Central American and Caribbean countries and even Mexico, with their ‘open’ economies, are badly hit by world recession.

While the US financial collapse did not have a major and immediate impact on Latin America- largely because the earlier financial crashes in Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile led their governments to impose limits on speculation — the indirect results of the US crash, especially with regard to the credit freeze and the decline of world trade, has brought down productive sectors across the board. By mid-2009, manufacturing, mining, services and agriculture, in the private and public sector were firmly in the grip of a recession.

The vulnerability of Latin America to the world crises is a direct result of the structure of production and the development strategies adopted the region. Following the ‘neo-liberal’ or empire-centered ‘restructuring’ of the economies which took place between the mid-1970s through the 1990s, the economic profile of Latin America was characterized by a weak state sector due to privatization of all key productive sectors. The de-nationalization of strategic financial, credit, trading and mining sectors increased vulnerability as did the highly concentrated income and property ownership held mainly by small foreign and domestic elite. These characteristics were further exacerbated by the primary commodity boom between early 2003 until the middle of 2008. The regimes’ further shift toward an export strategy relying on primary products set the stage for a crash. As a result of its economic structure Latin America was extremely vulnerable to the decision taken by US and EU policy makers in charge of key economic sectors. De-nationalization denied the state the necessary levers to meet the crisis by reversing the direction of the economy.

Structural changes imposed by the IMF/World Bank and its domestic ‘neo-liberal’ ruling class partners ‘opened’ the countries to the full blast of the world depression while dismantling the very state institutions which could have protected the economy or at least avoided the worst effects of the crisis.

Privatization led to the concentration of income, lessened local demand and heightened dependence on export markets while depriving the state of levers to control investment and savings, which could counteract the decline of overseas inflows of capital and the collapse of its overseas markets.

Denationalization facilitated the outflow of capital especially in the financial sector, deepened the credit crises and adversely affected the balance of payments. Foreign ownership made Latin American countries subject to strategic economic decisions made by overseas economic elites looking at the costs and benefits to their economic empires. For example, in Brazil the closing of US-owned auto factories and the mass firings of workers are based on ‘global market’ cost calculations, totally divorced from the needs of the Brazilian labor market.

The ‘export strategy’ was dependent on the state subsidizing the expansion of agro-business plantations producing staples for export markets. This came at the expense of small farmers, landless peasants and rural workers, weakening the domestic market as an alternative to a collapsing overseas markets, increasing dependence on food imports and undermining food security.

Export strategies depend on holding down labor costs, wages and salaries, thus weakening domestic demand and making employment dependent on the fluctuations of overseas demand. Specialized production in a vast complex international division of labor is central to the multinational corporation. This has dramatically reduced the national diversification of industry and integral manufacturing where all components of a product are produced within a single geographic region. Under the current division of labor, a Brazilian manufacturer of car brakes is totally dependent on external demand determined by the MNC. The strategic disadvantages of this ‘specialization’ in a global capitalist chain of production have become strikingly evident in this depression.

Despite these deep structural weaknesses, inherited from previous regimes, the current center-left regimes in Latin American have not moved toward any structural changes to decrease their economic vulnerabilities, with the partial exception of Chavez’s Venezuela.

The March 2009 summit of self-styled ‘third way’ regimes (plus the Obama-Biden and British Labor governments) met in Santiago, Chile where they studiously avoided even mentioning the flawed internal structures which have brought on the economic crises and promise to deepen it.

The consensus proposals of the “third way” regimes repeated anachronistic appeals for greater capital flows divorced from reality of the current crises. They called on the US, EU and Japan to resurrect collapsing markets and to promote trade. Specifically the Santiago meeting called for increased funding for the Inter American Development Bank (IDB, BID in Spanish), and encouraged the G20 leaders to promote stimulus packages and to pledge against protectionism. They called on Latin American regimes to increase spending and liquidity, to lower interest rates and to prop up, financial institutions and promote exporters.

The center-left regimes meeting in Santiago made no mention of plans to increase domestic demand through intervention in the labor market by preventing industrialists from firing workers. They did not mention increasing the minimum wage. They avoided any discussion on increasing demand in the rural areas through income generating agrarian reforms. They did not consider establishing publicly funded import substitution industrialization, which could generate employment for workers dismissed from export sectors.

In the face of rising food prices, no provisions were proposed to subsidize low income families, the unemployed, children and pensioners on fixed income. The center-left regimes’ proposals demonstrated high structural rigidity and their incapacity to break with failed strategies tied to the powerful agro-mineral export ruling class. Instead their proposals reaffirm their dependence on the ‘expansionary’ stimulus programs of the ruling classes in the US and Europe. Their repeated calls for ‘free trade’ and appeals to avoid ‘protectionism’ fell on deaf ears as all the imperial countries follow a dual policy of promoting free trade for their dynamic overseas multinationals and protectionism for their financial and troubled manufacturing sectors at home.

While eschewing any structural domestic changes that would favor unemployed workers, peasants, public employees and small businesses, they persist in following policies favoring the bankers, export elites and multi-national corporations. The main economic focus of Latin America’s center-left regimes is not internal reform; it is the pursuit of new overseas markets and investors.

In early April, Latin American leaders and their business elite met with their Arab counterparts in Qatar to expand investments and trade through joint ventures. Similar missions to China, Russia and Japan have led to investments almost exclusively in capital intensive extractive industries (petroleum and minerals) and mechanized export agriculture. Inter-regional trade via MERCOSUR has been highly asymmetrical as evidenced by Argentina’s $4 billion dollar trade deficit with Brazil. The center-left is structurally incapable of recognizing that the world depression has in large part undermined the ‘export strategy’; that the elites cannot overcome their internal contradictions and class constraints by ‘exporting’ their way to economic recovery. The search for new markets and investors in Asia and Middle East may provide a limited boost to the export enclaves but they will have little or no impact on the industry, service and related sectors, which employ the mass of workers and employees. Moreover, the Middle East and Asian countries are in serious crises as trade (both imports and exports), manufacturing and employment decline. Moreover, China has opted for a vast economic stimulus plan based on increasing domestic demand. Asia can provide Latin American regimes with little relief from the crises.

The one country absent from the Santiago meeting of the center-left regimes was Venezuela, in part because President Chavez has pursued an alternative economic strategy to the world depression.

Chavez strategy includes the nationalization of key economic sectors like and oil and gas, which increases state revenue; protection of strategic social sectors/food processing and distribution sectors; and the expansion of agrarian reform to increase local production of food. The government has a program of subsidized food prices, a 20% increase in the minimum wage to cushion the effects of inflation and public spending on labor intensive infrastructure projects which has resulted in a drop in unemployment with the creation of 280,000 new jobs in Jan-Feb 2009.

Chavez is pursuing a radical Keynesian program, which depends on large scale public investments to expand the domestic market and social subsidies targeting a large swath of the lower classes. His state investment policy relies on the ‘cooperation’ of the still-dominant private sector, especially finance, construction, agro-mining and manufacturing, either via financial incentives and state contracts or through threats of intervention or nationalization.

Chavez’ domestic structural reforms are complemented by his promotion of regional political-economic pacts, like PETROCARIBE and ALBA, with Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and several Caribbean and Central American states. He is counting on the growing financial and investment agreements with China, Middle East, especially Iran, and Russia, particularly in joint ventures in the petroleum and mining sectors.

While Chavez’ strategy represents a clear break with and alternative to the center-left ‘export-elite’ centered approach, it still confronts a series of serious contradictions. Venezuela is over-dependent on a single export (petroleum) for 75% of its foreign exchange earnings and a single market (the US). Secondly it is rapidly depleting its foreign reserves. Thirdly, its efforts to promote regional integration have not prospered as the principle countries in Latin America look toward the G20 for salvation. State intervention and nationalization have increased national leverage over the economy but has not confronted the mal-distribution of income, property and power. As a result, a wave of worker/employee strikes in education, mining, smelting and manufacturing have hit the economy.

Equally serious a 30% rate of inflation has eroded buying power for those with fixed incomes and salaries undermining recent increases in the minimum wage. Increases in the price of foodstuffs, over 90% of which are imported, adversely affects the balance of payments. The immediate future could pose a threat to the social stability of the Venezuela.

Latin America and the Deepening Depression

The participation of several major Latin American countries in the G20 meeting in London, April 2, 2009, and the subsequent agreements reveal the political bankruptcy of the current political leadership. The declaration of a major new “stimulus” package was belied by the fact that most of the funds cited ($1.1 trillion dollars) were already allocated before the meeting and would have no effect. The actual amount of ‘new money’ was only a “fraction” ($250 billion dollars) and mostly geared to rescuing the financial sector.

The G20 solemn agreement to oppose protectionist legislation was belied by an OECD report that 17 of the 20 countries have recently adopted measures protecting local industries and restricting overseas financing. The biggest winner at the G20 was the IMF, which was promised an additional $500 billion dollars to provide credit lines and financing. Given the US-EU dominance of the IMF and given its past history of imposing restrictive conditions favoring the imperial countries, the strengthening of the IMF poses a major obstacle to any progressive Latin American recovery. The high expectations of Latin America’s center/left and rightist regimes that G20 would provide a meaningful stimulus were dashed.

On the left, Fidel Castro and like-minded allies in Latin America cite China as an alternative market and investment partner. Yet China’s overseas investments are almost always directed to the extractive export sectors (minerals, petrol) and, to a lesser degree, agriculture. As a result, Chinese investment in Latin America has created few jobs while favoring sectors that pollute the environment. Latin America’s export profile with China is reduced to a primary goods monoculture, highly vulnerable to the fluctuations of world prices. Moreover, China’s trade agreements with Latin America include the import of Chinese manufactured good produced by non-union, super-exploited workers which undermines any recovery of Latin America’s manufacturing sector.

Latin American leaders, who look to China to pull them out of the depression, are committed to a neo-colonial style recovery based on a raw material export model. Likewise, the turn to Russia as a new market and stimulus is a highly dubious proposition, given Russia’s petrol-gas dependent economy, its lack of competitive industries and above all its deepening depression with an economic decline of over 7% for 2009.

The Latin American leaders’ search for a new stimulus package from the US and EU or new trade alternatives with China and Russia are desperate efforts to save the failing elite export model. The idea promoted by Brazil that since the imperial countries caused the world depression, they should provide the solution, is a non-sequitor, especially in light of their incapacity to stimulate their own economies. The US promotion of the IMF is directed toward undermining any progressive Latin American policies and independent regimes, and not helping them recover from the crisis.

Conclusion

Because of the Obama regime’s profound and costly commitment to military-driven empire building and the multi- trillion dollar refinancing of its banking sector (while backing credit-financing protectionism), Latin America’s ruling classes cannot expect any “stimulus package” from US.

The deep political divisions between the US and Latin America (and between the classes within Latin America), divergent national and class strategies preclude any ‘regional strategy’. Even among the left nationalist regimes, apart from some limited complementary initiatives among the ALBA countries, no regional plan exists. In this regard it is a serious mistake to write or speak about a “Latin American” problem, or initiative. What we can observe today is a generalized breakdown of the export-driven model and divergent social responses, between income protecting policies of Venezuela and export subsidy policies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Peru and Colombia. Throughout the recession, these center-left regimes have demonstrated a high degree of structural rigidity, making no effort to deepen and expand the domestic market and public investment, let alone nationalize bankrupt enterprises. The crisis highlights the process of de-globalization and the increasing importance of the nation state.

The deepening economic crisis adversely affects incumbent regimes, whether they are center-left or right, and strengthens their opposition. In Argentina the right and far-right have dominated the streets, with a growing power base in the ‘interior’ among the Argentine agrarian elite and the middle class in Buenos Aires. The progressive trade union, CTA, which has organized strikes and protests, is not connected with any new left alternative political organization.

Brazil has witnessed similar protests by social movements and trade unions against rising unemployment of over 10% and the decline in export-oriented industries. But the principle political beneficiary of the declining popularity of Lula’s self-styled “Worker’s Party” is the Right.

In contrast, the center-left will benefit where rightist regimes are currently in power — namely Mexico, Colombia and Peru. But as is the case elsewhere, the mass movements lack an organized political response to a collapsing capitalism.

Moreover neither Cuba nor Venezuela offers a ‘model’ for the rest of Latin America. The former is highly dependent on a vulnerable tourist economy while the latter is a petrol economy. Given the systemic collapse of capitalism, these countries will need to move beyond ‘piecemeal reforms’ (such as Chavez food subsidies) and piecemeal nationalizations and toward the socialization of the financial, trade and manufacturing sectors.

Mass protests, general strikes, and other forms of social unrest are beginning to manifest themselves throughout the continent. No doubt the US will intensify its support for rightist movements in opposition and its existing rightist clients in power. US ‘hegemony’ over the Latin American elite is still strong even as it is virtually non-existent among the mass organizations in civil society. Given the overall militarist-protectionist posture of the Obama regime, we can expect intervention in the form of covert operations as class struggle escalates and moves toward a socialist transformation.

Although the text is occasionally uneven, with most of the testimony coming out of Iraq, Israel and Palestine, there is a consistency to the stories here. Some mothers express an inconsolable anger while others seem to have opted for an almost zen-like acceptance of their children’s deaths in the world’s battles. The consistency referred to is not in how they deal with their children’s deaths, but in their common desire that no other mothers suffer like they have. The most evocative stories come from Iraq and Palestine, in part because Galleymore spent the most time in those two broken nations, but perhaps also because the perpetrators of the death in those places are so close to Galleymore’s own life story. Indeed, her son served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact was not only the motivation for Galleymore’s visit to Iraq and other nations in the Middle East, but was also a motivation to write this book. It is part of her attempt to understand not only what her nation and its ally Israel have done to their chosen enemies that spurred this project but also to understand what compelled her son to join the US military.

Galleymore addresses this very issue in the book’s section on the United States. To be honest, this part of the text drew the least sympathy from this reader. Much of what is written here is difficult to sympathize with. We read the letters of a soldier describing his unit’s interactions with the Iraqi people–indiscriminate killing and fear accompanied by a growing hatred of the mission and the people he was told he was sent to liberate. More stories of poorly equipped US troops going into battles they should never have fought because they should never have been in Iraq. Underlying it all is a failure to understand that there is no lasting glory in their mission beyond the individual acts performed on that battlefield where they don’t belong. After these tales of the hardships of the occupiers, Galleymore asks the question she was asked by some of her interviewees in those nations under the US (or its ally Israel) military’s boot. How can American mothers allow their children to join in this endeavor of conquering and occupation? Why don’t the mothers of US children considering the military just tell them “no?”

In response, Galleymore considers the cultural assumptions that create the dynamic whereby young Americans join the military despite their mothers’ objections. In the United States, writes Galleymore, 18-year-olds can “make legally binding choices independent of parents and family, including the choice to enlist in the military.” Many parents go along with this choice, believing that the military will somehow teach their child discipline. It may very well do that, writes Galleymore, but it also teaches those children to kill. This is what most Americans refuse to openly acknowledge: that they have allowed their child to learn how to kill other humans. In more collectivist cultures like many of those in the Middle East and Central Asia, argues the author, where family, clan, and parental respect are paramount, it is extremely unlikely that a son would enlist without permission from the head of the family.

Then again, here in the United States, the military is everywhere–schools, television, video games. Our culture is permeated with the military’s presence. Boys and girls as young as eleven go to summer camps sponsored by the US Army. Recruiters roam the halls of many high schools and shopping malls looking for future soldiers and marines. Malls lend shop space to military recruiters for a weekend geared toward elementary and middle school age children that includes all the free video games kids want to play. All they need to provide the recruiters on site is their name and social security number. A few months later the phone calls, text messages and emails began coming, encouraging the youngster to consider joining the military. If these recruiters were working for a gang besides the military, they would be chased out of town and condemned for the predators they are.

The United States has the mother of two young girls living in the White House now. From all appearances Michelle Obama seems to be a wonderful mom. One wonders what she would tell a military recruiter if they called her home looking for Malia or sent her oldest daughter an email extolling the virtues of enlisting in the military. Hopefully, she would be appalled at the sheer audacity of a recruiter attempting to influence a child. Yet, this is what the military does. Without shame. Of course, if the United States was not so insistent on maintaining and expanding its reach via the sword, then perhaps the military wouldn’t feel compelled to kidnap the minds of middle-schoolers. One way to change (and perhaps the only way) the drive for empire Washington and Wall Street have locked this nation into is by resisting that drive. A good place to start is by making the mothers of those children who fight Washington’s wars aware of the consequences of their inaction is. A good place to start this awareness is at the top. So, let me suggest that when you finish reading Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak About War & Terror you mail your copy to Michelle Obama at the White House. Perhaps she’ll take the time to read it.

Although the recently departed Bush administration made the approach described above into a diplomatic art form that drew more from television wrestling than any treatise on statecraft, they did not invent this approach. Nor will they be the last US administration to utilize it. Already, Obama’s Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has made comments regarding Iran that are equivalent to any threat made under George Bush’s watch. Furthermore, the men and women doing Obama’s work in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world are following the same trail already worn down by Bush’s people. Despite the hopes of millions who voted for Barack Obama, very little seems to have changed in the way Washington deals with its enemies. Into this impasse comes commentator and Mideast scholar Juan Cole and his new book titled Engaging the Muslim World.

Nothing less than a call to use some common sense in dealing with that part of the world Washington defines as the Muslim World, Cole takes a sweeping look at the history of the region from Egypt to Iran; from Pakistan to Gaza; and asks what it is that causes Washington to deal with the peoples of these nations in a manner often quite different from the manner in which it deals with other nations. Cole ends each chapter with a brief series of suggestions as to how Washington might better approach the problems it believes exists with regard to the issues of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and the various Islamic popular movements that have all recently been placed on Washington’s enemies list. He asks questions that need to be asked yet seem to not even be considered. Why are US troops still in Iraq? Why does a nation (the US) that has the notion of religious freedom encoded into its constitution insist on making the religious beliefs of these nations a cause for enmity? If Washington won’t negotiate with its enemies, than who will it negotiate with? If Tel Aviv and Washington support democracy, why do they refuse to acknowledge the democratic victory of Hamas?

Despite bringing up these issues, the real strength of Cole’s book is in the history he provides. Written for a western audience, the history surveyed here covers the genesis of the Islamist movements, their interaction with governments both local and internationally, yet it does not dwell on the religious aspects of those movements. instead, it discusses the political and economic role these movements have played and continue to play in the overall history of the nations involved. The anti-imperialist nature of the movements is discussed as is their popularity among the Muslim world precisely for their anti-imperialism. Underlying the historical narrative herein is a sincere and usually successful discussion of the complexities involved in that history. Unlike the dichotomous version of the world presented by the Bush administration and its allies, where Washington leads the good guys against the bad guys of Islam, Cole’s nuanced presentation of the history and current situation of US dealings with the Muslim world provide the reader with a clearer understanding of not only what is at stake, but also what is really going on. His perspective removes the often overwrought fears that have predominated mainstream US discourse on the subject at hand.

If we are to have a future world where peace prevails, it will require Washington and its allied governments to coexist with the the part of the world we know as the “Muslim world.” The approach that demanded its subjugation to Washington’s whims has been shown to be bankrupt. To achieve coexistence, one must have understanding. Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World is the ideal primer.

Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, even in what its officials were calling the “final act,” followed a blueprint laid down during the Lebanon war more than two years ago.

Then, Israel destroyed much of Lebanon’s infrastructure in a month of intensive air strikes. Even in the war’s last few hours, as a ceasefire was being finalized, Israel fired more than a million cluster bombs over south Lebanon, apparently in the hope that the area could be made as uninhabitable as possible.

Similarly, Israel’s destruction of Gaza continued with unrelenting vigor to the very last moment, even though according to reports in the Israeli media the air force exhausted what it called its “bank of Hamas targets” in the first few days of fighting.

The military sidestepped the problem by widening its definition of Hamas-affiliated buildings. Or as one senior official explained: “There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel.”

That included mosques, universities, most government buildings, the courts, 25 schools, 20 ambulances and several hospitals, as well as bridges, roads, 10 electricity generating stations, sewage lines, and 1,500 factories, workshops and shops.

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah estimate the damage so far at $1.9 billion, pointing out that at least 21,000 residential apartment buildings need repairing or rebuilding, forcing 100,000 Palestinians into refugeedom once again. In addition, 80 per cent of all agricultural infrastructure and crops were destroyed. The PA has described its estimate as “conservative”.

None of this will be regretted by Israel. In fact the general devastation, far from being unfortunate collateral damage, has been the offensive’s unstated goal. Israel has sought the political, as well as military, emasculation of Hamas through the widespread destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and economy.

This is known as the “Dahiya Doctrine,” named after a suburb of Beirut that was almost leveled during Israel’s attack on Lebanon in summer 2006. The doctrine was encapsulated in a phrase used by Dan Halutz, Israel’s chief of staff, at the time. He said Lebanon’s bombardment would “turn back the clock 20 years.”

The commanding officer in Israel’s south, Yoav Galant, echoed those sentiments on the Gaza offensive’s first day: the aim, he said, was to “send Gaza decades into the past.”

Beyond these soundbites, Gadi Eisenkot, the head of Israel’s northern command, clarified in October the practical aspects of the strategy: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan.”

In the interview, Gen Eisenkot was discussing the next round of hostilities with Hizbollah. However, the doctrine was intended for use in Gaza, too.

Gabriel Siboni, a colonel in the reserves, set out the new “security concept” in an article published by Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies two months before the assault on Gaza. Conventional military strategies for waging war against states and armies, he wrote, could not defeat sub-national resistance movements, such as Hizbollah and Hamas, which have deep roots in the local population.

The goal instead was to use “disproportionate force,” thereby “inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”

Col Siboni identified the chief target of Israel’s rampages as “decision makers and the power elite,” including “economic interests and the centres of civilian power that support the [enemy] organization.”

