Category Archives: Hezbollah

Wikileaks: Israel plans total war on Lebanon, Gaza

Juan Cole writes:

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that

The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same period of time, to which Aftenposten has gained access, leave a clear message: The Israeli military is forging ahead at full speed with preparations for a new war in the Middle East.

The paper says that US cables quote Ashkenazi telling the US congressmen, “I’m preparing the Israeli army for a major war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite.”

The general’s plans are driven by fear of growing stockpiles of rockets in Hamas-controlled Gaza and in Hizbullah-controlled Southern Lebanon, the likely theaters of the planned major new war. Ashkenazi does not seem capable of considering that, given a number of Israeli invasions and occupations of those regions, the rockets may be primarily defensive.

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Lebanon is staring into the abyss

Fawaz Gerges writes:

Once again, Lebanon is on the brink of major social and political upheaval. Rumours of an impending armed clash between Hezbollah and the pro-western governing coalition have spread like wildfire among the Lebanese people, who are hoarding food and arms in anticipation of the worst.

On the surface of it, the current crisis revolves around a United Nations tribunal set up to investigate the 2005 assassination of prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. An indictment from the tribunal is imminent; there is increasing evidence that the tribunal will accuse members of Hezbollah, the Shia-dominated resistance movement, as having played a central role in the assassination. If true, this could provide the spark that ignites the next confrontation.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has repeatedly dismissed the tribunal as an “American-Israeli” tool intended to incite sectarian strife in Lebanon. He has warned that the looming indictment will be an act of war against his group. He has demanded that the Lebanese government – led by Saad Hariri, the son of the late prime minister – distance itself from the UN tribunal and renounce it before the indictment is released.

On a deeper level, the standoff reflects a broader institutional crisis. Lebanon’s institutions are dysfunctional and defective; they have failed dismally to mediate conflict among rival groups, as well as to integrate rising social forces into the political process. The Hariri tribunal is a case in point. Lebanon’s three major institutions, the presidency, the cabinet and the parliament, are paralysed, unable to solve the impending crisis.

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Threat of civil war looms in Lebanon

The Guardian reports:

More than six months of menacing political rhetoric is likely to reach a potent day of reckoning in Lebanon soon when indictments are handed down after a five-year investigation to determine who killed the fragile state’s former leader Rafik Hariri.

The indictments are almost certain to implicate at least three members of the militia group and political powerhouse Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of the elder statesman and patron to the country’s Sunni Muslims.

The potential implications of that have taken Lebanon to a point that veterans of the country’s civil war had vowed never to allow again.

Tensions are palpable on the streets of Beirut, which has cast itself as a city that rose from the ashes of the 15-year conflict as a cosmopolitan and tolerant capital. Now, a generation on, residents of the city and enclaves around the country are demonstrably falling in behind sectarian positions. Many fear that bloodshed cannot be avoided.

“You are not wrong,” said a former president, Amin Gemayel, when asked about a sense of foreboding. “This is the most dangerous period in Lebanon for many, many years.”

“Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah in a direct engagement and the Lebanese guerrilla group would inflict heavy damage on the Israeli home front if war broke out, a former Israeli national security adviser said Thursday,” Reuters reports.

“Israel does not know how to beat Hezbollah,” said Giora Eiland, an army ex-general who served as national security adviser to former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

“Therefore a war waged only as Israel-versus-Hezbollah might yield better damage on Hezbollah, but Hezbollah would inflict far worse damage on the Israeli homefront than it did 4-1/2 years ago,” he told Israel Radio.
Echoing serving Israeli officials, Eiland said:

“Our only way of preventing the next war, and of winning if it happens anyway, is for it to be clear to everyone … that another war between us and Hezbollah will be a war between Israel and the state of Lebanon and will wreak destruction on the state of Lebanon.

Eiland went on to say: “Our only way of preventing the next war, and of winning if it happens anyway, is for it to be clear to everyone … that another war between us and Hezbollah will be a war between Israel and the state of Lebanon and will wreak destruction on the state of Lebanon.”

He calls this “effective deterrence,” but it can also be viewed as an effort to incite civil war by suggesting to Hezbollah’s enemies that if they don’t break Hezbollah’s power, then everyone in Lebanon will suffer the consequences.

The latest evidence of Israel’s efforts to interfere in Lebanese affairs was revealed yesterday.

Haaretz reports:

Lebanese television published Thursday photos of spy installations that the Lebanese Army had found in mountainous areas near Beirut, showing one of the devices bearing Hebrew writing.

The Lebanese Army said Wednesday it had uncovered two Israeli spy installations in mountainous areas near Beirut and the Bekaa Valley – one on Sannine mountain and another on Barouk mountain.

The photos released Thursday show a device bearing the words “mini cloud” in Hebrew, along with the name of the manufacturer – “Beam Systems Israel Ltd.” – in English.

According to reports, the installations included photographic equipment as well as laser and broadcast equipment.

Earlier Thursday, the Voice of Lebanon radio station reported that the explosion heard in Lebanon late Wednesday was an Israel Air Force operation aimed at destroying an espionage device it had installed off the coast of the city of Sidon.

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff add:

Since the beginning of 2009, Lebanese intelligence, with the aid of Hezbollah and apparently Iran, have been trying to uncover what has been called an extensive spy network operating on Israel’s behalf.

More than 100 Lebanese civilians and soldiers have been arrested as part of this effort, including fairly senior Lebanese Army officers.

According to Hezbollah, eavesdropping equipment was planted in the cars of the senior Hezbollah leadership.

Israel has never responded to the reports from Lebanon.

Reports from Lebanon need to be understood in the context of rising political tensions as The Hague’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon prepares to announce an indictment against senior Hezbollah officials in connection with the death of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the father of the current premier, Saad Hariri.

The discovery of further supposed Israeli spy activity in Lebanon serves Hezbollah interests by reminding the Lebanese public that Israel, not Hezbollah, is the real enemy.

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How Israel and the US benefited from the murder of Rafik Hariri

Who has benefited most from the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005? As the International Court of Justice arrives at its version of events, Dyab Abou Jahjah, writing in Open Democracy, finds confirmation in WikiLeaks for pointing us in a different direction.

Lebanon nowadays seems much bigger than it actually is. In a way this is no surprise for a country that always was a playground for regional and international agendas and a laboratory for testing any new formula in the area. However, this time, Lebanon is much more than that. Since 2006 it has become clear to all serious observers that this country is the focal point of a strategic divide, or more accurately the strategic divide in the Middle East. By virtue of the victory of Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, the Lebanese resistance has become a major factor in tipping the balance in favour of the Syrian/Iranian influence in the region as against that of the American/Israeli-led project. The latter project aims at