The best Israel could hope for against Hamas and Hizbollah, Col Siboni conceded, was a ceasefire on improved terms for Israel and delaying the next confrontation by leaving “the enemy floundering in expensive, long-term processes of reconstruction.”

In the case of Gaza’s lengthy reconstruction, however, Israel says it hopes not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon. Then, Hizbollah, aided by Iranian funds, further bolstered its reputation among the local population by quickly moving to finance the rebuilding of Lebanese homes destroyed by Israel.

According to the Israeli media, the foreign ministry has already assembled a task force for “the day after” to ensure neither Hamas nor Iran take the credit for Gaza’s reconstruction.

Israel wants all aid to be channeled either through the Palestinian Authority or international bodies. Sealing off Gaza, by preventing smuggling through tunnels under the border with Egypt, is an integral part of this strategy.

Much to Israel’s satisfaction, the rebuilding of Gaza is likely to be even slower than might have been expected.

Diplomats point out that, even if western aid flows to the Palestinian Authority, it will make little effect if Israel maintains the blockade, curbing imports of steel, cement and money.

And international donors are already reported to be tired of funding building projects in Gaza only to see them destroyed by Israel a short time later.

With more than a hint of exasperation, Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, summed up the general view of donors last week: “Shall we give once more for the construction of something which is being destroyed, re-constructed and destroyed?”

The Resistance is one project and the resistance movement is one movement and has one course, one destiny, one goal, despite its different parties, factions, believes, sects and intellectual and political trends…Resistance movements in this region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, complement one another and (Hezbollah and Hamas) are contiguous groups.

– Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah 7/18/08

In Lebanon, we, the Islamic Resistance, are ready and prepared to confront any Israeli stupidity. We are prepared to face any foolishness. We have the wisdom to act calmly and we will not be dragged to any act of which we are not convinced. But we will not accept becoming a target for anyone. Hezbollah’s level of readiness is greater than the enemy’s imagination.

– Mohammad Raad, leader of the Hezbollah’s block in the Lebanese Parliament 1/09/09

Beirut, Lebanon — “Where is my friend Hussein?,” this observer asked some of the guys yesterday at my favorite motorcycle repair shop in Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah area in Beirut, as I helped, with my bandaged arm, off load my motorbike. “Silver”, sad to report, was not at all in good shape. In fact Silver needed a front end alignment, a new headlight, two turn signals, a new tail light and a new front wheel guard and at least the cracked windshield taped, before we could head off again and add the more than 11,000 miles we have logged crisscrossing Lebanon together.

The problem was Beirut’s flash hailstorm on Sunday. Immediately upon entering Verdun street near the Dunes hotel, Silver, not being used to a surface road mixture of oil and ice, and having a van cut him off from the right, tried to maneuver and skidded on his side and this observer went tumbling (again!). This time against a hotel protective barrier as some army guys jumped out of the way then courteously helped me up with a friendly “Welcome in Lebanon.”

“Isn’t this about your third ‘divine accident’ this year?,” one of Hussein’s mechanics, Ali grinned, as payback for me telling him a Sunni joke the other day about Hezbollah’s string of “divine victories.”

Again, I asked why my friend Hussein was absent. No response.

If one wants his motorcycle fixed cheap, well and quickly, even the pro government-anti Hezbollah Sunni repair shops in the central Beirut area of Hamra neighborhoods will tell you it’s best to take it to Ghouberi. “Ghouberi” is code language for the Hezbollah area of Dahiyeh/Haret Hareik, where most macho Hamra guys fear to tread as they continue to smart over “the events of May,” when Shia Hezbollah and some of their allies in Shia Amal and the Christian National Syria Socialist Party stormed parts of Sunni West Beirut and locked it down tight for around 72 hours before handing it over to the Lebanese Army. It was all about sending a message to the US-Israeli backed government not to mess with Hezbollah’s communication system or with their guys at the Beirut airport.

Once again the Hezbollah shop that took care of Silver did a great job. The mechanics, mainly Hezbollah reservists with ‘day jobs,’ apply the same work ethic of thoroughness and skill to their bike work as they do defending Lebanon against Israeli attacks. Space only allows for one example. As I inquired about the prospects that Hezbollah would open a second front, I noticed that a mechanic and his Palestinian dropout helper (quitting school is the growing pattern these days in Lebanon’s Refugee camps due to economic and political pressure), one with a screwdriver and the other with a wrench, literally checked and tightened every nut or screw on the bike. Never in 20+ years of riding and crashing motorcycles in more than a dozen countries had I seen mechanics do that.

Pastries or Pistachios as Clues

“So where was Hussein?” I asked for the third time. “He not in Beirut,” one of the mechanics said.

I immediately understood.

There is quite a lot of code language used in Lebanon these days, and “He’s not in Beirut” in Hezbollah parlance means, “He’s been called up,” he’s off somewhere for a few weeks doing ‘training’ or he’s been posted with his 5-6 man unit.

While Hussein is “not in Beirut.” it’s likely no one among his family or friends will hear from him. He may spend days or weeks in a tree along the Blue Line electronically eavesdropping on Israeli soldiers or recording their movements and habits or any one of hundreds of preparatory tasks. Hussein will return as if he just completed his day off but will answer no questions that begin with where, what, why, who, when, are, can, do, etc. Quite likely he will look leaner, stronger, more serious than when he left and will parry inquires with a smile and a question about “what’s new with you,” etc.

One might gain some inkling where he has been from what he brings back as gifts for his pals. For example, if Hussein brings special pastries acquired only from a certain village, which he did last time for this observer, obviously he had been posted in the Bekaa Valley. If he returns with a bag of oranges perhaps he was down south. Iranian candies or Iran’s famous Pistachios? For sure he was, well, the dear reader gets the idea.

Today, the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah remains on full alert, in the 1/10/09 words of Lebanon’s Oppositions leader in Parliament, Mohammad Raad, “in case Israel does something stupid, we are ready.”

Some Hezbollah officials took note of what might be an Israeli record of some sort. They pointed out that whereas in the July 2006 War, Israel killed approximately 1,100 Lebanese civilians in 33 days of carpet, frenzied and indiscriminate bombing, in Gaza they have achieved the killing of approximately the same number of Palestinians, is about have the number of days. No doubt some kind of a lesson the Israeli military learned from their failure in the earlier conflict.

Many questions are being asked throughout Lebanon about whether the Hezbollah leadership will yield to growing pressure from all parts of Lebanon and within its ranks to force Israel to lift its destruction of Gaza? If so, are there ways it could be done without a igniting a sixth war in Lebanon?

Contemporary Wisdom in Lebanon

Every day brings more questions from Resistance observers inside and outside of Lebanon: when is Hezbollah going to deliver on all those speeches by Party leaders expressing Hezbollah’s ‘sacred commitment’ to the bloodstream issue for all Arabs and Muslims: the liberation of Palestine?

These days the Lebanese Resistance, led by Hezbollah is on Full Red Alert and there is a palpable sense of foreboding in many Hezbollah supporting neighborhoods.

In the bike shop, with its “town meeting” atmosphere, some Hezbollah members are more explicit.

“We can hit Dimona with hundreds of rockets on the first day, if we get the order,” the veteran Abass explains. “The Zionists are very lucky I do not have the authority or we would have joined the battle when the first bomb fell on Gaza. It is just a matter of when, not if, we join the Gazan Resisters.”

The largest of dozens of demonstrations in support of the Gaza Resistance Hamas have been organized by Hezbollah. Thousands of those in attendance at every demonstration bristle with anger along with hundreds of millions all over the World. In Lebanon, many, not only in the Palestinian camps and Hezbollah areas, but north and south ache to do something to help the trapped and dying Gazans.

Regarding the likelihood that Hezbollah will come to the military aid of Gaza, the local conventional wisdom, much of it likely wrong, includes:

* Hezbollah is still regrouping its base from the July 2006 Israeli aggression and rebuilding thousands of homes and businesses and doesn’t want them destroyed again.

* Hezbollah may not yet be prepared militarily.

* Hezbollah has not completed its redeployment to the Bekaa Valley and to the strategic mountain tops where the next war with Israel will be largely based. This includes towns such as Sajad near Al-Rihan Mountain, north of the Litani River with its clear view of all of South Lebanon and the upper Galilee of occupied Palestine, as well as part of the Golan and the Mediterranean coastline. The geographic location of Sajad between the Al-Zahrani and Litani Rivers give it strategic importance and links the South and the Bekaa. They need more time.

* The certain massive destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure of roads, bridges, schools, would turn the populace against it and undermine its great political progress since 2006.

* That Hezbollah, having recently consolidated its base and formed a political coalition with Christian and some Druze leaders wants time to see its alliances grow stronger and free of potential military and political “unintended results.”

* Hezbollah wants to win the currently scheduled June 9, 2009 elections, and being seen as sparking another massive destruction of Lebanon would give its rival parties plenty to beat it over the head with at the polls. Every time Israel issues a new threat against Lebanon and announces in advance that it intends to commit war crimes by destroying Lebanon, this helps Hezbollah’s rivals in the polls as they take to the airwaves and argue that Hezbollah wants another war and does not care about destroying Lebanon like last time. Or, as scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb observed last week, intense domestic pressures to disarm, and possible, more externally manufactured, locally-executed conspiracies hatched against it that could drag it into the kind of civil warfare that the movement found itself in during May 2008.

* Hezbollah does not want to risk losing the June 9 election and wants to keep its lead in the polls.

* Hezbollah is currently behind in the polls and needs peace in Lebanon in order to convince swing voters that it will be behave responsibly if the voters will allow it to govern.

* Hamas is assured of winning the war Gaza, given that Israel must win with its 1000 to 1 military advantage or it will be humiliated and, as Anthony Cordesman has pointed out, would likely in any case lose its deterrence position, likely for good.

* That the Israeli government and its supporters claim that Israel learned from their poor performance in July 2006 is wishful thinking and their performance to date strongly suggests Israel has learned nothing and will deliver to Hamas a silver platter with huge organizational and political gifts.

The “Varsity Squad” of Hezbollah has so trained the “Junior Varsity Squad” that there is no need to intervene unless Hamas is on the verge of total elimination which given its strong showing during the past 17 days appears very unlikely. As one Hezbollah reservist noted, “If Hamas survives to fire even one rocket into Israel after Israeli forces eventually withdraw from Gaza, the World will declare Hamas the winner.” Israel discovered Hezbollah expertise last weekend when it learned that the capabilities of Hamas are much more than they anticipated including its ability to strike Beer Sheba.

Based on conversations with several Hezbollah functionaries, Shia Hezbollah appears to have increasingly deep respect for Sunni Hamas. They share an ideology and a set of strategic goals that transcend their religious difference. Both were created as an alternative to failed Arab nationalist organizations in order to effectively confront the Zionist occupation. Hezbollah has been the primary role model, trainer, and “coach” of a “new” Hamas with apparent dramatic results.

Strategically, the fact that Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbollah cooperate well, despite differing interpretations of some of the Koran, and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohammad), leads some observers to believe that this display of Muslim unity dampens the effects of the fiery rhetoric of Egypt’s Mubarak and Jordan’s Abdullah, among others, who regularly raise the chicken-little alarm of an Iranian constructed “Shia crescent.”

Hezbollah’s “Parental Pride” in Hamas

When Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated last February, one of the major projects he had been working on for nearly two years was to teach Hamas the lessons Hezbollah learned during the 22-year Israeli occupation of much of Lebanon as well as the 2006 Israeli aggression against Lebanon. The current conflict in Gaza may indicate how well Hamas learned from “Hajj Radwan,” Moghinyeh’s nom de guerre.

It was Israel that killed Imad. One reason was that he was deeply involved in training Hamas with the Hezbollah model of Resistance. He is known to have been very proud of the Palestinians and stated shortly before his death to Party colleagues: “They (Hamas) are becoming a very good resistance force.” Some in Lebanon refer to Hamas as the JV (Junior Varsity) or “red shirts” as opposed to the Hezbollah “Varsity” or “blue shirts,” and “Hajj Radwan” is the coach of both. In another Report to the Party, he expressed his admiration for their ability reporting that, “they are proving day after day that they are powerful people capable of facing all challenges.”

During Mughinyeh’s scores of tutorials, Israel was tipped off by certain Palestinians who had met with Imad and who knew or suspected his real identity from “the old days” when Imad spent years with the PLO and was close to Arafat and his inner circle. Most people, even those who worked closely with him, did not know his true identity and he tried to keep it that way even avoiding his home village where half the residents are Mughinyehs. Yet, some who met with him remembered him and ultimately betrayed him.

Some, including this observer, theorize this is why Mughinyeh was killed, almost certainly with the help of Syrians in Israel’s employ since every individual allowed in the Damascus “special security zone” where the killing occurred was closely vetted, examined and then carefully watched. A “full report” on the assassination was claimed to have been made by the Syrian government, which promised to release it within a few days. In two weeks the report will be exactly one year past the promised release date and no one claims to have seen it.

Yet Hajj Radwan is said to have helped revamp Hamas’ military command and replaced certain elements. One subject Mughinyeh is said to have stressed to Hamas during such meetings was the importance of “the communications network as a strategic weapon,” which included Hamas keeping in direct battlefield contact with other Resistance groups fighting Israel, and advising Hamas on ways of fighting Israel using a number of different tactics and bases in locations in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, according to the authoritative Beirut daily Al Akbar.

One of his communications to superiors in Hezbollah is said to have reported: “The way the bottom of the earth was transformed in (areas) around the Strip and inside cities indicates that if determination and leadership was provided to them (the Palestinians), they would achieve what hasn’t been achieved before.”

Other lessons Mughinyeh offered Hamas, based on the lessons from 2006, included that each Hamas small unit of approximately five fighters should be fully equipped and must have a clear plan to fight Israeli soldiers and to wage a long war of attrition until Israel withdraws. Another included instruction on ways to stockpile weapons that would allow Hamas to have quick access to them even if Israel occupied many areas in the Gaza Strip. It is some of these pre-positioned weapons that special Israeli search units try to find in order to exhibit them for propaganda purposes.

How well Hamas has learned from Hezbollah’s experience remains to be seen. Meanwhile plenty of suspicions and speculation remain concerning exactly who killed Hezbollah’s much loved Imad Mughinyeh and why.

As Hezbollah has leveraged its 2006 victory, Hamas will likely do the same, with the losers again being the American–Israel axis, the current PA leadership, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The winners, in addition to Hamas, are once more Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Never in American history has one US administration delivered such a long and consistent string of political victories to its declared adversaries while assuring the eventual collapse of its most favored nation, and managing to turn most of the World, and its own country, against itself.

As I write, I am listening to an Israeli military spokesman telling an Al-Jazeera reporter that the reason for all of this bloodshed is Hamas. Hamas, he says, “is running a con game on the people of Gaza.” According to the bloody logic of Israel, Tel Aviv has no blame in the mass murder being perpetrated on the people of Gaza. This is despite the fact that Israeli weapons are what is killing the Palestinians. This is despite the fact that the bombs and rockets rained on the people of Gaza are considered legitimate weapons while the rockets launched by Hamas’ military wing are labeled weapons of terrorists. At the risk of redundancy, how can anyone genuinely believe this? How can anyone call the Israeli rockets that kill more civilians in one stroke than all the thousands of rockets fired into Israel anything but weapons of terror?

This is a war. It may be a very lopsided war, but it is a war. The longer it goes on, the more innocents will die. The longer it goes on, the more Palestinians will side with the resistance in all its forms, including Hamas. The longer it goes on, the likelihood that it could spread heightens. Israel most likely hopes it can end Hamas’ rule in Gaza and force Palestinians to acquiesce to the peace plans contrived in Tel Aviv and Washington. Hamas and its allies are probably hoping for a scenario where they bring the IDF to a stalemate, somewhat like the situation that occurred with Hezbollah during the summer of 2006. Speaking of Hezbollah, if Israel achieves its goals in Gaza, does it plan to revisit Lebanon in a sequel to that 2006 war? Would Israel open a second front on its northern border if Hezbollah began an effort to support the resistance in Gaza? On January 6th, 2009 the Lebanese media reported that the Israeli Air Force was intensifying its reconnaissance flights over southern Lebanon, an area considered to be a Hezbollah stronghold. In addition, Major General Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, told Israel’s cabinet that a response from Hezbollah to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza was a possibility. Hundreds of IDF reservists have been called up and sent to the Israeli-Lebanese border. On January 8th, AP reported that Hezbollah rockets had been fired into Israel from Lebanon and that Israel had returned fire. Hezbollah denied any involvement.

Despite the fact that the powder keg of the middle east is on fire once again, Tel Aviv has shown no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire. Indeed, it continues to ignite even more powder. This can only mean that they believe their forces can destroy the supply routes used by Hamas and other Palestinians and weaken the resistance to such a point that Tel Aviv can neutralize the Palestinian rulers in Gaza just like those in the West Bank. If this occurs there may no longer be war, but their peace will be one that insures another battle. The current talks Egypt is holding with representatives from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas seem to indicate this to be almost certain. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council continues to prove its subservience to Washington by refusing to demand a ceasefire in the conflict. This from the same body that used the lies of the Pentagon and White House as a reason to approve an attack on Iraq in 2003.

Let’s go back to those civilians Tel Aviv and Washington claim Hamas hides behind. Besides the quite obvious physical fact that Hamas members are Palestinians before they are anything else and therefore live in Palestine, the other fact is that the IDF, too, lives among its civilian population. After all, they are all Israelis and most of them go home after their work day unless they are stationed on a border or involved in a war. Israeli military facilities, like those of most every nation, are situated near and in civilian areas if for no other reason then the fact that civilians work at them in a variety of support and other functions. The very nature of Hamas and other resistance factions since the dawn of guerrilla warfare is that they are like fish in the sea. This is not only because they have the support of the people but because they need it to exist. If Hamas is holding the Gazans hostage, then Tel Aviv is holding the entire population of Israel hostage by its refusal to negotiate with Hamas and its deception and lies in its negotiations with other more moderate Palestinian groups. Furthermore, the current Israeli offensive places Israeli civilians in an almost certain future danger as it places Gazans because sooner or later the battle will once again shift back to Israel itself in the form of bomb attacks.

This is, once again, the point where the inhumanity becomes clear. Political agendas are important and the right of the Palestinian people to a nation is accepted by most people in the world. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, Israel — the nation with the second most say in the matter– has made it their national purpose to deny this right, except under terms that amount to continued occupation. So, instead of honest and lasting attempts to work towards a Palestinian state, Israel (with the monetary and moral support of Washington and other western governments) invades, destroys, and lies its way towards a future that frustrates Palestinian hopes for a nation while simultaneously weakening the Israelis’ ability to keep theirs. After all, wars and occupations are never permanent and rarely destroy the will of those being warred against. Indeed, the history of the Palestine-Israel seems to indicate that they only multiply the opposition. How many more years will it take before Tel Aviv understands this?

I’m not calling for a coup d’etat, but go talk to your leaders and tell them you do not accept what is happening in Gaza.

– Hezbollah Sec-Gen Hasan Nasrallah calling for Egyptians “in millions” to demonstrate their support for opening the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt, 28 December 2008

[I]t is essential if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.

– Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

Beirut, Lebanon — Giggling like smitten teenagers, exchanging Channakah and Eid greetings (neither acknowledges the more Shi’a associated Ashoura) Hosni Mubarak and Tzipi Livni ‘hooked up’ this past week in Cairo to discuss Gaza.

Both spoke of their desire to see Corporal Shalit returned safely. Both knew Israel’s former Mossad operative, current Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister wannabee had a permission slip from the Bush Administration for all-out war against the Palestinians in the 25 by 6 mile territorial snippet along the Eastern Mediterranean. When the correct photo-op was selected for public distribution, it showed a concerned and dour Egyptian President brooding with arching brow.

The duo focused on ‘diplomatic logistics and cover’ and the urgency to crush Hamas. They appeared oblivious to all who happened to be in the vicinity of American rockets and bombs or institutions leveled by waves of F-16 fighter jets and missiles kept in ready use from the $ 200 million worth of spare parts supplied by US taxpayers from 2001-2006, as well as 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel , and thousands of TOW, Hellfire and “bunker buster” bombs and missiles, freed up for delivery to Israel last year when the Bush administration signed a $ 1.3 billion contract with Raytheon.

What was not on the agenda was what both knew but ignored. The fate of 1.5 million people, one of the highest population densities in the world with nearly 60% of its population 16 years or younger and nearly 75% of whom are malnourished, and according to one recent estimate by the World Health Organization, 46% of whom are afflicted with acute anemia, with 30% suffering from stunted growth as a result of chronic malnutrition and who would need an escape via Rafah.

One wonders if the dynamic duo discussed the fact that 10% of these children have permanent brain damage or that eighty-two percent are afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder; the great majority of them having witnessed death first-hand or that more than eighty percent of the population as a whole is dependent on food aid? Were Mubrak and Livni aware of reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children?

The UN and eyewitnesses such as members of the Free Gaza Project report that unemployment is rampant — upwards of 60% with most Gazans subsisting on less than $2 a day.

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Even a cursory examination of the events which began on December 27, 2008 require that Mohammad Hosni Mubarak be added as an accomplice to the pending International Criminal Court (ICC) case concerning international crimes being committed by Israel with American weapons.

HOKOK, the Beirut- and Washington DC-based International Coalition against Impunity, which filed a case against Israeli political leaders regarding Israeli crimes committed in Gaza with the International Criminal Court at The Hague on December 10, 2008, will send international lawyers back to the ICC on January 15, 2009, to amend its complaint under the Rome Statute and indict Egypt’s Mubarak among the Defendants.

To his great credit, Professor Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, has joined HOKOK’s call for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli violations and determine whether the Israeli leaders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.

The Case against Mohammad Hosni Mubarak

Mubarak knew that Gazans would need a safety valve, an escape route from the coming carnage, which according to the Washington-based Council for the National Interest (CNI), appears to be another Sharpeville Massacre. CNI points out, “Nearly fifty years ago, the South African regime attacked a crowd protesting the conditions in the Bantustan of Sharpeville and in a matter of minutes killed some 69 black South Africans. Eventually, after world reaction to this “incident,” sanctions were imposed and they led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. Using American weapons, Israel has just indiscriminately killed more than four times that number in Gaza. In 1960, there were 20 million black South Africans and today there are only one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza. So the first two days of the American-supported Israeli attempt to wipe out Hamas is sixty times as criminal as the Sharpeville massacre.

Mubarak’s actions make him complicit in International Crimes outlawed by Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide by assisting in the killing members of a specific ethnic group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

By sealing its border with Gaza and forcing back many Palestinians at gunpoint who were trying to escape the slaughter, Mubarak violates basic Islamic, Christian and Judaic morality that requires that he open the cork of the bottle and let these men, women and children live. So does international law. Otherwise he is actively responsible and complicit in Israel’s project of creating a situation where Palestinians, in Rafael Eitan’s infamous phrase, “will only be able to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.”

By denying the possibility of a broad range of necessities – food, cooking or heating oil, water, electricity, shelter, medicines, for a population unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation, and locking them inside Gaza in a blazing holocaust, amidst millions of gallons of untreated sewage is criminal conduct: Mubarak is complicit.

Oh mightiest Pharaoh, Let My People Go!

By forcing Palestinians from Gaza back into killing fields and subjecting them to massive collective punishment, Mubarak is in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

On Monday morning, Israeli planes bombed a mosque. The house next to the mosque collapsed and inside, five sisters aged 2 to 10 years old were killed. Mubarak is helping Israel turn Gaza into a modern version of the Warsaw ghetto.

By slamming and sealing the life saving escape route Mubrak signs on to the effects of the scorn of international revulsion, the genocide, the political objective, the empirical objectives of Western dominance of the Middle East for a Greater Israel alongside an Egyptian Kingdom, the religious fanaticism, the psychopathology and the indiscriminate brutality and ruthlessness.

Mubarak’s actions make him complicit in International Crimes outlawed by Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide by assisting in the killing members of a specific ethnic group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Some believe Egypt’s President went further. London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi quote sources who say Egyptian intelligence minister deliberately misled the Palestinian organization about IDF intentions. Hamas sources say this is why movement’s compounds were not evacuated: “Egypt collaborated with Israel in its Gaza attack and lulled Hamas into thinking the Israel Defense Forces would not attack Gaza”, Al Quds al-Arabi claimed in the report, based on Arab diplomatic sources, that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman told a number of Arab leaders that Israel was intending to attack the Gaza Strip in a limited manner in order to pressure the Palestinian organization into agreeing to a renewed ceasefire.

Hamas sources close to former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar also reported that Egypt told Hamas on Friday evening that Israel had agreed to begin negotiations about a potential ceasefire and would not attack Gaza before Cairo had attempted to settle the issue.

These sources noted that, in general, Hamas’ internal ministry orders the evacuation of its security compounds following any Israeli threat of operative action. They had not done so this time based on Egypt’s assurance that Israel wouldn’t attack and based on the assumption that an IDF attack would not be launched on Saturday.

Colluding with Israel, the Bush administration and the Palestinian Authority in this aggression toward the Palestinians of Gaza, Mubarak reminds one of the Jews who served the Nazis as capos inside the ghettos of German controlled Europe during World War II, their baksheeh being that that they will be the last to be destroyed.

Hasan Nasrallah has reminded the Egyptian people of their duty, and once it becomes widely known that Mubarak cooperated with Israel as an adjunct of its colonial army in the assault against Gaza he may be deposed as un-redeemable. Rejecting the Resistance to Zionism, Mubarak invites Revolution.

UPDATE: Lebanon reacts to the Gaza Massacre

Lebanon has witnessed no fewer than 30 demonstrations and day and night student vigils against the Gaza slaughter during the past 72 hours. Tens of thousands of people massed in the southern suburbs of Beirut and packed the surrounding streets for a Hezbollah-led protest rally yesterday, calling for support for Gaza as it underwent its third day of Israeli attacks. Three more demonstrations are planned for this evening.

Sunday saw a joint Fatah-Hamas demonstration that included Osama Hamdan and Fatah’s Abass Zaki outside the UN HQ known as ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia). Hezbollah plans daily demonstrations until Gaza is free according to its Media Office.

All alongside countless smaller manifestations composed of smaller groups, boy and girl scouts from various confessions, individuals, shopkeepers, and increased attendance in Mosques and Churches, some of the latter ringing bells, throughout Lebanon.

The sewage and rain flooded alleys of Beirut’s Palestinian Refugee Camps, Shatila, Burj Burajneh and the smaller Mar Elias Camp, are filled with equally steadfast refugees in support of their countrymen to the south.

* Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer and researcher, currently based in Beirut, drafted, for HOKOK, the International Coalition against Impunity, its Complaint/Submission filed, on December 10, 2008, the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the Internationally Criminal Court in The Hague. The Case charges Israel with continuing Rome Statue International crimes in Gaza and throughout Occupied Palestine. In January 2009 HOKOK will petition the ICC to include Mohammad Hosni Mubarak as an additional defendant in the Case.

Joshua Frank: Afshin, can you tell us a little about Press TV? How long has the station been on the air?

Afshin Rattansi: Certainly more than a year. It’s an initiative by the Iranian government to counter some of the more crazy assumptions that other international channels make about the Middle East. Of course, given the crippling siege of Gaza at the moment, international media can’t even get into the place so that makes Press TV uniquely able to cover something that the rest of the world’s media seems to have forgotten. The “narrative”, as the fashionable post po-mo word goes, seems to be that the U.S. made a mistake by invading Iraq rather than the whole operation being an international war crime.

If Press TV can redress the balance a bit, it would be good. Also, wars in Africa are covered on other stations as if they are purely about “black people fighting each other” just as famines are somehow natural phenomena. Little is told about the corporate background to conflicts in a continent in which the positive stories seem to be about animals and “entrepreneurs” somehow battling, atomistically, against the tide.

Frank: You aren’t a native of Iran, so how did you get involved with Press TV?

Rattansi: There may be some Iranian in me! Afshin is an Iranian name and I think there is a possibility my roots are from the a magician’s castle in Alamut but that’s a long story and goes back a thousand years or so,

But seriously, I had been at Bloomberg News, hired to revamp things, after my time at CNN International and Al Jazeera Arabic and, most enlightening of all, the Today programme at the BBC. The mainstream coverage in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was very poor even if Today and its source, the late David Kelly, tried its best to allow listeners another view of what the British government was spouting about WMD in Iraq. It was odd as twenty years ago I was accused of being against an ally, Saddam Hussein. I had helped make a documentary for Channel 4 in the UK about how Western companies, in particular architectural firms akin to Albert Speer acolytes, were aiding
Saddam.

The British government didn’t like it at all and yet, once I was working at Today, my colleagues and I were being accused of being apologists for Saddam because we could tell that the government was lying about WMD. Blair’s people unleashed an onslaught that led to the resignations of all the most senior staff at the BBC. I left for the Jazeera Arabic programme, Top Secret, which identified the 911 attackers when Osama bin Laden himself contacted the programme to name the perpetrators. They would be caught even as we ran the trailers.

Well, after that story the Qatari Al Jazeera Arabic was chastened as we prepared for the launch of the English-language channel. As for my attempt at trying to get Bloomberg to avoid bluster and actually cover what was well known – the impending financial catastrophe – it ended in failure. In between, at CNN, coverage of the financial world was laughable. I remember talking to financial editor, Todd Benjamin who was nonchalantly cheerleading multinationals without a care in the world for the house of cards.

It was in this context, that I was getting worried that the same mistakes were going to be made all over again, vis a vis Iran. For me, the deaths of more than a million people in Iraq let alone the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan were axiomatic. Reading Seymour Hersh had me worried and I still don’t know if he was being used. But Iran was the story. Thankfully, that’s died down a little. But going to Tehran seemed a responsible thing to do.

Frank: Do you think the mood has changed because of the forthcoming change in administrations here in the United States? What’s the perception among Iranians about Barack Obama?

Rattansi: I think the mood hasn’t changed at all. Certainly, Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State and the possibility of Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke hardly inspires much confidence. Nevertheless, there was a certain amount of heat generated by the electoral victory of Barrack Obama.

Frank: How can people in the US tune in to Press TV, and why do you think it’s important that they should?

Rattansi: Press TV is available in the U.S. through special servers via the internet at presstv.com. I think the audience will certainly get a very different perspective to that on other channels of world events and they may be surprised to see that many of the people interviewed on the channel – from Noam Chomsky to Gore Vidal to Amy Goodman – are all American.

Press TV is available in Europe on Sky Channel 515.

We in Hezbollah want to demonstrate to our adversaries and doubters what we can achieve for our fellow Lebanese and our Palestinian brothers and sisters and to show them that our Party is 10% about military matters and 90% about ending corruption and improving the quality of lives of all who live in Lebanon. We will offer the voters a clear choice and they will decide. If we win, our friends and foes alike can observe and evaluate our achievements and then work with us on a basis of mutual respect, dialogue, and cooperation if they so choose or, if we fail, vote our deputies out of Parliament. We must respect their decision.

– Zeinab, a Hezbollah supporter studying at the American University of Beirut 12 September 2008

Lebanon’s 2009 election campaign is underway!

As this note is written, Hezbollah election strategists are meeting nearby studying, analyzing, debating and formularizing plans for Lebanon’s make or break 2009 elections. That poll, if it happens, may determine the foreseeable future of Lebanon and is arguably this fractured country’s most important referendum since the French more on less left in 1943.

The Hezbollah-led opposition may become the solid majority in Parliament following next May’s election, taking as many as 70 of the 128 up-for-grab Deputy Seats.

Some in the March 14 current majority will join Hezbollah out of self interest. Others will try to use the election to eliminate rivals and gather the confetti and posters from the 2005 “cedar revolution.” Others may, following the election, retire from politics. And some of Lebanon’s old soldiers and chieftains like Michel Aoun and Amin Gemayel will likely never officially retire but will slowly fade away with their boots on and waiting for the call to serve yet again.

The Hunt for Votes

As recently as this week, given the publicity over the 26th Anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, Samir Geagea apologized at a campaign rally for “mistakes” committed by members of his party :

“I fully apologize for all the past mistakes that we committed when we were carrying out our national duties,” he said, with a straight face, avoiding direct comment on the Sabra-Shatila Massacre and gliding over the slaughter and presumable “mistakes” of raping and cutting open pregnant women and bashing in the heads of babies. Geagea did not explain to those whose votes he is seeking which part of “our national duties” such acts “carried out”.

Running on an undisguised anti-Hezbollah plank, and seeking to push his rival Amin Gemayel aside in order to motivate and unify the younger Phalange and Kateib elements, Samir declared: “I ask God to forgive us and so I ask the people whom we hurt [evidently the victims of the Sabra-Shatila slaughter and their surviving relatives who received no compensation from the state or from any other source] in the past to forget.”

He added, “I want to tell those who are exploiting our past mistakes [read: such acts as commemorating the 26th Anniversary of the Massacre on September 16, 2008 at Martyr's Square, Shatila Camp and distribution of student laptops to deprived Palestinian children] to stop doing so because only God can judge us,” he concluded.

Yes we can!

With its power at its apex—inside and outside of Lebanon—many Hezbollah members are excited at the prospect of finally being able to demonstrate what the Party is all about.

Some pro-Hezbollah voters are happy to learn the results of the just-released Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll. The poll found that by a majority of 51 to 43 percent American citizens now believe their country’s leaders should talk with the leaders of Hezbollah. Eighty-three percent of Americans—including 81 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Democrats—think that improving their nation’s standing internationally should be a “very important” foreign policy goal.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

It is common to hear in the Halifee Sandwich shop in Haret Hreik, or at various 2006 July War commemoration events, comments like “some of our former adversaries are in for a surprise—and we want to make it a pleasant surprise!”

The reference is to the “human face of Hezbollah” which some are urging be presented. One Hezbollah member studying at the American University of Beirut explained: “Of course we are good at beating up the Zionist thieves of Palestine but there is much more to our social movement that we can do for our Country. Like stop the decades of corruption by Lebanese officials, help the Palestinians, fix the electric, water, telephone systems, get some traffic laws enforced and address the need for a social security system that serves all of Lebanon and improve the education system. And how about a real health care system?”

“There are an awfully lot of New Dealers among Hezbollah advisors”, according to one member of the Party’s politburo.

Hezbollah Burnishes Its image: Contrition with a Plea for Patience and Understanding

Some political observers of Lebanon believe that if there is relative peace in the country, Hezbollah will do very well in the coming polling and that this will be good for the Palestinians. Others, including many in Hezbollah, think maintaining the current calm may not be easy given intensified efforts by those working to cause turmoil.

Space only allows for a brief mention of the fact that in the run-up to the coming election, Hezbollah has been trying to reduce doubts about last May’s image-damaging bloody events. Hezbollah is reaching out to undecided voters and has participated in the following initiatives:

• A flow of Hezbollah offers for dialogue addressed all the factions in Lebanon and giving high priority to last week’s presidential-sponsored dialogue, the next session of which is scheduled to be held on November 5, the day after the US Presidential election.
• Hezbollah’s Politburo member Mahmoud Qmati and other Party leaders have been calling for the launching of “a new era” based on “forgetting the past, despite all its pain and wounds.”
• Hezbollah has refrained from boasting about its victory in achieving the new Lebanese policy statement which allows (for the time being– pending the 2009 election) Hezbollah to keep its weapons, and underlines the “right of Lebanon’s people, army, and resistance (referring to Hezbollah’s military wing) to liberate Israeli-occupied areas and “defend the country using all legal and possible means.”
• Working on maintaining the fragile peace that it helped broker between the majority and opposition on May 21 in Doha, Qatar, leading to the creation of a unity Cabinet, in which the opposition achieved veto power over Government decisions.
• Hezbollah is also working on setting up a substantive meeting(s) with the leader of the March 14th alliance leader Saad Hariri through the efforts of Hizbullah’s coordination liaison and coordination committee head Wafik Safa. On September 7, Hasan Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah “recognizes the popular representation of the Future Movement within the Sunni community and we are ready to cooperate with them provided there were no preconditions.” Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine or deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem will likely head the Hezbollah delegation. Meetings during 2004 and 2005 between Saad’s father Rafiq and Hasan Nasarallah are thought to have been positive for the Country.
• Hezbollah’s Wafik Safa has been working on achieving a entente with Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party.
• In an important public relations move, aimed at improving relations with the Sunni community, Hezbollah has made the decision to create a new department of Arab relations. The purpose of the new unit is to “monitor the party’s relations in the Arab homeland with the different forces, parties, popular groups, and elites, as well as with the governments with which Hezbollah has relations or with which it is going to establish relations.” These developments come in the context of structural modifications that Hezbollah has decided to implement in light of developments that have occurred since the July-August 2006 War. Hassan Azzadine, a member of the Hizbullah politburo, will likely preside over the department.
• On 8/18/08 the head of Hezbollah’s political council, Sayyed Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed signed a Memorandum of Understanding with 14 Tripoli based Lebanese Sunni Salifist groups (Tripoli is Pro-Saad Hariri-but becoming restive and his support is softening. Hezbollah wants to prevent civil strife in the area following the May incidents which some writers, including Al Akbar’s Al-Amine, have written witnessed the collapse of the infrastructure of the Future Movement). The Sunni and Shia signatories pledged that both sides would work together to stop Sunni-Shia incitement and bloodletting and would continue Muslim dialogue. This bold initiative was too much for the Welch Club which moved quickly to force a ‘temporary freeze’ by encouraging the pro-US March 14 “ruling team.” Cash and threats were allegedly quickly exchanged and suddenly one of the key signatories from the Sunni Salifist side “got religion” following his uncle’s “displeasure” and claimed perhaps further study of the issue was prudent. Others have claimed that massive pressures were exerted by security bodies on the Salafist forces who signed the agreement and contacts were made by regional sides to create a front to undermine this understanding.

The Bush Administration does not feel its interests are well served by Shia-Sunni peace whether in Iraq or Lebanon. Still, the fact that the MOU was negotiated and signed demonstrates to Lebanon’s electorate that Hezbollah is reaching out to all fellow Muslims in the coming election, even their takferi “kafer labeling” nemeses who view Shia—and basically all but themselves—as heretics.

• Apologized for the shooting and killing of the Lebanese Army helicopter pilot Captain Samer Hanna and sent a delegation to meet with his family. Hezbollah Sec-Gen Nasrallah expressed condolences to the family, saying: “I address the father of the martyr Samer Hanna, and send you my deepest condolences.”
• In a bid to prevent armed incidents in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s number two Sheikh Naim Qassem recently asked Lebanese immigrants who support Hezbollah in its struggle against Israel “to respect the laws and policies of their host countries and know that the fight against Israel should take place in Lebanon and not anywhere else.” Qassem told a delegation of Lebanese immigrants in Dahiyeh that “Our brother emigrants should be aware that they are not supposed to be fighting Israel in their host countries, especially that these countries are not occupied by Israel.”
• Separate reconciliation talks were already held last Monday between Hezbollah and Mr Jumblatt, following the assassination in a car bombing of a senior member of a rival Druze party allied with Hezbollah.

Despite conciliatory initiatives such as the above, it’s been a tough, intense and pressured spring and summer for the Hezbollah led Lebanese Resistance.

Indeed, these past 24 months since the end of the July 2006 “hot war” Hezbollah has again had to play defense to Bush Administration-Israeli attacks, this time in the form of a sustained “cold war” of dozens of projects aimed at weakening Hezbollah’s resolve, discrediting its message, attempting to scare its supporters and with dire threats of bombing “of all of Lebanon” if Hezbollah wins, all the while facilitating and excusing Israeli violations of UNSCR 1701.

In addition to countless threats from Washington and Tel Avi , on average of twice a week over the past 104, local friends of the Welch Club continue to dutifully, and sometimes on cue by monitored instructions from abroad, disparage the Party.

A Page from a 1960s US Presidential Campaign Playbook

Hezbollah has done its best to counter what it considers mis/disinformation attacks with what some local observers have come to refer to as Hezbollah’s “Defense Department.” This moniker, coined by an American researcher in Dahiyeh, refers to Hezbollah’s “boiler room” operation similar to what was first seen in American politics during the 1968 Robert Kennedy Presidential Campaign and which is now standard fare for every major US political campaign.

Hezbollah’s Defense Department works in Lebanon as follows. When attacks on the Lebanese Resistance are unleashed in the media Hezbollah’s Defense Department morphs into rapid response mode. Its Media Relations Office, well known to the international media for its work during the 33 days of Israeli bombing of Lebanon, may quickly issue a rebuttal, or one of Hezbollah’s 7 members of Parliament or one or more of its political allies will respond quickly with detailed information contradicting, clarifying, or exposing what Hezbollah considers erroneous or scurrilous attacks. A recent example was the other day when Hezbollah quickly denied false reports about deployment of members of its armed units and missiles in Sannine mountain, terming them lies. A statement released by Hezbollah’s media office said the March 14 “forces have adopted a policy of lie, lie and lie until people believe you.”

Some seasoned Lebanese-based journalists claim Hezbollah’s Defense Department is the most efficient media relations unit of its kind in the Middle East, second only to the international Zionist narrative juggernaut.

Long discredited claims are still heard from time to time when its adversaries need to score political points at its expense, such as that if Hezbollah wins next spring’s election it will impose an Iran style Islamic Republic, discriminate against non Shia, or repress women. Yet anyone living in Hezbollah’s society quickly learns that women not only control decision making and events in the three key rooms in their homes, the kitchen, children’s room and bedroom, but that they are the key pillars in the Party administration social programs.

In the face of these efforts to discredit it, Hezbollah is preparing with gusto for next year’s crucial Parliamentary elections from which it and its allies, including a majority of Lebanon’s Christians and significant Sunni and Druze supporters, hope to win and end what many Hezbollah members consider the US-Israel control of Lebanon’s government. It would also re-codify the right of the Lebanese Resistance to retain its military prowess pending the new government’s decision on exactly how the Islamic Resistance and Lebanon’s fledgling army will work together to defend Lebanon from foreign projects.

On the Hustings

On any given day, several key Hezbollah members are on the campaign trail. A recent and typical Sunday saw Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassim in Hermel in the Bekaa telling supporters that the Party wants to reach out to all the confessions with dialogue and partnership to build a prosperous Lebanon that can defend itself against Israeli aggression. Shortly Nawaf Musawi, one of Hezbollah most effective and popular speakers, and a favorite with visiting American and Western delegations, was in Eita Shaab and Nabiteyeh rallying Hezbollah voters and discussing Hezbollah’s position on various issues.

On September 21, 2008, Mohammad Fneish, Hezbollah leader, Member of Parliament and Lebanon’s Labor Minister, who led Hezbollah successful support for raising Lebanon’s minimum wage which was announced this week, told voters that dialogue meetings should discuss means of protecting Lebanon and complement the process of liberating the currently occupied territories. During an Iftar banquet in the Southern port city of Tyre, Fneish said Hizbullah’s weapons should not be considered a problem because the resistance “gave a meaning and a value to the state.” Fneish said that international concern about Lebanon was intended to restore Israel’s dignity after the achievements of the resistance during the summer 2006 war. He said Hizbullah would “seriously discuss all issues “because Hezbollah’s agenda does not contradict that of the state.”

Other Party members were preparing for the coming election by checking voting lists, vetting candidates, honing the Party’s message to skeptical and undecided voters and urging the Party faithful to fulfill their national duty and show up at the voting booths on election day.

A pastry chef at the Patisserie across from Shatila Camp explained that Hezbollah is eager to have the voters decide such issues as “whether Lebanon remains a resistance state or yields to current US administration-Israel projects.”

If Hezbollah and its allies become the majority in the next Parliament and thus the government, it will be, according to the young Shia woman, Nala, who works in the Western Union office next to the Palestine Red Crescent Akka Hosptial “for the new US administration to decide to either recognize the poll results in Lebanon and honor its countless pledges to support the will of Lebanon’s voters or once again dump a democratically elected government in the Middle East in favor of supporting the collapsing colonial enterprise still occupying Palestine.” Ali, her fiancé and co-worker added, “Internationally, there is not much left but ridicule for the US Zionist-Neocon “New Middle East Democracy” project, but it is not quite dead yet, fueled as it is with hundreds of millions of dollars for its foot soldiers and supportive mercenaries.”

After the election will we get normal electricity, water, Internet, road repairs?

This observer has detected among Hezbollah friends a genuine excitement about the Party’s opportunity, as one Party member related to a meeting with visiting Americans: “We in Hezbollah want to demonstrate to our adversaries and doubters what we can achieve for our fellow Lebanese and to show them that our Party is 10% about military matters and 90% about ending corruption and improving the quality of lives of all who live in Lebanon. We will offer the voters a clear choice and they will decide. If we win, our friends and foes alike can observe and evaluate our achievements and then work with us on a basis of mutual respect, dialogue, and cooperation, or vote our deputies out of Parliament. We must respect their decision. We aim to restore true democracy, transparency and accountability for all Lebanese and as I think you know Hezbollah does not love the dysfunctional confessional system but we prefer one person one vote. The same that will eventually be achieved for Palestine. Personally I believe that as we prepare for a new government and hopefully real change, a new census would be good. It has been about 76 years since the last one.”

Speculation is increasing regarding Hezbollah’s economic program for Lebanon but the Party is keeping the wraps on until it is finetuned in the coming weeks. Hasan Nasrallah has made plain that the Hezollah platform will focus on social and economic issues, including education.

Before getting up from an outdoor cafe table, next to a group of Madhi Boy Scouts returning from a clean up a beach outing and from a long discussion about next year’s election, one Hezbollah organizer leaned over and whispered, in an apparent reference to a particular US Presidential candidate, “Yes we can!”. He winked and gave a thumbs up as he vanished into the unlit southern Beirut night.

So what’s in it for Hezbollah if they help the Palestinians?

Much will no doubt be written about Hezbollah’s electoral prospects and program during the coming months, but one issue which Hezbollah is being lobbied on is improving the conditions of Lebanon’s approximately 405,000 Palestinians (more than 10% of Lebanon’s population), half of whom live as pariahs in 12 currently baking Palestinian Refugee Camps which will become fetid and swampy with fall rains.

Some Lebanese electoral strategists are advising Hezbollah “not to touch this sure loser constituency” for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that there is not one Palestinian vote to be had for Hezbollah in the coming election since Palestinians can’t vote. Others counsel that Hezbollah needs to broaden its base among Lebanon’s feuding 17 confessions, some of whom continue to blame the Palestinians for many of their woes. Still others have warned Hezbollah and to play down its vocal opposition to the US-Israel project of naturalizing the Palestinians in countries where they have been forced to settle.

Additionally, it is not forgotten that the PLO for years ran roughshod over many Shia in South Lebanon during its “state within a state” Rambo days. Some bitter Palestinian feelings also remain toward the Shia (Amal-on behalf of anti-Arafat Syria) attacks and widespread destruction and killing of more than 3,000 Palestinians during the 1986-89 ‘Camp Wars.’ While Hezbollah refused to join the brutal assault on the camp Palestinians and worked to end it, other anti-Palestinian sentiments persist among some Shia from personal loses deemed to have been caused by PLO ‘hoodlums’ between the late 1970’s and 1982.

Both groups appear willing to let bygones be bygones and Hezbollah is serious about its Islamic duty to help the Palestinians. Some in Hezbollah even argue that the Sunni PLO remains the step-mother of Shia Hezbollah. Did not the PLO train Iranian Islamist dissidents years before the successful 1979 Khomeini Revolution? Weren’t Khomeini and Arafat close? Was it not the PLO’s Abu Jihad (assassinated on the orders of Ariel Sharon exactly 6 years to the day, April 16, 1988 of the 1982 Massacre) who helped Islamist groups with weapons as the PLO prepared to sail from Beirut’s ports in late August of 1982? Some of Hezbollah’s key members had previously fought with the PLO. Some still feel a sense of nostalgia for “the good old days” of their adolescence.

As Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nassarallah has often stated, the Party has a moral, religious, and political duty to help return Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees to their stolen lands.

The response to the massacre at Sabra-Shatila was for the resistance to become active in Lebanon. If the Lebanese people had given up on the resistance, they too would have been complicit in the massacres of Qana and Sabra and Shatila.

– Hasan Nassallah June 4, 2002

We renew our pledge to Jerusalem, to the Palestinians, and to the cause and Imam of Jerusalem; their city will forever remain in our souls, and will continue to be our cause, our battle, and our ultimate objective.

– Hasan Nassallah October 28, 2005

The fundamental consequences of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila and the founding of Hezbollah are two seismic events from the same time and place which some argue are locked in a swirling expanding embrace that will return Palestine to the Palestinians.

In fewer than 45 minutes following the explosion in Islamabad at the 315-room Marriott Hotel during the Ramadan Iftar mealtime, Saturday, Hezbollah security units nearly invisibly secured the area of the 162-room Beirut Marriott Hotel. One of the embassies they secured was that of Palestine, which opened last year.

The security precautions were less out of love for the Bush administration, which the movement and increasing numbers internationals consider a rogue terrorist regime, or love for the Zionist-owned hotel chain, than the fact that the Marriott is within one of Hezbollah’s densely populated base areas. Dahiyeh, which includes several southern Beirut neighborhoods, often erroneously referred to as “suburbs,” is less than a mile from the Palestinian refugee area known as Sabra-Shatila.

Hezbollah works regularly to intercept elements openly boasting of or secretly planning on attacking its neighborhoods. Some being watched and infiltrated are Al Qaida inspired Sunni Salafist cells, who consider Shia Hezbollah more their enemy than they do the US or Israeli governments. Contrary to brother Robert Fisk’s recent reports, these groups are indeed growing in Lebanon and inside the Palestinian Camps, particularly Ain el Helwe, Bedawi. They are trying to launch in the so far peaceful camps near Tyre. This observer would agree with Fisk that it will not be easy for Al Qaida to find enough supporters and adherents of the Salafi-Jihadi ideology to challenge the strength of Hezbollah’s well-organized partisans. Yet, no fewer than 11 Al Qaida-inspired groups, eager to destabilize Lebanon, and sometimes related to US-Israel projects, have been organizing according to Palestinian Popular Committee Representatives inside the Camps. Some of their goals are being telegraphed by the rising campaign of threats coming from their sometime-sponsors in Tel Aviv and Washington.

The Angry Bear Returns to the Levant: From Russia with Love

When the rest of the story is able to be told concerning what really was happening during the late April and early May events in West Beirut, the facts will support a very different conclusion than the narrative offered by the Welch Club. Researchers expect to elucidate contents of ten and one half hours of taped conversations between Washington and its Lebanese surrogates. Conversations are referred to during a meeting between Hezbollah’s number two, Sheifk Naim Qassim, and a former US Ambassador with his American delegation during a July 2008 dialogue in Dahiyeh. A full report of the May events will also document details of what is known by many here, that every incoming and outgoing communication at the US Embassy is carefully monitored, analyzed and contemplated. The same with Israeli Sunday Cabinet meetings.

This week the Israeli Army’s Information Security Chief, Colonel Ram Dor, complained in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot (Latest News) that Russia is relaying intelligence information to Hezbollah. Dor said Russian Navy spy ships and Russian personnel serving at monitoring stations on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights carry out intercept and hacking missions and relay Israeli secrets to Hezbollah.

“My evaluation is that such facilities can cover most of Israel’s territory,” Dor said.

The US intelligence unit in the American Embassy in Beirut also blames the hacking and sharing of its ‘most secured communications’ on the Russians while others claim its tit-for-tat for what the Mossad and CIA did early last year in Georgia.

US Embassy Internet security experts are unclear to what extent the Russian military is directly responsible for “communication compromises,” but they claim that the traffic patterns and servers used in the operation are definitely coming out of Russia and result from increased Russian activity in the Middle East.

Some in Beirut speculate that this explains why the meticulously planned US-Israeli “May Surprise” turned out to be a “May Surprise” for its sponsors and their local teammates, who were dropped like a bad habit when the project imploded.

To counter this problem, the US Defense Intelligence Agency’s newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is authorized for the first time to carry out “strategic offensive counterintelligence operations” in Lebanon and against any group anywhere which the Bush administration considers “terrorist,” according to Mike Pick of the DEA, who will direct the program.

Covert offensive operations will be carried out in Lebanon and abroad against people known or suspected to be connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities, according to Toby Sullivan, Director of Counterintelligence for James R. Clapper, Jr., the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

According to Walter Pincus, who covers counterintelligence for the Washington Post, these sensitive, clandestine operations are “tightly controlled departmental activities run by a small group of specially selected people” within the Defense Department. The new unit is designed to thwart what groups like Hezbollah might be trying to do to us and to learn more about what they’re trying to get from us,” Sullivan said. In the case of “terrorists,” the object would be to identify people who might be “trying to do harm, collect information about us, and keep them from doing that. So far we don’t know if Hezbollah is trying to do anything to us but we will watch them,” he stated.

“You stop, we stop,” is the Putin offer to the next US administration, according to Congressional staff sources on the US Senate Intelligence Committee. Many in power in Moscow also consider the Bush administration a “terrorist cabal” and are awaiting the November election results, hoping Obama wins.

The Student Laptops and the KKK Kid

Hours before the Marriott was attacked in Pakistan, Fairouz Husseini sat with her girlfriends in the courtyard outside Haifa Middle School across the road from Shatila Refugee Camp, which is administered by UNWRA in Bir Hassan. Fairouz and her friends were giddy two days after receiving laptops at the 26th Anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre Memorial.

“I love it! I can’t believe it’s mine to keep!” Fairouz exclaimed as she protectively dusted off the pale green cover of her new XO laptop, and recorded an interview with the screen sized video and built-in camera. The XO laptop is part of an advanced teaching tool developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that some believe can revolutionize education in developing countries.

“That American man told us that if we used it properly it would open the doors to the Great Library of Alexandria for us and we can learn as much as any student at the best schools anywhere in the World!” she added.

Amal, a very loquacious 13-year-old friend of Fairouz chimed in, “We are making a laptop club at our school. We call it: Learn for our Return! Is that a good name? What do you think? Our friend Ahmad says it’s a silly idea. Anyway, Ahmad does not behave properly and is sort of wild. He is what we call a KKK kid — Kalashnikov, Kassem and Katyusha. Anyhow, most students in the camps are peaceful and we want to rebuild our country when we go back and we need lots of knowledge to do it!”

Fairouz and her Ramadan-fasting pals were already out of school for the day even though it was not yet noon. Lebanon’s camp Palestinians are severely challenged by a shortened school day due to overcrowding. On average around there are 35, but sometimes there are as many as 50 students per class, and because UNWRA must run two shifts daily. Student and teacher absenteeism is high, standards are low, text books insufficient, infrastructure poor, and dropout rates increasing.

Of the 59 Palestinian camps in the Levant (Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon) only the camp schools in Gaza are as bad, indeed worse, as those in Lebanon.

Gaza Director of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) John Ging reports that up to 60 percent of Gazan children at UNRWA schools had failed their math exams last year, while 40 percent failed their Arabic exams at the beginning of the year.

UNRWA provides schooling for Palestinian refugee children from grade 1 through 9, but offers limited secondary education and, as in Lebanon, these schools are forced to operate double shifts due to overcrowding. “Many children come to school hungry and unable to concentrate,” according to Ging.

Haifa Fahmi al-Agha, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Education Ministry’s Director General in the Gaza Strip, has documented that failure rates at schools in Gaza were deliberately lowered the past few years to cope with overcrowded classrooms, too few schools and limited educational funds. The same “lowering of the bar” trend is creeping into Palestinian schools in Lebanon.

Shatila Camp, as well as its sister, Burj al Baraneh, is located in Ghouberi Municipality, whose Council is now controlled by Hezbollah, whose party members won all 21 Council seats in both the 1998 and 2004 elections. Hezbollah security protects the whole area around Shatila Camp, and Haifa and other Palestinian Schools with their Shia, Sunni and Christian students. The Sabra-Shatila area is an increasingly close-knit area bringing together the Sunni Palestinians and the Shia Hezbollah.

More than 90% of Lebanon’s Palestinian students interviewed recently, in an admittedly unscientific poll, appear to believe that Hezbollah holds out their best hope to return to Palestine, and insist their parents would vote for Hezbollah in next year’s critical election if Palestinians were allowed to vote in Lebanon.

Before leaving for home, Fairouz introduced this observer to her lovely mother, Nour. Nour is a community organizer who had come to collect her daughter. She elaborated on why the Sunni and partially secular Palestinian community of Bir Hasan (where the first killers assembled 26 years ago before being sent into the Camp) have come to support the Shia Party of God despite a sometimes troubled past relationship.

The Non-ID Issue and Palestinian Gratitude

Besides shared values regarding education, Hezbollah supports the project that is now finally happening to give Palestinians identification cards for the first time.

“This is so important to our people in Lebanon. Actually Hezbollah worked quietly with Prime Minister Siniora’s people to achieve this much needed progress,” the community organizer explained. “They do a lot for us but they don’t announce it to the public so much.”

Many Palestinians credit pressure and dialogue from Hezbollah with the announcement last month that the government of Lebanon will finally issue temporary identification cards to perhaps as many as 5000 Palestinian families (around 20,000 individuals) who have no documents and who habitually hide from the authorities or risk imprisonment. PM Fouad Siniora, in bed with the Bush Administration, wins kudos for his work on this issue. Siniora appears to reject the Bush-Cheney and Israeli intense antipathy toward Resistance-supporting Palestinians.

The Lebanese authorities have thus agreed after 40 years to give temporary ID cards to “non-ID” Palestinian refugees. Palestinians without any ID documents are subject to more capricious treatment by authorities than those holding UNWRA ID or Ration Cards or NR (”Non Registered”) cards.

Most non-ID Palestinians are either former “Fedayeen” or descendants of the Palestinian fighters who came to Lebanon in the 1970s after being driven from Jordan during the “Black September” conflict with the Jordanian monarchy.

To qualify for the new IDs these individuals need to get a residence notice from a Mukhtar and submit it to the Lebanese General Security. The Non-ID card will help settle the legal status of thousands of Palestinians living in Lebanon and is about the only good news for the Palestinians here since their PLO protectors left Beirut in 1982, when the camp’s steep descent into misery accelerated. Lebanon’s new PLO “Embassy,” which was allowed to open in May of 2006, has already received 2,600 names of applicants.

Like all Palestinians, the new ID-holders will still not be allowed to work in professional vocations or to own property, but at least their marriages will be legally registered and, theoretically, they can no longer be rounded up by the authorities at whim.

Sidon Mukhtar Mohammad Baasiri explained that dozens of Palestinians were flocking into his office on a daily basis seeking IDs. “I have hundreds of applications from Palestinians who want to get a residence notice as a starting point toward getting an ID,” Mukhtar Bassiri noted.

Over the past two years, more than 350 non-ID refugees had been arrested in Sidon alone and more than 200 students were denied the right to access its schools and universities. To its everlasting credit, UNRWA often allows non-ID children to “sneak” into its schools — but they cannot pass their examinations at age 18 and gain qualifications because that requires legal papers. As reported by Daily Star’s Fayez Najjar, an unregistered Palestinian father of 14 children from Ein el Helwe Camp explained that his sons had been arrested for lack of ID several times as they stepped outside the autonomous security system of Palestinian-controlled camps. Hezbollah is credited with helping advance this project.

Fatima Khalife’s Quadruplets and Hasan Nasrallah

This is another example of Hezbollah “good neighborliness” mentioned by Hajjah Nour, which this observer had actually learned about earlier while conducting research in Mar Elias Camp in Beirut.

Many foreigners may not be familiar with the 6000-resident Mar Elias Palestinian Refugee Camp located just to the Northwest of Sabra and Shatila. It is small, one of the original camps set up in 1948. It is heavily made up by Christians from Nazarath and surrounded by Gulf-funded high rise construction projects. Salivating investors eye its boundaries and prime location near the sandy beach of Ramlet al Baida and Hamra.

Last month, this observer, en route to an appointment inside the Camp, was negotiating the sharp turns of alleys so narrow and dark that they have likely never been warmed by direct sunlight, barely enough space to advance along on a motorcycle.

Suddenly I noticed a gaggle of squealing pre-teens lining up for motorcycle rides and practicing their English with “hello!,” ‘how are you?,” “welcome!” The kids apparently recognized me and the trusty steed “Silver” from an earlier visit. But this time it was necessary to apologize and explain in very weak Arabic what “next time” meant because I was rushing to an appointment with a camp social worker, who told me yet another “Hezbollah story” which affords insight into the Party’s relationship with Palestinians in Lebanon:

On August 9, 2005, a Palestinian mother named Fatima Khalife gave birth to Quadruplets in Shatila Camp. One of the four babies, Omar, was very ill and not expected to live. He needed life-saving surgery and his family inquired at the nearby Safah Hospital. Being Palestinian, Lebanese law forbids any assistance from the National Social Security Fund, meager as it is. UNRWA contributed around $2000 and some local NGOs another $1,500. Still about $37,000 shy, the family was very happy when an article about the boy’s plight was published in the local daily, As Safir. Two wealthy humanitarian Lebanese women came forward and offered to help the infant by paying for his surgery.

The Palestinian community was ecstatic and prayed for success with the delicate operation. Shortly before the scheduled surgery, a call was received at the hospital business office that caused its cancellation. When it was learned that Omar is a Palestinian, the well-to-do Lebanese ladies, perhaps with memories of the civil war and lost loved ones, withdrew their offer of medical assistance.

Word of what happened circulated in the crestfallen community. A local TV station, New TV, ran a story about the Khalife family’s desperate plight as Omar’s brain infection took a virulent turn. Within minutes of the program being aired, the office of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called Omar’s father. Hezbollah said it would like to pay for the boy’s surgery and all subsequent expenses until the boy was well. And it did. Nasrallah had watched the program and was deeply moved. Today, Omar is healthy, sweet, rambunctious, beautiful, three years old who just learned how to press the ignition button and start a foreigner’s motorcycle.

Hezbollah cannot solve all the Palestinian’s problems in Lebanon pending their return to Palestine, but with no one to rely on but themselves, Palestinians appreciate enormously such gestures as saving Omar.

At the risk of over-simplification, one concludes that these kinds of “Robin Hood” stories have created a broad admiration for the Hezbollah-led Resistance in Lebanon’s Palestinian community — as do Hezbollah’s straight-dealing with the Shatila and Burj al Burajneh Camps in the Ghoberi Municipality, where it helps with infrastructural, sewer and water projects (probably against “the law” and wishes of many in Lebanon).

This is not to say that there are no lingering personal grudges within Lebanon’s Shia-Palestinian community from individuals who suffered at the hands of the other over the past four decades during the civil war and Zionist occupation. Yet, one Palestinian friend, Samer, a Mar Elias Camp social worker, reported that both communities want to let bygones be bygones. He points out that marriages between Shia and Sunni and Christian Palestinians are increasing (his wife is Shia). He also pointed out and that he personally has more Hezbollah friends than Palestinian, as he introduced me to his best friend, Ali, a Shia and Hezbollah party member.

It is likely Ms. Rice’s last visit to Lebanon, but not her finale to the region which has averaged roughly one appearance every 9 weeks since assuming her current post. Rice, as with the Bush administration generally, remains hugely unpopular here in Lebanon based partly on her callous remarks during the 33 day July 2006 War: “It [the wanton Israeli killing and bombing] are the birth pangs of the new Middle East”; “it’s too early for a sustainable ceasefire”; “Israel is just exercising its right to self-defense and the United States supports that right”; and her work to delay a ceasefire during the fighting which directly contributed to more than 1,400 Lebanese killed, 4,500 wounded and massive destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure as well as its economy and environment.

As she left for Ireland, Secretary Rice presumably had been briefed that to its great credit, Ireland’s judicial system last week acquitted the Raytheon 9 of all terrorism charges in a much anticipated and perhaps bellwether trial. The Bush Administration supported the Raytheon 9 indictments stemming from actions by peace activists in Derry who decommissioned Raytheon computers in Derry, Northern Ireland, following the July 30, 2006 Second Qana Massacre which killed 27 mainly women and children and wounded more than 40 others who had hidden, frozen in terror for 16 days in the dark basement of a house without food, water, ventilation or sanitation (the first Qana Massacre being the April 18, 1996 Israeli bombing of the UN Post in Qana, that killed 105 civilians and wounded more than 200).

Both locations are a few hundred meters from where Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have performed his first miracle at the suggestion of his mother Mary, to turn water into wine to supply the larger than expected number of wedding guests who liked to visit Jesus when he came north to the Tyre and Saida area for a warm welcome and respite from the Serahedren authorities in Jerusalem. Given South Lebanon’s great natural beauty, Jesus’s frequent visits are understandable. The topography, atmosphere and geography are, experts assure us, are essentially unchanged from his day — a sharp contrast to the Saviors’ well trod paths in Palestine.

A US Embassy press aid was asked a question during the stopover about the fact that Rice urged President Bush to quickly resupply Israel with Raytheon Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) bomb guidance systems during the July 2006 War, and whether Rice was aware that the Belfast court had found last Wednesday that the Raytheon 9 “were reasonable in believing that Israel was committing war crimes and that Raytheon was aiding and abetting them”. The Embassy was not sure about the correct answer to this question but would check on it and advise.

A second question was whether or not Secretary Rice was aware and/or concerned that the US had given Israel Raytheon weapons that had been used at Qana, as well as at an estimated 137 other sites in Lebanon during the 33 day attack (including the JDAM guided MK-83 1000 lb. bomb dropped on the early morning of July 19, 2006, on the Nabysheet, Bekaa home of the Hussein Chokr family killing, Mrs. Khajeda Chokr and all but one of her children including Mohammad, Bilal, Talal and Yassin). Concerning whether Secretary Rice was aware and concerned about US supplied Raytheon products being used for this purpose the Embassy press office answer was identical to the one given in the Belfast Courtroom last week by a Raytheon Board member.

The answer was a dismissive and curt ‘No’. A film of the aftermath of the Qana bombing had been admitted into evidence as a Defense Exhibit and shown to the jury at the Raytheon 9 Trial in Belfast.

Meanwhile, the Raytheon issue continues with a campaign underway to have Raytheon itself investigated as a criminal enterprise as it regularly aids and abets Israeli war crimes, much as is the case with the US Caterpillar Corporation and its bulldozers in Palestine which killed the American human rights activist Rachael Corrie in March of 2003 and whose equipment continues to be sold to Israel and to destroy the homes, crops and property of Geneva Convention (IV) enshrined ‘protected persons’.

While her visit was brief, Secretary Rice covered a lot of subjects. One purpose was to meet and greet the new President Michel Suleiman who some in the Welch Club feel is too friendly with the Hezbollah-led Opposition (read: Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and a majority of Lebanon’s Christians).

“He’s a very fine man”, she called out to the Press, as she dashed to meet with a quartet of gentlemen who is not at all happy with her these days.

Ms. Rice could be excused for dreading this necessary meeting which included the Bush “A” team here in Lebanon. Before racing over to meet with Parliament Speaker and Hezbollah ally, Nabih Berri, Rice met with Hezbollah Leaders in Lebanon.

According to Israeli journalist Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, writing in a report published at 7pm Jerusalem time on June 17, 2008 on Arutz Sheva, the IsraelNationalNews.com, Rice also met with Hezbollah officials in trying to work out a governmental accommodation. This observer’s Hezbollah sources are not prepared to confirm this report just now.

Rice held talks at Qoratem Palace with the March 14 majority alliance represented by Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri, Democratic Gathering leader Walid Jumblatt, Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Rice reportedly got an ear full which included, depending on the source, an alphabet soup of problems and complaints which included:

* “Where the hell were you (the Bush administration) when we needed you to enforce your bright ideas regarding attacking Hezbollah’s phone system and sacking the pro-opposition Airport security Chief!” (On Tuesday June 10, 2008 Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General, and former long time chemistry Professor, Naim Qassim, told this observer and former US Ambassador Richard Viets, and the visiting Washington DC based Council for the National Interest delegation that Hezbollah made a move to emphasize its opposition to the US-ordered initiative only following nearly 10 hours (of monitored?) phone calls between Washington and Prime Minister Siniora office “and other countries.” Hezbollah, Qassim explained, with a smile and twinkle in his eye, believes Lebanon’s government is occupied and that all important decisions are now being made in Washington.)

* “Hezbollah will likely sweep the next election so what are you going to do about it?” This is a tough one to answer for the Bush administration given all its solemn words about the Democracy project, loving Lebanon, “being here to support the freely elected government of Lebanon,” what is “good for Lebanon is good for the United States” etc.

Some in the Media wanted to know if the US would repeat those words after the next election, perhaps remembering the US quick switch regarding “respecting the will of the voters” that occurred in other places including Palestine with the Hamas victory, Iraq and Egypt. Hezbollah Deputy Naim Qassim stated during the above noted meeting that Hezbollah intends to compete in the coming election for seats throughout Lebanon and hopes to win half, or 64, of the 128 seats with its Christian, Sunni and Druze allies. Other observers think Hezbollah will win more than 70 of the Parliament’s seats. Either way, Hezbollah becomes the next government of Lebanon.

Does it get declared ‘a terrorist regime’ or does it get taken off the US terrorist list? The inquiring minds meeting with Rice wanted to know. Put another way, Ms. Rice says the US wants to work with “the very fine Michel Suleiman”; will it also want to work with “the very fine Hezbollah government”?

Rice, talking to reporters at Ain al-Tineh following a cordial meeting with Speaker Berri said the Shia speaker and close confidante of Hezbollah realizes that he enjoys the backing of the United States. She dodged a question as to whether Washington would recognize the next Lebanese government if it is a majority Hezbollah government. Some thought her warmth toward Berri was meant to signal Hezbollah that the US realized its awkward position if it keeps touting democracy and free elections and continues to reject the results of those democratic elections.

* The Shebaa Farms issue was also raised and complaints were aired to Rice by her team that the US has not pressured Israel to return them thus bolstering Hezbollah’s resistance role. While this issue has been raised since, since Israel took the Farms in 1967, it has become acute since 2000. Rice repeated the Bush administration mantra that the matter must be studied and the UN must be more vigorous in making a decision.

“The Secretary-General should intensify his efforts,” she told the gathering and also advised them that Presidents Sarkozy and Bush discussed the matter and want the UN of occupy them.

The fact of the matter is that the UN cartography completed the study nearly one year ago and the parties agree that the Farms belongs to Lebanon and that Israel must withdraw. Israel is demanding a unknown price before it departs and as in the case of the recently announced 1,300 new housing units in Palestine (40,000 more over the next 10 years) believes the Bush administration is finished and in unable to pressure Israel due to the US election season.

Rice is angry over being stiffed by Olmert and Livni during the weekend on the settlement expansions as well as this week’s further land grab of prime agricultural land inside Gaza along the Gaza-Israel border, but feels the US can do nothing, though she will mention it to the Israelis. She has altered her language just a little bit on the Shebaa Farms and now adds that the relevant UN resolution must be enforced. She of course has in mind UNSCR 1701, not the 60 year old UNSCR 242 or the 40 year old 425 which respectively demand complete Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian and Lebanese land.

Rice heard plenty about Hezbollah and how the coming prisoner exchange promised by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah — likely to happen within days — will enhance the party even more. Rice is aware that US impotence in getting Israel to hand over the cluster bomb maps has caused continuing loss of life and use of agricultural acreage in the South. She was advised that all of Lebanon is outraged about this and why hasn’t the Bush administration done something about it? She was advised that human rights organizations and some NGOs are encouraging Hezbollah to delay any prisoner swap with Israel until the German mediators can get Israel to include the landmine and cluster bomb maps in the deal.

Hezbollah just may take their advice. The party is very aware of last month’s 111 Nation initialed Treaty banning cluster bombs and moreover, Hezbollah’s core Shia constituency in the South of Lebanon is the group most affected, every hour, every day, by the unexploded ordnance. One Hezbollah Commander asked this observer, “if the cluster bombs were in occupied Palestine and we had the maps, and withheld them, how do you suppose the situation with respect to US pressure would differ?”

Rice assured her interlocutors, as she has repeatedly done since the August 2006 cessation of attack that, as with the serial Israeli violations of the 1976 US Arms Export Act as amended, “we are looking into that — it’s being considered” (read: ‘forget about it fellas — it ain’t gonna happen’).

So if the “A Team” feels let down as Condi jets off into the horizon, perhaps it is a case of unrequited love. But her guys’ political disappointment with the Bush administration is palpable.

The ‘ruling team’ in fracturing according to the Beirut political analysts. Some are plotting against those they usually kiss upon greeting, and turning on others while blaming “the Americans.” All, no doubt, calculating their next moves and their confessions’ odds in the rapidly approaching elections.

One of the currently most disgruntled appears to be Walid Jumblatt who is said by political analysts in Beirut to have several reasons to dismantle the March 14 alliance. Because the base which supports the Welch Club projects is made up of Jumblatt, Al-Hariri, and the Christian team, Jumblatt is in a position to cause a lot of changes in the period preceding the parliamentary elections. Jumblatt felt months ago that the United States was not about to do anything concrete to help his team but he kept wagering on Hezbollah abstaining from moving on the ground and “going after him in the mountain”.

After he became aware that there is no US effort to change the Syrian government, and that Hezbollah’s strength is growing and that nothing can be done to stop it, he was told by the Saudis to handle the Sunni situation until Al-Hariri matures enough. According to Beirut’s Al Akbar Daily, this Welch Club directive caused Jumblatt to temporize and tread water. But then the disturbances took place last month and pushed Jumblatt into a comprehensive re-evaluation of his actions and policies and even of his leadership position.

People who have met with Walid Jumblatt recently, including the delegation of Harvard grad students and the American CNI group mentioned above, report that he is in particularly bad shape.

The brilliant long term Progressive Socialist leader is contemplating retirement to enjoy his vast (’socialist’) land holdings and vineyards above Khalde and Damour. Last week he told his key advisors that he was prepared to resign and turn the PSP over to his son (that’s how it works in feudal Lebanon tradition – Primogeniture today! Primogeniture tomorrow! Primogeniture forever to paraphrase the late Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama).

When one aid asked Walid if his depression and wish to resign was the result of the May events (Hezbollah roared up into parts of his Chouf to rattle his cage, one observer noted, with unnecessary loss of life on both sides), apparently it did shake him up. Only yesterday did the Lebanese Army finally vacate his Sweifeit Headquarters and turn it back over to the PSP). Jumblatt was candid as reported in Beirut newspapers. “They won. We lost”, he was quoted as saying, referring to the 20-month struggle between the US-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition.

Walid has been Condoleezza’s favorite for more than a year. She once said he is “so lovable” and reminded her of a cross between the Nutty Professor and that fellow in Back to the Future.

This observer withdraws, with apologies, the tentative conclusion he drew during the fighting that many of Jumblatt’s (Druze) people broke from him in favor of his Druze rival, ex-minister Talal Arsalan in the May conflict. Some did, but talking with many Druze since then I have come to believe that when last month’s shooting started, like other confessions, the Druze circled their wagons and most still love Walid. I overstated the Druze defection and thus I erred.

One could hope that the “A Team” recovers from any heartache and bruised feelings as Condi flits back to Stanford after the Bush administration ends its reign of terror in this region.

Mike Whitney: Between May 7 to May 10, Hezbollah took over Beirut, shut down the city’s TV and communications facilities, blocked the main highways, closed the airport, and surrounded the homes of the leading political leaders with armed gunman. The action was taken in response to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s decision to outlaw Hezbollah’s telecommunication network and sack the head of security at Beirut airport. Although the incident has been downplayed in the western media, it appears that Hezbollah achieved a total victory and is now recognized as the strongest group operating within Lebanon. What affect will Hezbollah’s victory have on the political dynamic within Lebanon?

Franklin Lamb: I don’t believe Hezbollah achieved a ‘total victory’ as the question suggests, but its achievements were certainly strategic and that sets out the future in many respects. As you rightly imply, Hezbollah’s emphatic statement by its quick move into the March 14 areas was aimed at Israel, the Bush Administration and their agents and allies in Lebanon and the Middle East.

What provoked the precise timing of the action was the fact, as Sheik Naim Qassim, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General told this observer and a former American Ambassador and other US citizens who met with him on Monday May 10 in Dahiyeh, was a 10 hour “series of conference calls” from the Welch Club to the Serail (Government House) that immediately preceded the Siniora government decision to move against Hezbollah, its vital optic fiber phone system and the Airport security office. According to Hezbollah sources there were other US planned assaults on the Opposition which have not been made public.

According to Qassim during this frenetic series of conference calls involving several countries, the decision was made in Washington to move against Hezbollah. Hezbollah believes the Lebanese government is virtually occupied by the Bush Administration and all substantive decisions now announced in Beirut come from Washington.

The outcome of the May events as you implied in your question was devastating for the Bush administration and its allies. It not only led to withdrawal of the two government decisions against Hezbollah, it led to the Dora agreement and the current serious efforts to form a unity government and share power. For nearly two years the Opposition tried to achieve a unity government for Lebanon and may now have done so with its counterstrike against the Welch club move against it.

The May events led to agreement on holding a democratic election next year and the veto power of the opposition over US initiatives sent to the ‘majority’.

Hezbollah’s Sheik Naim Qassim stated to a US Delegation two days ago that the party and its allies expect to win 64 of the 128 seats in next years election. Others think the current opposition may win as many as 70 seats in the new Parliament. In either case Hezbollah and their allies will effectively be the next government of Lebanon.

Will the predicted Hezbollah electoral victory be the fourth Democratic election in the Middle East rejected by the Bush administrations new Middle East project? Will the Bush administration accept the fact that Hezbollah will likely have the Ministries of Defense, Exterior and Finance (the others don’t matter much) and be true to its daily claims that it wants to help Lebanon have a democratic and stable government which the Hezbollah government will bring? Very doubtful.

Hezbollah will face many challenges but the Party will also have the opportunity to demonstrate what it is capable of delivering in terms of social services to Lebanon’s increasingly desperate population. Hezbollah’s much anticipated Economic Plan may reshape the Middle East and the populations of Egypt, Jordan, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may demand a local version of the same.

On the downside of the May events, Hezbollah has yet to convincingly explain to the people of Lebanon why a convoy of its fighters advanced on Sweifeit and other villages in the lower Chouf. People died needlessly including this observers neighbor, Marwan Jurdi. Marwan was a teacher and had no business dusting off his rifle to fight Hezbollah who had no business entering Sweifeit. A tragedy which Hezbollah leader Nasrallah correctly stated at a rally a couple of weeks ago caused deep wounds, which must be healed.

Presumably the fast strike was to neutralize Walid Jumblatt who during two recent interviews with Harvard students and the US Council for the National Interest is reported to be in bad shape and scanning the horizon for a new ‘alliance’.

Hezbollah will likely not touch Walid because he is not reliable or predictable and is thought to be owned by the CIA. The “socialist” Jumblatt has amassed a huge fortune (which Lebanese warlord has not?)of land holdings with expansive vineyards above Khalde and may retire to survey and manage his estates. He knows he is a marked man from many quarters( who isn’t around here these day?) In Beirut Jumbalt is known as the “walking dead man.”

MW: How will it affect relations with Israel and the US? Does Hezbollah now pose a credible deterrent to a future Israeli invasion?

Franklin Lamb: Yes. There has been a fundamental shift in this respect. Hezbollah actually achieved its deterrent capacity following the July 2006 War. Some say as early as 1996 or 2000 when if forced Israel out of most of Lebanon.

Several times in the past 20 months Israel has “probed” Lebanon and Hezbollah has signaled thru back channels that it was ready for a ferocious response if Israel again attacked Lebanon.

Most recently Hezbollah’s deterrence capacity was exhibited when Israel cancelled its attack on May 11, which was green lighted in Washington to assist the Siniora government allies in West Beirut. Frankly put. Israel is no longer able to attack an Arab country, Lebanon, with impunity. A historic first. Rather, it knows that it faces massive retaliation when it next attacks Lebanon. Recently there was a Report that Tel Aviv would receive 600 missiles each day following an Israeli attack on Lebanon. US Congressional sources have challenged that figure and have estimated the number at 1,000 Hezbollah missiles per day against Tel Aviv is war breaks out.

MW: Hezbollah’s takeover of Beirut was an amazingly swift and efficient military operation, and yet, it is nearly impossible to find any details about the operation itself. What really happened on the ground and how is it that a armed militia was able to carry out such a sophisticated “Green Beret” type operation (on a city-wide scale) with so few casualties? Can we expect that the “Hezbollah model” of resistance will be exported to other neighboring countries like Iraq, Jordan or Saudi Arabia?

Franklin Lamb: Contrary to Israeli reports, those who moved into Beirut did not come from the South of Lebanon, from the Bekaa nor were they necessarily the ‘first team.’ Most were reserves with regular full time jobs in Beirut and the surrounding area.

Most came in cars and vans just three miles south of Hamra from the Jnah, Ouzai, Ghoberi, Dahiyeh area. They moved along the seafront past the Coral Beach Hotel, along the only free public beach in Beirut, Ramlet al Baida, along Corniche Mazra and fanned out up the inclines to the right into West Beirut streets.

It did not require much more than 20 minutes to reach their forward positions. Others, including Amal and the National Syrian Socialist Party came from the new airport road and from the southeast and east.

Potentially the ‘Hezbollah model’ has application in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, if oppositions there can replicate the Hezbollah model of study, analysis, caution, patience and determined, disciplined execution. Hezbollah is not essentially a Shia phenomenon, it is a rapidly expanding resistance and justice movement and that it what makes it so lethal to colonialism and occupation enterprises such as Zionist Israel and hegemonistic America during the current period.

MW: Even before the takeover, Hezbollah chairman, Hassan Nasrallah was the most popular Arab leader in the world. Is Nasrallah really the “terrorist-extremist” he is made out to be in the western press? What affect has Nasrallah had on Arabs living in the region?

Franklin Lamb: Hezbollah under the leadership of Hassan Nasrallah has given the Arabs of the region restored self-respect following 60 years of humiliation and 41 years of repeated and voracious occupation and aggression. Hezbollah’s sometimes spectacular success has inspired many in the younger generation throughout Lebanon among all the sects as well as the Middle East and far beyond. One sees this in the faces of the old and young . . . in the market places and play grounds in the universities and middle schools. in the course also of interviews. The Middle East is standing up and reclaiming it pre-Crusade unity, spirit, purpose and culture. Nasrallah is the new Salaadin, Nassar and regional hope.

MW: Nasrallah has shown that he is capable of thinking strategically and politically. This appears to have put him at an advantage in dealing with both Israel and the United States. Israel’s 34-day war was not just a humiliating defeat; it was also seriously mismanaged from the beginning. In battles in cities and towns throughout southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters went toe to toe with the better-equipped IDF and turned them away. Is it possible that the real path to peace in the Middle East is a strong army — like Hezbollah — on Israel’s northern flank to discourage further military adventurism?

Franklin Lamb: I see it certainly as one of the major elements because if takes away the first option that Israel has used in the past. Israel has committed aggression more than 40 times on the ground against Lebanon starting in 1967 to July 2006. This era is over. Soon even Israel’s air force will be in peril from Hezbollah missiles as it attempts to add to its more than 6000 violations of Lebanese airspace and sovereignty since the 1960’s.

MW: How do you respond to people who believe that Hassan Nasrallah is a religious fanatic who wants to install an “Iran-type” theocratic regime in Lebanon?

Franklin Lamb: I would ask them to study the subject a little more closely and they would learn that Hezbollah, in the words of PLO founder and longtime representative of the PLO in Lebanon, Shafiq al-Hout, recently discussed with this observer, Hezbollah is probably the most secular of the Parties in Lebanon. What he meant is that Hezbollah and its leaders rely on reason, dialogue, and empirical analysis not on what we often think in the West as blind application of Sharia.

Hezbollah believes in one god as you know. Having said that they are very secular in the ways they tolerate and respect others beliefs and rights to differ on issues of politics, philosophy, sociology, and personal beliefs. I personally know many Shia and Hezbollah members who are very secular and keep their religious views to themselves. Just yesterday, when my motorcycle was in the shop I hopped a taxi to Hamra and the Shia driver brought up the subject of religion and presented several of his arguments for why he has real doubts there is a God. Unfortunately there is deep and vast misinformation/disinformation about Hezbollah and their religious beliefs. They are very secular on a day-by-day basis and they are very tolerant of others views. In Dahilyeh, after a short period one does not feel that one in a religious enclave.

Nasrallah and Hezbollah, as Naim Qassim told former US Ambassador Richard Viets and his delegation a couple of days ago that there is no interest in an Islamic Republic in Lebanon. That idea was expressed back in 1985 in Hezbollah’s ‘open letter’ announcing its formation. The relevant language was influenced by Ayatollah Khomeini and the then recent success of the Iranian revolution.

For years, Nasrallah has regularly stated that Lebanon is not Iran and never will be and if Lebanon wants an Islamic republic let 90% of the people vote for it and only then could it be considered. The Islamic Republic of Lebanon idea was a fantasy and virtually no one but the Zionist lobby and their pals even mention the concept anymore.

MW: General Michel Suleiman, Lebanon’s army chief of staff, was sworn in as the country’s new president last Sunday. The Bush administration did not send a delegation, which indicates the level of frustration with recent developments. It’s clear now that the real center of power has shifted away from Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his allies in the “US backed” March 14th Coalition to Hezbollah. Nasrallah said in a recent speech that he has no interest in meddling in Lebanon’s political affairs but will not disarm his militia. With Hezbollah currently at full strength and confident after their victory; do you think an Israeli attack on Iran less likely? If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, will Nasrallah launch missile strikes on Tel Aviv?

Franklin Lamb: My personal belief is that Hezbollah would attack Tel Aviv if Israel or the US attacked Iran and perhaps even Syria.

I do not think either the US or Israel will attack Iran before Bush leaves office although both would very much like to.

The $4 per gallon gas prices in the States could rise to $12 per gallon if Iran shuts down the Gulf of Hormuz, which it would almost certainly do.

Israel does not have the military power to take on Iran by itself and the still drowsy American public has no appetite for yet another war. Such a conflict might well destroy the State of Israel and it knows it.

Such an attack would likely cause Iraq to explode in a massive violence against American forces that would make the 1968 Tet Offensive appear mild in comparison. The populations of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia would likely attempt to overthrow their governments.

This would be for starters and things would escalate form there. The results are unpredictable but surely would be catastrophic on a scale never seen since World War II.

The United States is on its way out of the Middle East. Attacking Iran would quite simply accelerate its departure.

MW: The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz is reporting that Hezbollah and the Olmert administration are close to a deal on a prisoner exchange. There are also reports that Israel is negotiating secretly with Syria on the Golan Heights and that the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has opened talks with Hamas. Is Olmert trying to divert attention from his own problems (bribery charges) or is Israel attempting to neutralize its potential enemies in the event of an attack on Iran?

Franklin Lamb: I think you are exactly correct on this point.

MW: Hezbollah has been supportive of labor strikes in Beirut. Are Lebanon’s troubles really the result of sectarian problems (as the media suggests) or class divisions? Is this really a struggle between the wealthy Sunnis and Christians versus the poor Shia?

Franklin Lamb: More class divisions and the economy I would say. Skyrocketing prices increasing power cuts, poor job market, shortage of housing are all increasing tension and conflict. Plus outside actors continuing to meddle in Lebanese internal affairs and promote conflict. The exacerbation tensions here is cause less by whether one is Armenian, Druze,Chaldean, Maronite, Shia, Sunni etc. that the yawning economic gap.

With respect to the Saudi/Hariri owned Solidere Corp. This week in announced profits of $157 million dollars for the most recent reporting period. These are astounding and record figures when consumer good prices are rising. Under Rafik Hariri’s premiership, Lebanon borrowed more than $40 billion to rebuild parts of Beirut (now effectively owned by Solidere/Hariri Family and Friends). This interest alone on these loans payable partly to Hariri and Saudi banks keeps Lebanon stagnate and barely above water. Without a new economic plan, Lebanon is lost. Hezbollah claims it has a plan, and we will soon see what it looks like and if Hezbollah can transform Lebanon economically.

MW: Are the prospects for peace in the region better or worse with a well-armed Hezbollah?

Franklin Lamb: Better in the sense that there is for the first time in modern history an Arab/Muslim deterrence to Zionist and Western colonialism. Worse in the sense that the US and Israel are rapidly losing influence and viability in the Middle East and may once again resort to war to stem the breach.

The agreement was not ideal for either party and I hope that it will serve as a launch pad for decent relations between the majority and the opposition. We will tackle the other issues in Beirut and there is no need to fear anything.

— MP Michel Aoun, Hezbollah ally and leader of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) following this morning’s Doha agreement

Tent City, Beirut — Lebanon will have General Michel Suleiman as its new President, possibly within hours. But no later than Sunday May 25, in order to allow time for the international community to send representatives.

Suleiman had appeared to be closer to the government coalition when he was first nominated but he was recently criticized as being too close to the opposition when his troops did not intervene when gun battles broke out between the warring sides this month.

Some say events make the man. Others the obverse. Suleiman could be a much needed, honest, strong, independent leader that will endear him to Lebanon and the Arab cause and Nation. This ‘unity president’ was finally confirmed after rival Lebanese political factions agreed, after talks in Doha, Qatar, in a deal to resolve the 18-month crisis that has kept the country without a president since November.

Under the country’s sectarian democracy, the position of President is filled by a Christian Maronite. Suleiman will be Lebanon’s 12th president since the country’s independence in 1943 and the third after the Saudi-brokered Taif Accord that ended Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. General Suleiman, 59, has held his post as Army commander since 1998.

As of this afternoon, hundreds of people and shop-owners of downtown Beirut took to the streets of the city in jubilation over the agreement. Foreigners living in Lebanon cannot help but share their joy and being filled with a sense of “These gifted and long-suffering people deserve some peace” — enshallah it will last.

Some of the residents of Beirut’s Tent City are posing for photos this morning; others are packing up their belongings and taking down their tents following the Doha Agreement that was reached in the early hours of May 21. It buys some time for Lebanon to sort out its politics. One young Swiss couple is haggling with a fellow from Lebanon’s Communist Party (what’s left of it) trying to buy a tent for their trek around Lebanon.

Hezbollah has informed the head of Beirut’s municipality and its Mayor that it will help rehabilitate downtown Beirut and will pay for any damage incurred to stores that happened during the nearly 18 months stay of the Tent City.

The Accord has been well received internationally so far, with Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and France expressing satisfaction, even though each side gave a qualified endorsement of the Doha results depending on their party’s stance. The Bush administration is reported to believe that what was agreed upon at Doha was probably the best they could get at the last minute when delegates were packing to leave Doha without any agreement. Time will tell.

The dismantling of the Hezbollah-erected ‘tent city’ in posh Rafiq Hariri-built downtown Beirut cannot happen fast enough for those whose businesses have suffered, been forced to move, or have been lost due to the 18-month pro-opposition civil disobedience occupation. There is hope that some of the millions of dollars lost during the 18 month occupation can be recouped if the coming tourist season brings in around one million visitors.

Relief is in the air.

The mental and physical fatigue of many Lebanese from the constant tension, political bickering and occasional deadly violence in their country has been summed up by demonstrations held along the road leading to Beirut’s international airport by non-governmental organizations. “Agree, or shame on you,” read another message to Lebanon’s representatives, while another said, “We want to raise our children in Lebanon!”

Across Lebanon a collective sigh of relief is palpable and almost audible as the civic organization Khalass! (Enough!) removes their signs from the airport road. Yesterday, several dozen citizens whom were injured and left handicapped from the 1975-90 Civil War held up signs telling their leaders to end the political paralysis in Lebanon or not to return. “If you don’t reach agreement, don’t come back!”, some of the signs read.

During the last hours of May 20 there was gloom at the Doha Conference Center where Lebanon’s political parties were gathered and the usual political bickering continued. Opposition Member Michel Aoun accused pro-Siniora government March14 leader Saad Hariri of seeking to establish Beirut as a ‘Hariri’ city, not a capital for all Lebanon. “This is the main point we disagree on,” he said.

“The agreement was not ideal for either party and I hope that it will serve as a launch pad for decent relations between the majority and the opposition. We will tackle the other issues in Beirut and there is no need to fear anything”, Aoun has said today.

Meanwhile Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea repeated his recent favorite phase that “They [Hezbollah] will not get at Doha what they did not get with their weapons”, and that the Doha talks were “staggering” due to Hezbollah demands. Geagea renewed his call yesterday for “an Arab Deterrent Force” to bring stability to Lebanon. When a journalist asked Geagea did he mean like the last Arab Deterrent Force that came in 1976 and stayed for 29 years (i.e. Syria) Geagea just glared at the impertinent young lady from Greece while others smiled and giggled.

So it is thus that after five days, at close to 3 a.m. on May 21, Lebanon’s political factions have in fact agreed to an arrangement which will allow for General Michel Suleiman to be elected Lebanon’s President, and a unity government to be formed.

The recent stumbling block was the new election law. The Hezbollah-led Opposition still wants as close to a one person-one vote system as they can get. They would also like the voting age lowered to 18 years which would benefit them among the younger, politically active Lebanese. They did not get either in Doha but with an expanded government to be set up within days discussions can begin anew.

With regard to the critical ‘deal breaker’ issue of Hezbollah’s weapons, this was kept off the table and finessed in Doha and the new government will debate and decide how Lebanon will view and deal with it. Hezbollah feels protected for now since it effectively achieved at Doha the veto over government Cabinet decisions. It had sought this since the end of the July 2006 war.

Pending the 2009 Parliamentary elections, the ‘unity government’ is to be as follows:

The US-, Israel-, Saudi-backed majority gets 16 of the 30 Cabinet seats. The Iran- and Syria-favored Opposition led by Hezbollah and which includes the largest Christian party, the Michel Aoun-led FPM gets 13 Cabinet posts and the remaining 3 will be chosen by President Suleiman.

Some observers, including this one, thinks that next year’s election with likely double Hezbollah’s current number of Parliamentary seats of 14, which could go as high at forty or more. Michel Aoun’s FPM also stands to double the number of its Deputies. If this happens there would be ample votes for the Opposition (which could become the new Majority following the 2009 balloting) to protect the weapons of the Resistance, still a key point of contention between the US-Israel-Saudi backed Majority Government and the Iranian-Syrian favored Opposition. For now the Government will address the issue of not using weapons to achieve political gains and focus on the commitment to the decisions reached during the 2006 dialogue. This should work for the time being.

Also agreed upon at Doha is the adoption of the Qada (Lebanese administrative District)-based 1960 electoral law with Beirut divided into three constituencies:

* The first electoral district comprises Ashrafiye, Rmeil and Saifi with five seats: Two Armenians, one Maronite, one Orthodox and one Catholic;

* The second electoral district comprising Bashoura, Medawwar and Marfa’ with four seats: One Sunni, one Shiite and two Armenians;

* The third electoral district comprising Mazraa, Msaytbe, Ras Beirut, Mina el Hosn, Zaqa el Blat and Dar el Mrayseh with ten seats: Five Sunnis, one Shiite, one Druze, one Orthodox, one Evangelical and one for the minorities.

This arrangement is actually pretty fair to both sides for now given the current circumstances and the fact that there has been no census since 1932. Saad Hariri got most of what the Future Movement wanted in order to preserve his electoral base in West Beirut.

Soon all eyes will be on the coming election which may be the most important since Lebanon achieved its independent from France in 1943.

Washington, Tel Aviv, Tehran, Damascus and Riyadh will have their favorite candidates and will, no doubt, be watching closely.

Yadlin was putting it mildly.

But what Intelligence Chief Yadlin did not reveal to the Israeli public was just how “significant” but also “immediate” the Hezbollah threat was on May 11. Nor was he willing to divulge the fact that he received information via US and French channels that if the planned attack on Lebanon’s capitol went forward, that in the view of the US intelligence community Tel Aviv would be subject to “approximately 600 Hezbollah rockets in the first 24 hours in retaliation and at least that number on the following day”.

The Israeli Intel Chief also declined to reveal that despite Israel’s recent psyche-war camping about various claimed missile shields “the State of Israel is perfecting”, that this claim is being ridiculed at the Pentagon. “Israel will not achieve an effective shield against the current generation of rockets, even assuming no technological improvements in the current rockets aimed at it, for another 20 years. And that assumes the US will continue to fund their research and development for the hoped for shields”, according to Pentagon, US Senate Intelligence Committee, and very well informed Lebanese sources.

The planned attack on Beirut

According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the Bush administration initially green-lighted the intended May 11 Israel ‘demonstration of solidarity’ with the pro-Bush administration militias, some with which Israel has maintained ties since the days of Bashir Gemayal and Ariel Sharon.

In the end, “the Bush administration got cold feet”, a Congressional source revealed. So did Israel.

Israel was not willing to proceed with the original Bush Administration idea which was to have Bush attend the May 15 Israel anniversary celebrations following the Israeli attack meant to hit Hezbollah hard, and give Bush the credit for coming to the dangerous region. The message was to be that Bush comes to the rescue on horseback and leads the US Calvary charge straight out of a B western movie where the bugle would sound and flag would be unfurled and the white hat good guys would show their stuff before riding into the sunset and back to Texas, leaving the results to the likely Obama administration to sort out.

The plan involved Israeli air strikes on South and West Beirut in support of forces it was assured would be able to surprise and resist Hezbollah and sustain a powerful offensive for 48 hours.

Also presumably disturbing to Israel was the report it received that Hezbollah had once again in all probability hacked its “secure” military intelligence communications and the fear that the information would be shared with others.

The Hezbollah rout of the militias in West Beirut plus the fear of retaliation on Tel Aviv, ruining 60th anniversary celebrations, forced cancellation of the supportive attack.

Israel limited its actions to sending two F-15’s and two F-16’s into as far North as Tyre, one of more of literally hundreds of violations of Lebanese airspace, sovereignty and UNSCR 170l.

Clearly frustrated, Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit said Israel should not yet take any action now, but warned “those things could change if Hezbollah takes over Lebanon”. (A few minutes earlier he had declared that Hezbollah had done just that and had treated the Lebanese army as a doormat).

Later in the Sunday cabinet meeting, Minister Ami Ayalon called for an emergency meeting of the political-security cabinet to discuss “the ongoing crisis in Lebanon and why Israel was not assisting friendly forces.”

Minister Yitzhak Cohen (Shas) said that “Israel must immediately ask the [United Nations] Security Council to hold renewed discussions over Resolution 1701″. The minister was referring to the resolution that stopped the Israeli actions against Lebanon during the 34-day between in 2006, maintaining a fragile cease-fire.

Finally Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert informed Israeli supporters in Lebanon, through the media, and presumably other means that “Israel was following the violence in Lebanon closely, but would refrain from intervening”. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio Sunday that Israel was prepared for the possibility that the situation in Lebanon will deteriorate into another civil war (meaning future opportunities for Israeli influence and intervention in Lebanon) and that the current fighting could end with a Hezbollah takeover of the government. “We need to keep our eyes peeled and be especially sensitive regarding all that is happening there”, Vilnai told Army Radio.

The Bush administration, also disappointed, switched tactics and is opting for domination of the narrative of the fairly complicated events of the past week and using their media and confessional allies to launch a media blitz (minus Future TV for a few days) to flood the airways with:

1. ‘Hezbollah staged a coup d’état’. Even Israel, if not the Bush administration, concedes Hezbollah has no interest in taking over the Government. One observer, paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s comment, deadpanned, “Some Hezbollah Coup! Some Hezbollah Etat!”;
2. Hezbollah brought its forces from the South and occupied West Beirut; Hezbollah did not bring their forces from the South to Beirut, they remained on alert for an Israel attack down South;
3. ‘Hezbollah broke its pledge not to use Resistance arms against Lebanese militias and shot up West Beirut’: The facts are very different when viewed close up on the streets here.

When the Lebanese Resistance took the decision during the early hours of Friday morning to engage in civil disobedience, it delayed its actions so as not to preempt the Labor movement strike for higher wages which it supported. When the marching strikers were prevented from moving into West Beirut the Opposition extended its civil disobedience manifestation.

Various militias, including the smartly outfitted Hariri “Secure Plus” with its distinctive maroon tee-shirts and beige trousers (now know locally by some as “Secure Minus” and a hoped for future Blackwater operation in Lebanon, disintegrated surprisingly quickly because many of its green recruits brought down from Tripoli felt misled and betrayed regarding their job description as they were handed weapons an instructed to fight Hezbollah. Snipers from anti-Opposition factions killed civilians from rooftops in Beirut trying to ignite a civil war.

Hezbollah, acting in self defense according to and acknowledged by various officials including John Dockem at the office of Defense Intelligence-Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), quickly clamped down on the trouble makers, took control of the streets, within hours handed them over to the army, and virtually evacuated West Beirut, retaining one position near Bay Rocks manned by unarmed representatives.

Meanwhile, the Hariri influence has been greatly weakened in Akkar near the Palestinian Refugee camp of Nahr al Bared and in the Tripoli area. According to some political analysts, including Fida’a Ittani, a regular columnist for the independent pro-opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar writing on May 14, the Future Movement, defeated in Beirut, no longer has any serious influence in the North.

Several Salafi al Qaeda-admiring movements are present in Lebanon and like Fatah al Islam’s declaration this week that they will fight for the Sunnis, they vary in their attitudes from silent opposition to Future leader Saad Al-Hariri to fully supporting him as the leader of the Sunnis. These groups are valued by certain ‘leaders’ in Lebanon because are the only ones with coherent structures at the ideological, political, technical, and field levels.

Judging from Saad Hariri’s confused statements at his subsequent news conference and statements by other parties, the bitterness of promised but not forthcoming assistance was evident.

For two days following the debacle of his forces imploding the head of the Future Movement said nothing. Finally on the 14th he broke his silence.

The Halba massacre, committed by Hariri’s Mustaqbal militiamen which brutally and barbarically murdered 11 people from the opposition, did not seem worthy of discussion as he spoke. In a press conference on Tuesday, Hariri simply ignored what all the Lebanese had seen on TV from weapons, ammunition and alcohol found in Future movement offices, and instead listed a series of delusions.

“We awaited an open war on Israel, and yet here is an open war on Beirut and its people”, he stated. Some interpreted this rather odd statement either as a subconscious slip of the tongue on Hariri’s part expressing his frustration that the Israeli help did not arrive or that his reported earlier incoherent state persisted.

Hariri’s original speech was reportedly so confused that the Saudi channel al-Arabiyya decided to cease broadcasting it and subsequently only read excerpts from what he said. It was only when US criticism resumed, and Hezbollah fighters drew back from the streets surrounding his house that Hariri was urged to stand up and speak again with a stronger tone: “This has been decided by the Iranian and Syrian regimes that wanted to play a political game in Lebanon’s streets. For us nothing has changed. We will not negotiate with someone having a pistol pointed to our heads.”

Anger at the Bush administration and Israel by certain warlords in Lebanon must feel much like the frustration of Secure Minus personnel who rushed from Tripoli and felt misled, abandoned and cheated.

Street Notes 12 May 2008

In the lower Chouf village of Choufeit with its panoramic view of Beirut’s closed airport (which will likely stay closed for 4 or 5 more days as a Hezbollah pressure point on the Bush administration to achieve a settlement that it views as fair and just), Dahiyeh, Sabra, Shatila and Burj Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camps; Pentecost Sunday started in a somber mood for the few remaining Christians and dominant Druze population of this picturesque, rugged, hilly and ancient village.

The reason was that virtually the whole village was in attendance at a 9 a.m. memorial service for two supporters of the Druze Lebanese Democratic Party, 18 year old ____ and 22 year old _____ (names withheld at the request of family pending notification of family members living outside Lebanon) who were probably shot as they drove too fast through a newly setup check-point on May 10th. (The exact circumstances and who exactly was responsible are not clear given the myriad explanations one receives depending on who one talks to in this tight-knit village.

Perhaps only in American black communities has this observer witnessed such a large turnout by the local population at funerals for a neighborhood member who was felled by violence. Parked cars snaked for nearly one mile in all directions alongside the winding roads. Hundreds of Druze women dressed in black with white scarves around their necks and some men in traditional black baggy Druze garb with knitted white caps mournfully gathered along their former enemies, the Christian population.

Once more, a Mt. Lebanon village united in mourning at dawn would be killing the neighbors sitting next to them at a memorial service hours later in the afternoon. Choufeit has never been more split than it is this morning. “If Jumblatt ever comes to Choufeit we will kill him,” said a town butcher from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who fought hard for five hours yesterday against Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP).

The killing of these two Druze young men did not directly cause yesterday’s intense violence in Choufeit but it definitely affected the tenseness and ferocity of their revenge seeking friends, family and community.

Chief among those blamed is Walid Jumblatt, known as “the weather vane”, given his history of changing his political stance depending on the current power alignment, and who is expected to seek a deal with Hezbollah in a bid to keep some position in the coming new government. It was just 36 months ago that Jumblatt was praising Hezbollah as the legitimate Lebanese Resistance and he may return to that position as he appears ready to give up his role in the Welch Club and try to save his leadership role in the deeply fractured Druze community. Hezbollah will now dry up Jumblatt’s power and shut him up. The Party will very likely force him to reconcile with the — as of this morning — much stronger Druze leader Talal Arslan, Hezbollah’s ally, who is getting credit for arranging last night’s ceasefire and presumably saving many Druze lives.

Hezbollah support in the Druze community is growing rapidly this morning. Its current major task now being worked on is to improve its relations with many seething in the Sunni community. As St. Joseph’s University gifted Professor Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous recently commented, (I paraphrase) when trouble starts in Lebanon the religious confessions look to their own, no matter what they were pontificating just hours before about “one Lebanon — one people de-confessionalized.”

As of 6 a.m. this morning, Choufeit is deeply wounded and the main street is littered with hundreds of 5 inch 50mm heavy machine gun casings as well Kalashnikov and M-16 shells, RPG casings, 107mm mortar rounds, broken glass, many patches and trails of of blood, a few burned out cars, and a few damaged shelled apartment houses. The house of Jumblatt’s deputy was shelled and burned around 5 p.m. yesterday — it was still burning this morning as no one has bothered to put it out. The power lines to Choufeit have been cut and main cables are on some roads. It is unknown how long the village will be without power.

“We killed 56 terrorists and they killed four of us”, town lawyer Khalil Juridi who practices law with his brother and sister as Jurdi, Jurdi, and Jurdi in the Jurdi Bldg in Choufeit. (The casualty numbers are not verified yet. This morning as I passed by Choufeit’s Kamal Jumblatt hospital, a nurse told me she thought about 10 were killed.)

I was surprised to see Khalil heavily armed as I returned from Hamra around 12:30 yesterday. As he kept warning me and others to stay inside, dozens of towns people, virtually all of whom had been at the young men’s funeral hours before they gathered with their weapons on the streets. This was a motley group to be sure but steeled and ready to die if need be to defend their village. Some left to help friends fight in Toumat Niha, Mresti and Jabal el-Barouk. Fighting also raged in of Kayfoun, Qamatiyeh, Bchamoun, Aytat, Shweifat, Baysour, Ras el-Jabal. The difference in Choufeit is that it was largely a Muslim intra-Druze fight.

This observer at first discounted what Khalil was saying yesterday early afternoon about the pro-Hezbollah Talal Arslan Druze group, many of whom lived in our neighborhood and who Khalil had grown up with, advancing up the hill on Choufeit because I was distracted thinking about my morning is Hamra. Plus, one gets inured here sometimes by so many rumors difficult to pin down.

In Hamra, on Pentacost Sunday morning things were much clearer. Contrary to the BBC report, Hezbollah has not completely withdrawn from West Beirut. They are manning the cut and block of the main Corniche road just diagonal from the Bay Bank in front of Bay Rocks. They advised that they will stay there pending a fair settlement with the ‘ruling team’.

The reality in West Beirut today is that even if every Hezbollah member but one withdrew, Hezbollah would still be in control of Lebanon’s capitol. He does not even need to have a weapon. All that is necessary is for it to be known that he is present. The Lebanese Army is increasingly deployed but its role is determined by the Bay Rocks barricade.

One faculty member of the American University of Beirut (AUB) explained that if someone from Hezbollah handed the US Embassy gatekeeper a polite note asking the Embassy to close up shop, it would be done within hours this Monday. This observer agrees with an increasing number here that in critical ways, Hezbollah is now Lebanon and the American era is teetering. Whether the damage done by the Israeli lobby controlled Bush administration Middle East policy is reversible, anything soon is unclear. Comments such as the one by US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe on Saturday blamed Hezbollah for the fighting saying: “They continue to be a destabilizing force there with the backing of their supporters, Iran and Syria.” The immediate future is not encouraging until the current US administration indicates a willingness to engage with Hezbollah on the basis of mutual respect, free and open dialogue, and commitment to solving the regions problems, including a just solution to the Question of Palestine.

Two blocks up to the right of the continuing Hezbollah position are 10 or more Christian National Syrian Socialist Party (NSSP) groups of heavily armed fighters. Unlike the Hezbollah guys they would not agree to photos but did proudly take this observer’s photo of their handiwork outside the burned out Hariri Future TV complex first started in 1993 and which developed recently into not just the mouthpiece of the pro-Bush Administration March 14 group but as the broadcaster of reputedly excellent programs popular around the Middle East.

The NSSP and the army are both posted in close proximity of Queitem, the Hariri mansion where Saad is in some ways under house arrest this Monday afternoon. Yesterday, Amin Gemayel rushed back from Paris, against the advice of some, to try to prevent Samir Geagea from staging a putsch and replace Amin as head of the Phalange Party.

“Amin’s tough problem is that Geagea learned more from Amin’s brother Bashir than Amin did concerning how to deal with rivals for power. Ask the Frangieh and Chamoun families”, a former deputy to George Hrawi of Lebanon’s Communist Party recently commented. Jumblatt not Geagea (this time) is a prime suspect in Hrawi’s 2005 assassination.

Geagea is meeting with Siniora this afternoon and earlier reported rumors are resurfacing that Geagea may be cannoned the Welch Club future Christian leader of Lebanon.

The Arab League delegation arriving in Beirut is expected to achieve more than a vague general ‘feel good’ declaration before it departs. The reality is that the League also is deeply split with dramatic increase of support for the Lebanese Resistance.

Returning to Choufeit where I was staying, I had become used to descending the three floors underground in pitch blackness, sometimes using my mobile phone for a little light.

Returning around 2pm yesterday I was very surprised to find around 35 people outside my flat door in the stairwell. I did not see or hear them until I stepped on one. As I opened the door we could see each other and one mother explained that they were all afraid to stay in the upper floors because they have lots of windows and they are afraid of snipers. As she spoke the children (who they later told me they held their breaths as I came down the stairs in the dark because they thought I must be the ‘enemy’) resumed their crying and wailing. The flat is large with two baths but little furniture and they all moved in. As I left this morning around 6am some were still asleep on the floors.

Getting solid information here is sometimes tough unless you do the digging yourself.

Some of the best I got recently was last night from 12 Aya, a precocious Lebanese charm of a young lady. Three times Aya came to where I was sleeping and woke me up “to see if you were ok”.

Later she admitted that she “needed to talk”. After explaining that her family felt abandoned by their father who was still in Dubai and was supposed to arrive last week, Aya offered valuable insights in response to some questions I posed.

As only a parent of a 12 year old young lady can possibly understand, Aya speaks clearly and to the point. Part of the conversation went something like this:

“How are you now Aya, are you ok?”

“I am scared.”

“Well, everything is fine now, the fighting is over”. Five seconds later there was a huge blast nearby. Aya just stared at me.

“Honey, doesn’t be worried. Things will be fine.”

“Yeah right.”

What are you afraid of?”

“Of dying, they want to kill us.”

“Who?”

“Our enemies.”

“Who are your enemies?”

“I don’t know. We have so many.”

I tried to change the subject and I mentioned my 12 year old daughter in the States. I told Aya how much I missed her and wished she could come to Lebanon and the girls could be friends. “And you could teach her more Arabic and show her around your beautiful country and you could do fun stuff.”

“I have a better idea,” Aya said. “Why don’t I just go to America and stay with her for awhile?”

Is a solution at hand?

Based on a US Congressional source, the Siniora government is reportedly able, with US approval, to offer the following face-saving proposal to Hezbollah to end the current crisis:

1. Hezbollah can keep its landline optic telecommunication cables for use in its Resistance struggle against Israel. But they should be put under “State Control”. Translation: Hezbollah controls them exclusively same as now and no one else will touch them. But ‘officially’ they will be under ‘State’ control, i.e. not State control.

2. Concerning the other major issue regarding the head of Beirut Airport Security, General Wafiq Shouqair gets reassigned but Hezbollah gets to name his replacement. Translation: Wafiq stays in office, keeps his authority and puts his deputy’s name card slipped over his on the office nameplate.

The public version of the proposal above reads a bit differently as offered this afternoon by Siniora. It does not mention to the public “due to sectarian sensitivities” points one and two above. It also includes the formation of a national unity government in which the minority cannot block decisions and the majority cannot impose them.

Siniora has also proposed a five-point introduction to a settlement, including placing the two government decisions in the hands of the army but will withdraw these quietly.

Hezbollah has issued no comment on this report as of press time.

The current situation in Hamra

Many Hezbollah fighters left the streets of Hamra and turned them over to the Lebanese Army which had been largely absent on Friday.

Some of Hezbollah’s withdrawing ‘regulars’ were replaced by ‘reserves’. “Its good for their training”, one fellow who was obviously in charge outside of Starbucks on Hamra Street, explained through an interpreter. Some Hezbollah and Amal forces seemed quite willing to speak with the media about their mission.

Some pro-opposition commentators wandered around Hamra trying to assure returning residents.

“This was not a coup! Think of it as a protest and message to Bush and Olmert. If we wanted a coup we could surround the Serail. Mr. Siniora would perhaps hand us the keys. We don’t want them. Let’s all prepare for elections and let the people decide who sits in Parliament and makes up Cabinet.”

Hezbollah reportedly has excellent relations with the Lebanese Army and wants to maintain them. Evidence of this is apparent today as Hezbollah’s forces made a point of politely and almost paternally yielding some of their street corner locations to the Army with handshakes and sometimes kisses.

Outside Costa Coffee down from the Bristol Hotel, one seasoned Hezbollah fighter spoke to some obviously younger and ‘greener’ Party members and instructed them on their duties as they relieved him and he headed south for rest. He explained that things went fairly smoothly yesterday and that they would likely see residents start returning to Hamra. “Be helpful to those who need help. Assure them their neighborhood is secure and safe. We will start no violence and if someone else wants to we can assure those in who live in Hamra that we will quickly deal with troublemakers”.

A few isolated acts of vandalism were reported yesterday and an internal joint Hezbollah-Amal investigation is underway to find out about what happened and insure that there is no recurrence. “No bad behavior by our fighters or any of our allies will be tolerated and bad behavior (from our side) will be severely punished and if vandalism occurred, Hezbollah will pay for it! Lebanon knows our standards. Remember during the July 2006 War. When our fighters had to use food and water that belonged to absent owners we left IOUs on the table. Everyone was later paid.”

Some Amal guys were looking for an open sandwich shop but doubted that “people here in Hamra make sandwiches as great as we have in Ouzai. Our area has the best kebabs in all of Lebanon!!” (this observer did not have the heart to ask the young man if this was his first time outside of his “area”).

“We will be magnanimous toward our adversaries in the small victory we achieved the past couple of days”, explained ‘Ali’ an acquaintance of this observer who also lives in Haret Hreik.

“If the ‘ruling team’ wants to claim victory that is fine with us. They can attack us verbally all they want. We are used to this. This situation was forced on us and we defended ourselves. Now we should seek a just and quick solution and heal any wounds”, one young woman, obviously a Hezbollah supporter, explained as she chatted with some fighters and journalists. She added, “We want dialogue and a fair peaceful solution. We are a Resistance movement and will not participate in a civil war”.

As of this afternoon the losers and winners appear as follows:

The main losers obviously are the Bush administration, Israel and their Welch Club allies. Personal losers are Amin Gemayel, barely still the “leader” of the Phalange Party, as he talks tough and tries to rally his ‘forces’… from Paris. Samir Geagea has pretty much nudged him aside and is reportedly casting his dark gaze toward Saad Hariri who may be planning to retire from politics and help with the very big family business. After the parties meet with President Bush next week, a ’shaking out’ process may begin.

Walid Jumblatt is another loser since his provocations, taunts, and Welch Club cheerleader role to take on Hezbollah left him at its mercy both in the Mountains and in his Beirut home. Whatever credibility he had has evaporated. Among the Druze there is discord and inter-party fisticuffs as there was last night in Choufeit when Jumblatt asked the army to occupy and secure his Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) HQ but some of the younger members threatened violence, as the villagers watched beneath a huge a poster of party founder Kamal Jumblatt and the army and Jumblatt jr. backed off. PSP problems will require Walid’s sustained attention for some while party members explained last evening to this observer.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora loses more of his waning influence and status. One of his main problems is that he is increasingly seen as a Bush administration puppet. Not least of his worries this morning, as he prepares to avoid being dumped by Bush next week, is the ringing endorsement he received yesterday from Secretary of State Rice, without bringing herself to mention Siniora by name:

“Our support for the legitimate Lebanese government, its democratic institutions, and its security services is unwavering. This support is a reflection of our unshakable commitment to the Lebanese people and their hope for democratic change, economic prosperity, and confessional harmony. We will stand by the Lebanese government and peaceful citizens of Lebanon through this crisis and provide the support they need to weather this storm.”

She would not even mention his name as she employed the standard State Department verbiage just before a US puppet is dumped. It was dusted off from Vietnam days when JFK (Diem) and LBJ (Thieu) used almost identical language before switching horses.

The rest of Rice’s analysis seemed to many in Lebanon, whose population is among the most politically sophisticated in many ways, as simply obtuse: “No one has a right to deprive Lebanese citizens of their political and economic freedom, their right to move freely within their country, or their sense of safety and security”.

State Department officials said this morning that the international coalition supporting the Lebanese state against Hezbollah has never been stronger. Washington believes Hezbollah has “bitten off a bit too much” and now risks alienating the rest of Lebanon’s population, including Hezbollah’s important Christian allies, an official said.

The Bush administration reminded the World that it has spent $1.3 billion over the past two years to prop up Siniora’s government, with about $400 million dedicated to boosting Lebanon’s security forces. This statement constitutes a hoax according to some informed observers in Lebanon:

“The money the Bush administration has spent has been to create a Sunni ‘Internal Security Force’ not for the Lebanese but for the ‘ruling team’ (the name the oppositions and its allies call the current government of Lebanon) which is no more than a militia run by pro-American officers. Hezbollah could defeat and disband this Bush militia in three hours of less”, according to one long time UNIFIL program administrator.

One frustrated US Senate Intelligence Committee staffer emailed this morning with a tinge of irony and cynicism:

Referring to President Bush: “Now this loser has really done it. Having effectively delivered Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran, he has now handed them Lebanon. Mark my words, Saudi Arabia is next and the Saudis know it and will make a deal with Iran.”

The major winners are obvious: Lebanon’s Christian population allied with General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Hezbollah, Amal and their Sunni, Druze and international supporters.

Hassan Nasrallah’s position is probably the strongest it has ever been, not just in Lebanon but throughout the region. If he wanted to be a dictator of all of Lebanon, which he eschews, he could have the position today.

Rami Khoury, writing in Beirut’s Daily Star this morning got it right in this observer’s view when he wrote:

Nasrallah’s task now is to create an inclusive environment conducive to the answering of these and other challenges. He and his party cannot be expected to come up with all of the solutions, and nor should they want to: If they cannot draw other players – and not just their closest allies – into the process, Nasrallah runs the risk of being cast as a dictator by default.

Hizbullah and its partners have frequently argued that their counterparts in the March 14 Forces coalition were not interested in true partnership, only in dictating terms. Now Nasrallah has to prove that his side is ready, willing and able to live up to its own expectations, and speed is of the essence: After 15 years of civil war, 15 of diluted sovereignty, and three of limbo, the Lebanese deserve at last to have a level of politics commensurate with their talents and energies. If Nasrallah is the man who makes this happen, history will judge his actions to have been a revolution, not a coup, and a long-overdue one at that.

Late news is that the airport may open by Monday but this is not certain.

The question is no longer why, for the answer has become clear. However, what is the secret behind the timing of this? What is being prepared for the future stage and which coincides with US President George Bush’s tour of the region? Has internal dialogue gone without return, and if it takes place, then what is its agenda? What will Hezbollah and the opposition do to face the new challenges?

– Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassim during a just completed May 8, 2008 interview

Outside Beirut’s Closed Airport –

Hezbollah sources concede that they were taken by surprise and some were shocked by the intense, incendiary bombardment of the last few days by pro-government operatives. As Hezbollah studies ‘the situation’ and how to respond this beautiful spring Beirut morning, there is a real danger things may rapidly spiral out of control.

Yesterday started off peacefully enough, with a strike called by the General Federation of Labor Unions (GFLU) in Lebanon represented by the General Labor Union. The strike was supported by Hezbollah to protest the Governments failure to adopt what the Union considers a living wage of $600. Currently the minimum wage in Lebanon is approximately $200 per month. The Strike continues for the second day but tensions are escalating and Beirut’s airport remains closed by anti-Government demonstrators. Beirut’s main roads are intermittently blocked, the streets virtually empty and the town largely locked down as sporadic violence and stone-throwing continue.

The region awaits this evening’s news conference, his first since July 12th 2006, the first day of the last war, during which Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give an indication of Lebanon’s immediate future.

“Stay inside today, Dr. Lamb! Do not go outside!” this observer’s friend, Hussein Chokr from Nabysheet in the Western Bekaa Valley ordered by telephone at crack of dawn this morning. “Abu Mohammad”, as he prefers to be called (of out respect for his eldest son) was in Montreal, Canada when he lost his wife Khadija, 43, (a full time mother for five children, and loving wife, while he arranged for them to immigrate to Canada. Khadija single handedly raised the children as mother and father in his absence.

Their beautiful sons Mohammad, 22 (who had just become a lawyer graduating first in his class); Bilal, 19 (a first year university accounting student, known in his community for his computer skills); Talal, 17 (a gifted artist who was planning for the first public exhibition of his art in Canada (some of which can be seen at www.majzarat-al-nabysheet.org) and Yassin, 15 (who had just received a full tuition scholarship), were all murdered at 7:10 am on July 19, 2006.

This happened when the Israeli air force “erred” and launched a US MK-83 1000 lb. bomb, guided by a Raytheon JDAM (joint direct attack munition) system and blew up their home. The boys’ sister Bushra miraculously survived as she slept with her mother in the third floor bedroom and was later dug out from the rubble with serious injuries for which she continues to receive intensive care.

No one in the Chokr family, building or immediate neighborhood, according to villagers, had any connection to any element of the Lebanese Resistance. Abu Mohammad’s family, like himself, and many in Lebanon, were non-political.

The Israeli act was quite simply one more war crime.

How Hezbollah Was Ambushed

The continuing and intense anti-Hezbollah barrage started last week in rat-a-tat fashion. It continues to intensify this morning with a significant number of Lebanon’s politicians, religious leaders and other partisans raising a cacophony with new charges. Conspiracy theories, taunts, threats and provocations continue, the stone throwing on some streets, as commentators offer myriad analyses of “the implementation of suspicious schemes” as Beirut’s An Nahar noted.

The hot war prospects not looking so great recently, it is widely believed in Lebanon that the decision was taken following David Welch’s recent visit here for an intense cold war assault against Hezbollah and we are now witnessing its implementation. Some locals are calling it a “hot air cold war” as a barrage of accusations is fired across Dahiyeh from several directions.

Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt, led off against Hezbollah last weekend, followed rapidly by the Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea.

Items:

* Hezbollah is spying on the airport! Jumblatt announces. “They are monitoring runway 1-7 with cameras on top of Jihad al Bina packing crates in order to assassinate or kidnap their opponents along airport road which runs through Shia neighborhoods”.

Swoi habibee! (Easy, sweetheart) Walid. “The containers to hide the cameras,” said Jihad al Bina Director Qassim Allaq, “are owned by the organization (Jihad al Bina construction company) and have been in place for the past 20 years, so why hasn’t anyone asked about them in the past?”

“These containers,” Allaq continued, “are our property and have been in place for more than 20 years. There are cameras everywhere around the place for security. The land on which the containers are placed is the property of the organization (Jihad al Bina)…why hasn’t the media spoken about the containers before? Why haven’t anyone of the officials asked us about them in the past?”

* “The Iranians are spying on my house!”, Geagea announced within hours. Actually three teenage students may indeed have watched Geagea’s mistress leave his house just minutes before Samir’s wife returned. The students said they were following the popular tourist route called “the Jesus Trail” and got off the right road. A definite violation of the redline because Mrs. Geagea, who represents the Phalangist Lebanese Forces in Parliament has a fiery temper! One wag joked that maybe Iran put Geagea, who still may be obliged to answer for the disappearance of the four Iranian diplomats in l983 who it is claimed were kidnapped by his forces, “in the doghouse again!”

* Within minutes, Israel Defense Minister Barak called in reporters to go on the record and repeated David Welch’s comment that the Lebanese will have a ‘hot summer’ and that the local economy will tank again as tourists stay away and that Hezbollah can destroy Israel’s nuclear faculty at Dimona.

* The next day it was announced that the Saudi Government pledges “to spend their whole treasury if that is what it takes to ’save Lebanon’ (and their business interests i.e. solideire, hotels, banks and real estate) as they reportedly increase dramatically aid to all Lebanese Christians who will oppose General Aoun and his entente cordial with Hezbollah.

* A Pro Government Muslim group verbally attacked Hezbollah, without offering any evidence to support its claim saying “What Hezbollah is doing as part of its expansion policy is setting up armed barracks inside residential apartment buildings along the coast of Iqlim (Kharroub) and its entrances for dubious goals – one of which could be to control the international highway that links Beirut with Sidon and the rest of the south,” said a statement issued after a meeting between the two groups at the house of MP Mohammed Hajjar.

* On May 6 pro Siniora MP Atef Majdalani accused Hezbollah of shifting to civil strife with the objective of declaring a breakaway state.

* A couple of hours later, Geagea again: “Hezbollah is another Mahdi Army militia planning on fighting the government in the Beirut alleys.”

* Last night the Phalangist Voice of Lebanon radio said Hezbollah members were dressed up in police uniforms and penetrating districts of Beirut controlled by their rivals of the Mustaqbal movement.

* Within minutes a government source also said Hezbollah was massing gunmen in downtown Beirut, sparking fears of a possible attack against Prime Minister’s Siniora’s private office.

* A statement was issued from Saad Hariri’s office on behalf of the March 14 group which accused Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Reza Shibani of becoming a “high commissioner” entrusted with overseeing the creation of the Hizbullah state.

* Geagea again: “Hezbollah is buying up Mt. Lebanon and West Beirut real estate to disperse their security assets and build ‘a state within a state!”

* Jumblatt again: Hezbollah has set up a separate optic cable telephone communication system near Saida to link the Shia communities.

This “telephone system” item did get some significant public attention in Lebanon but not for the reason Jumblatt had hoped. Not many Lebanese are against Hezbollah creating another “resistance tool” against Israel. During the July 2006 war Israel messed with Lebanon’s phone system sending scare messages and jamming the phones in the south, but could not penetrate Hezbollah communications. What fascinated the general public here is the fact that at nearly 49 cents per minute Lebanon’s phones rates may be about the most expensive in the world with terrible reception—plus bugged by Israel and others, tens of thousands across Lebanon mistakenly believing they could sign up with “Hezmobile, Inc” phone service with cheap rates and better reception were at first delighted and then disappointed when they learned the system was only for military communications and in no way will compete with the regular miserable phone system.

“We were hoping we could stop paying off the warlords each time we make or receive a call”, one couple said wistfully.

And so it has been going these past several days.

It has been a “Hezbollah this, Hezbollah that, Hezbollah can do no right” campaign thought by many observers here to have been planned and launched in Washington. “The best defense is an aggressive offense” Feltman and Welch tutored the March 14th Deputy Nayla Moaward according to her report of her recent consultation in Washington as they prepare to receive the Maronite Patriarch Sfeir the 6th of the recent stable to strut into Washington to receive their “briefings”.

Things came to a head on May 5th when the Cabinet decided to move to shut down the Hezbollah communication system and fire Shafiq Shuqeir the Security head at Beirut’s Airport who is believed to be a Hezbollah supporter.

Of all the provocations this past couple of weeks, one of the most bizarre involved a guest of Walid Jumblatt, the arch Zionist French Deputy Karim Pakzad invited to a Conference here by the Druze leader. The Deputy’s claimed “kidnapping” and interrogation caught the attention of journalists and researchers in Lebanon who are familiar with Hezbollah’s highly efficient Media Relations Office and Hezbollah’s security concerns.

It wasn’t just that the Deputy set out to take photos in secure areas without permission, or how he appeared to exaggerate what had actually occurred, as he repeatedly explained, more dramatically with each telling, that he was “kidnapped, blindfolded, held for four hours and interrogated by Hezbollah in a secret location.” Or even the well prepared news conference with no fewer that 22 microphones which Jumblatt laid on to announce “this international crime” to the world which every Zionist and US neocon media and Internet outlet dutifully hyped as the story which grew direr at each retelling.

What was stranger was that everyone Karim was hosted by, just like every researcher and journalist in Lebanon knows the rules and they are simple and reasonable. Because of decades of pervasive Israeli spys metastasizing in Lebanon and especially areas where many in the Lebanese Resistance live and work, visitors are ask to drop by Hezbollah’s Media Relations Office and obtain a permit so the neighborhood watch people will not inquire of them who they are and why they are photographing in security areas.

The same precautions are taken in most sensitive areas these days. Jumblatt’s and Geagea’s area also take security precautions. Try photographing in Hamra near Saad Hariri’s Quiritum offices or around Muerab or near Jumblatt’s Mukhtara area and learn how quickly security personnel will approach.

When the French Deputy is in Washington he might want to test US sensitivity to security and try to walk around the Pentagon, CIA headquarters, inside the M Street Naval Annex, enter the ground on Observatory Road of the Vice Presidents acreage, or dozens of other locations and start snapping photos without permission.

The evidence strongly suggests this and many of the ‘incidents’ recently were staged to provoke Hezbollah into a reaction that has so far failed through various violent incident designed to achieve the same end. That effort continues today in Beirut as event unfold.

Americans who live in and frequent Dahiyeh comment on how peaceful and safe it is. One can walk or jog around these neighborhoods at 3 am without any fear of being accosted. One visiting journalist from Washington explained:

“I live almost exactly half way between the White House and the US Capitol (less than one mile between the two) there are no fewer than 9 police forces, ranging from the Capitol Police to the DC Police to the Executive Protective Brand and others assigned to secure our neighborhood. No chance I would wander around at 3 am on my street out of fear of being mugged or held up by someone high on drugs or looking for cash. There is no comparison between the security in DC where all you see are cops and here when you hardly notice any security”.

Last July, former American Ambassador to Lebanon Robert Dillon, leading a Washington based Council for the National Interest (CNI) delegation met with Hezbollah and later decided to have lunch in their neighborhood of Haret Hreik at the popular Halefee Restaurant, in fact, near where Karim was taking photos.

After dining on Falafel and Shawarma the American Ambassador and a few of his group decided to take a walk and observe some of the hundreds of buildings bombed during the July 2006 war.

As the group meandered toward the Bir Abed area and approached what is known locally as “Security Square”, a young lady in the American group starting taking pictures. The group had not visited the Hezbollah Media Office for a permit or arranged for a guide because their visit was spur of the moment and it was a Sunday afternoon. After a few photos were taken the group made a quick collective decision not to take more photos out of respect for the community and its security concerns. The CNI delegation young lady put away her camera. Within probably 45 seconds of her putting her camera in her purse, as the delegation continued its trek through the devastation, a young man with a walkie talkie appeared on a small “jog” motor scooter from one direction and seconds later another arrived from the opposite direction. It took five minutes of polite conversation to assure all that henceforth the rules would be followed. Sometimes Neighborhood Watch Hezbollah security guys will ask to quickly review recent photos taken. One imagines that if there were suspicious photos of “sensitive buildings” further inquiries would be made. In the present case no request to see the photos were made perhaps because the group were very obviously benign tourists. As the CNI group continued their walk the young lady said “they sure were polite and so apologetic for having to ask us not to take photos without permission. They were sweet. It’s their neighborhood. I am glad that they try to protect it.”

The French Deputy’s ‘kidnapping’ hoax was clearly meant to create an international incident out of something that was commonplace and could have been avoided if the Deputy had kept his cool and not become antagonistic when first approached by Neighborhood Watch.

This observer is not aware what was in the French Deputy’s camera that led to a little more attention from Neighborhood Watch than usual. Perhaps he will share them with us on YouTube.

Franklin Lamb can be reached at: fplamb@gmail.com
Mr. Chokr can be reached at: bekaa_garden@yahoo.com

Since the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, a leading Hizbullah operative, a sense of foreboding once again grips Lebanon. The Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the bombing foreshadows Israeli aggression and has declared his willingness to wage ‘open war’ should there be another invasion. Fighting words are not uncommon to the region; leaders often compensate for lack of action with bravado. However, no one is ready to discount the significance of Nasrallah’s statement. Why?

As the Israeli Air Force decimated the exposed Egyptian infantry in 1967 Nasser’s propagandists were forecasting success. When the US-UK air armada pummelled the hapless conscripts of the Iraqi army in ‘91, Saddam’s propaganda mill promised imminent victory (which it duly claimed shortly after signing unconditional surrender). Likewise, Saddam’s Minister of Information greeted the US-UK invasion in 2003 with similar fanciful flourishes. An object of frequent ridicule, such mendacity is often adduced by born-again Orientalists as a function of the addled ‘Arab mind’. That is, until one voice emerged that undermined stereotypes and restored dignity and trust.

Syed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of the Lebanese Hizbullah movement, has established a reputation for saying only what he means and promising only what he is able to deliver. Islamic Resistance, the guerrilla wing of Hizbullah, has evolved under his helm from its ragtag origins to the world’s most effective resistance movement, twice defeating the vaunted Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in battle. As a testament to his intelligence and organization skills, Hizbullah has also developed an efficient and extensive social service network — hospitals, educational institutions, a construction company and its own media — that caters to its mostly impoverished Shia constituency. As a result he has emerged as the most popular figure in the Middle East. The Syrian Bashar al-Assad according to Seymour Hersh claims to be in ‘awe of Nasrallah’ and ‘worships at his feet’. Secular MPs in Egypt revere him as an ‘heir to Saladin’. Christian divas in Lebanon have immortalized him in song. The modest Shia cleric is a living legend in the mostly Sunni Middle East.

Despite its regional popularity, Hizbullah remains a largely misunderstood phenomenon in the West where media demonology often conflates Hizbullah with al-Qaeda and Nasrallah with Usama bin Laden. Few in Europe or the US have heard Nasrallah’s voice. This may largely be due to the fact that all his speeches are delivered in Arabic. It is to introduce the Anglophone world to this important voice that Nicholas Noe has collected Nasrallah’s speeches and interviews spanning two decades in Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. With a competent translation by Ellen Khouri, the interviews and speeches elaborate on key events in Lebanon’s recent history. Nasrallah’s pronouncements are invariably thoughtful, nuanced and carefully worded, eloquence rarely giving way to rhetoric. At times fiery, they remain grounded in fact, and adversaries often ignore his promises at their own peril. The book reveals a methodical mind explicating on historical events and developments with an impressive attention to detail. The significance of some of the events may have diminished, however the chronologically ordered interviews offer useful insights into the strategic shifts in the movement’s outlook and the intellectual evolution of its leader.

Born on 31 August 1960 to an impoverished fruit vendor in Karantina, East Beirut, Nasrallah was drawn to religion and intellectual endeavour from an early age. Ninth in a family of ten children, the young Nasrallah would frequent walk to the city centre to purchase second-hand books and unlike his peers would devote all his time to reading. An early influence on Nasrallah’s thinking was the Iranian born Lebanese cleric Imam Musa al-Sadr. In Lebanon’s long history of civil strife, its mostly underprivileged Shia population has remained largely marginal. The confessional balance of the political system based on a 1932 census of dubious merit accords the Shia a subordinate role. It was the Harkat al-Mahrumin (Movement of the Disinherited) of Musa al-Sadr that first empowered the Shia and challenged the entrenched feudal elite lording over it. The movement also evolved an armed wing, Afwaj al-Muqawama Al-Lubnaniyya, better known as Amal.

The civil war of 1975 forced the Nasrallah family to relocate to its ancestral home in Bazouriyeh, South Lebanon, where Nasrallah joined the nascent Amal movement soon after finishing school in Tyre. At age fifteen, the precocious youth was appointed head of the movement for his home town, until then a secular leftist redoubt. Nasrallah founded a library at the local Islamic Centre where young men and women would come and receive education, also imbibing the revolutionary teachings of Musa al-Sadr.

In 1976 Nasrallah headed to Najaf in Iraq to complete his religious education under Baqr al-Sadr (executed in 1980 by Saddam, he was the Father-in-law of Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr). On al-Sadr’s instruction Nasrallah was taken under the wings by another one of his Lebanese disciples, Sheikh Abbas Mussawi with whom Nasrallah would later found Hizbullah. The man who Nasrallah would recall as a ‘friend, brother, mentor and companion’ would assist him through the ascetic seminary life where the new pupil’s hard work would lead him to finish preliminary instruction in two years, rather than the usual five. It was in Najaf that Nasrallah was first introduced to the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, who departed from the traditional quietist Shia theology in his concept of wilayat al-faqih -– the rule of the jurist-theologian -– which prescribed the supreme authority of the faqih over an Islamic state. To this day Hizbullah remains faithful to this concept, even though it has since abjured its call for the creation of an Islamic state as part of its ‘Lebanonization’ process begun in the 90s.

Nasrallah escaped the Baathist crackdown on Shia seminaries in ‘77 and arrived back in Lebanon in ‘78 to take up his education at an institution set up by Mussawi in Ba’albek. His return coincided with the Israeli invasion and two other events of immeasurable import –- the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr, and the Islamic revolution in Iran -– that led him to resume his political activities. By the late 70s Amal’s power, already circumscribed, was on the wane as a result of political myopia. It was only the mysterious disappearance of al-Sadr in 1978 (presumably assassinated by Libya’s Gaddafi) that revived its fortunes. By the time Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Nasrallah had become the head of Amal for the Bekaa region and member of its Central Committee.

It was around the same time that PLO had decamped to South Lebanon after the events of Black September in 1970. It initially challenged the entrenched elite -– mainly Sunnis and Maronites -– leading many Shia to flock to its ranks. Relations soured over time as the majority Shia population of south Lebanon was caught between the armed and often domineering presence of the PLO and the indiscriminate Israeli attacks from across the border. Amal, which was initially trained by the PLO, soon allied itself with Syria and intervened to thwart a Palestinian victory over Maronite militias in 1976. By the time Israel invaded Lebanon, the local population was so resentful of the PLO presence that many greeted advancing Israelis tanks with perfumed rice and flowers. Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal, sought a modus vivendi with the Israeli occupiers and joined the collaborationist ‘national salvation’ government (It wouldn’t be until 1983 that an Israeli patrol’s attack on an Ashura procession in Nabatiyah would lead Amal to join the resistance).

It was this initial failure of Amal to confront the Israeli occupation that led a faction led by Nasrallah and Mussawi to split and form the core of what would later emerge as Hizbullah. In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk’s magisterial account of the Lebanon war, the veteran Middle Easter correspondent describes the first Israeli encounter with this new force.

Some of the Shia fighters had torn off pieces of their shirts and wrapped them around their heads as bands of martyrdom… When they set fire to one Israeli armoured vehicle, the gunmen were emboldened to advance further. None of us… realised the critical importance of the events of Khalde that night. The Lebanese Shia were learning the principles of martyrdom and putting them into practice… It was the beginning of a legend which also contained a strong element of the truth. The Shia were now the Lebanese resistance, nationalist no doubt but also inspired by their religion. The party of God –- in Arabic, the Hezbollah –- were on the beaches of Khalde that night.
The improvisations soon gave way to disciplined guerrilla warfare after Ayatollah Khomeini dispatched a contingent of 1,500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in summer 1982 to train volunteers in the Bekaa Valley. Nasrallah played a key role in recruiting young Shia volunteers, and by 1985 had assumed leadership of Hizbullah in the Bekaa valley.

Deadly attacks were launched in the intervening years by a group calling itself Islamic Jihad allegedly linked to Hizbullah that targeted the US embassy and marine barracks. The latter there purportedly to keep peace had soon joined the conflict on side of the Israeli proxies in Lebanon. French paratroopers suffered a similar fate, leading to the withdrawal of the Multi-national Force. A successful strike on the Israeli head quarters in Lebanon that killed 72 Israeli soldiers also precipitated its retreat to the South where it maintained occupation of a narrow ’security zone’. Continually harried by Hizbullah, it would eventually end its costly occupation in 2000.

It wasn’t until 1985 that Hizbullah emerged as a coherent organization announcing its formal existence in the form of an Open Letter which also served as its manifesto. Established with an avowedly pan-Islamic outlook adhering to Khomeini’s Wilayat al-Faqih doctrine, the movement has since emphasized its distinctly Lebanese nationalist credentials with its ambitions limited to the liberation of occupied Lebanese territory and defence of the realm in the absence of a strong national army. Leading figures in the movement have hinted that the Open Letter belonged to a specific period in time and does not reflect Hizbullah’s present political stance.

Nasrallah, who had since moved to Beirut, first came to prominence when he started giving speeches and interviews after being appointed to the consultative council of Hizbullah in 1987. A year later came the first Israeli assassination attempt. Hizbullah, which, unlike other Lebanese groups, had avoided confessional/sectarian war to focus solely on resisting the occupiers, found itself for the first time embroiled in a turf battle with Amal in Beirut and South Lebanon. These animosities survived well into the 90s and would only be resolved when Hizbullah and Amal would join a coalition against the US-backed forces jockeying for control after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.

Although Hizbullah signed on to the Arab League-borkered Taif Accords that ended the Lebanese Civil War in 1989 they refused to relinquish arms. The pragmatist Nasrallah and Mussawi’s decision to participate in Lebanese politics also led to a high-level split when Subhi Tufeili the first Secretary General of Hizbullah chose to part ways rather than participate in the confessional political system. He was replaced by Mussawi as Hizbullah’s new secretary general. Hizbullah emerged with 12 seats in the 1992 parliamentary elections, a mark of the movements growing popular base in the Bekaa valley and the South.

Hizbullah continued its low-intensity war where it was careful to confine its activities to the occupied South. Israel however was less constrained: Mussawi was assassinated along with his family by an Israeli gunship in 1992 leading to Nasrallah being elected as the new Secretary General of Hizbullah. Nasrallah soon moved to modernize the resistance, ushering in a tactical revolution. Journalist Nicholas Blanford writes, that underr Nasrallah’s leadership, ‘the resistance became more compartmentalized, with units specializing in different weapons and tactics. Intelligence-gathering measures were improved and greater autonomy given to field commanders.’

These resulted in a nearly twenty-fold increase in the rate-of- attack on the Israeli occupation forces by the end of the decade, whereas the fatality ratio dropped from an average of five-to-one in 1990 to three-to-two by the end of the decade. Israel responded with several major attacks, beginning with ‘Operation Accountability’ in 1993, and ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’ in 1996 which culminated in the massacre of a hundred refugees at a UN compound in Qana by Israeli artillery (Nasrallah’s own 18-year-old son Hadi was killed in 1997 resisting the Israelis). The operations in 1999 and February 2000 were equally disastrous for Israel. Meanwhile, its proxies in the SLA continued their routine torture and harassment in the occupied South.

Hizbullah’s biggest success came on May 24, 2000 when Israel’s 22 year occupation of South Lebanon collapsed overnight and soldiers retreated behind the border. It was the first victory over Israel of any Arab force, and it was celebrated all over the Middle East. Yet it presented Hizbullah with an existential dilemma. Pressure was growing on Hizbullah to disarm as it had achieved its stated goal of liberating Lebanese occupied territory. In the debate over whether to continue the armed struggle or to shift focus completely to socio-political issues Nasrallah opted for the former. However this required a pretext which was furnished in the form of the Shebaa farms, a narrow strip of the occupied Golan Heights claimed by Lebanon. With Israel’s continued occupation of the farms, Hizbullah had a rationale for resistance.

The years between Israel’s retreat and the commencement of hostilities in 2006 saw very little combat. Israel continued its violation of Lebanese airspace with the occasional kidnapping of Lebanese fishers and farmers while Hizbullah managed to kill 17 more Israeli soldiers. Under the cover of the stabilizing Syrian presence there since the end of the Civil War, Hizbullah was able to avoid the messy parochial politics of Lebanon in favour of continued resistance. However, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 came as a major rupture with the past.

The mass protests in the wake of the assassination demanding an end to the long standing Syrian presence in Lebanon culminated in the ‘cedar revolution’ (a phrase coined by a US State Department official). With US-French backing, the so called March 14 movement, comprising mainly Sunni and Christian Maronite parties, succeeded in getting Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. Conscious that the vacuum left by the Syrian withdrawal may be filled by a US-Isareli hegemony given the pro-US orientation of the March 14 Alliance newly elected to power, Hizbullah forged strategic alliances to protect its interests. It buried the hatchet with Amal to forge an alliance that allowed it to join the government where it held 5 cabinet seats. Nasrallah has since succeeded in negotiating another strategic alliance with anti-Syrian Christian Maronite Free Patriotic Movement of General Michel Aoun.

Contrary to the prevailing media myth, the relationship between Hizbullah and Syria is mostly strategic, and their interests often diverge. Hizbullah sided with the Palestinians against the Syrian-backed Amal during the ‘war of the camps’; In the 1988-89 Hizbullah-Amal conflict Syria once against backed its rival. In ‘87 the al-Asad regime also had 23 Hizbullah men killed. Hizbullah is also aware that any peace agreement between Syria and Israel may come at its expense. The same is also true of US-Iran rapprochement: the Iranian peace offer to the United States in 2003 included a pledge to withdraw support for Hizbullah. The last Iranian Revolutioanrly Guard advisers left Lebanon in 1998. Hizbullah has since emerged as a fully autonomous movement, thoroughly Lebanese in its outlook. Today it is not so much its reliance on Iran and Syria that is of higher import, but the reliance of the two on Hizbullah.

Although Nasrallah had twice negotiated successful prisoner swaps in ‘96 and ‘98 using German intermediaries, in 2004 he scored a major coup when in return for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers and one captured officer, Hizbullah succeed in securing the release of 23 Lebanese and 400 Palestinian prisoners. However several Lebanese prisoners still remained in Israeli custody. In 2006 Nasrallah warned that unless Israel released these prisoners, he would have no choice but to capture more Israelis for another exchange. At 9:04 on the morning of July 12 Hizbullah guerrillas delivered on the promise by capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more in the ensuing firefight. A Merkava tank sent in pursuit was also blown up. This precipitated the heaviest bombing of Lebanon by Israel since its invasion of 1982.

The war saw Israel wreak mass destruction on the Lebanese civilian population, even as on the battlefield its performance remained dismal. Hizbullah withstood the air blitz and with its unrelenting barrage of rockets drew Israel into committing ground troops. The vaunted IDF with all its advanced weaponry soon found itself outclassed by Hizbullah’s iron discipline. With little to show for the mounting losses, Israel was forced to progressively climb down from its earlier maximalist aims, eventually agreeing to a ceasefire that merely restored the status quo ante.

Al-Manar continued its broadcasts uninterrupted through the conflict, and Nasrallah appeared on-air frequently giving reports on the progress of the war in his characteristic understated, factual manner (one such appearance ended with Nasrallah dramatically asking viewers to step outside their homes and look West where they were presented with the sight of a burning Israeli ship off the Lebanese coastline just targeted by a Hizbullah missile). During the war more Israelis tuned in to al-Manar than their own national TV. This time it was the Israelis turn to suffer the indignity of repeated claims of success by their leaders which would be subsequently discredited by events.

By the time Israel retreated back to its border it had left a hundred and twenty soldiers dead, forty of its tanks and armored vehicles destroyed and one helicopter downed. For Israel it was a humiliating defeat, and an end of its deterrence capabilities. Hizbullah emerged stronger and more popular than before. Its immediate and efficient assistance to those who had lost property during the war further added to its popularity.Critics who had accused it of precipitating the war –- including the inimitable Robert Fisk -– would be proven wrong by Israel’s own official inquiry into the war -– the Winograd Committee report –- which confirmed that the war had been planned by Israel more than a year ahead. As the Guardian reported, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s testimony to the commission ‘contradicted the impression at the time that Israel was provoked into a battle for which it was ill-prepared.’

In a country caught between its own factional rivalries and the perennial intervention of foreign powers, principle is often a dispensable commodity. Yet much of Hizbullah’s regional prestige derives from its ability to take difficult decisions in the face of impossible odds. Established as a rejection of the kind of realpolitik embraced by Amal, the existing Shia movement, Hizbullah has not shied away from taking difficult positions, such as its defence of the Palestinians against its Syrian backed Shia rival. Through al-Manar, Hizbullah has continued to present its successful resistance as a model for Palestinians in the occupied territories, at times actively intervening on their behalf. It responded to the March 22, 2004 assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the quadriplegic spiritual leader of Hamas with a barrage of more than 60 rockets at six different Israeli military positions in the Shebaa farms. Similarly in 2006 the timing of its raid was widely seen as intended to relieve pressure on Gaza under brutal assault at the moment (in this instance however it had the contrary effect as under the cover of the Lebanon war, Israel was able to get away with more murder).

In 2007 when the Lebanese military began its assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in order to crush a small band of Sunni militants, Fatah al-Islam, Nasrallah had to tread the fine line yet again. Most of Lebanon seemed indifferent to the plight of the innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire, and even his political ally, the nationalist general Michel Aoun supported unrestrained action. Nasrallah’s qualified statement of support however declared the Palestinian refugees a ‘red line’ as the Lebanese army was a red line. Neither need be crossed. This drew shrill condemnation from the US-backed Lebanese opposition who accused him of insufficient patriotism for not offering unconditional support.

The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate has put a spanner in the neoconservative plan for a new war by confirming that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. However, attempts to curb Iran’s mythical influence have continued apace. Israel’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Hizbullah have led its supporters in the US to back a new ‘redirection’ plan, as reported by the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh. This has included arming hard line Sunni militants to confront Hizbullah (in Iraq US precipitated a civil war by doing the opposite: arming Shias against the Sunni insurgency) and a wider propaganda campaign to sow fears of an emerging ’shia crescent’. In Lebanon this went awry when the militants started showing more interest in fighting Israel than Hizbullah. The Fatah al-Islam episode further sealed its fate.

The Sunni Arab leaders of the Egypt and Jordan (and to a lesser degree Saudi Arabi)have played along. As journalist Patrick Cockburn observes, they ‘were embarrassed by the success of the Shia
Hizbollah in the war in Lebanon… compared to their own supine incompetence.’ In the wake of the 2006 invasion of Lebanon where the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian leadership tacitly sided with Israel, a poll found Nasrallah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the two most popular leaders in Egypt. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that both are Shia, whereas the leadership of the largely Sunni Egypt has long played on sectarian differences to deflect its own sordid role in sustaining US-Israeli hegemony.

Since 2006 Hizbullah has led the opposition in a non-violent protest against the government demanding fairer representation. Detractors have tried to portray this as a coup against the government, and Nasrallah’s demand for a one-man-one-vote system as somehow outlandish. A deadlock has prevented the appointment of a new President, and the political future remains as yet uncertain. Forces of status quo resent Hizbullah’s assertiveness, but more so its status as a global player where they on the other hand remain perpetually identified with their parochial concerns. The government, backed by its supporters in the West and among the Arab states, has thus far prevented Hizbullah translating its military victory into political gains. While the people of the Middle East idolize Hizbullah, for their leaders the movement presents the threat of a good example. It is not yet confirmed who assassinated Imad Mughniyeh, but Israel is not alone in wishing to see Nasrallah and his movement humbled. Should there be a war, it would be interesting to see how the different forces line up. For now, the only thing that remains certain is that whatever happens in Lebanon, its borders are too small to contain the impact.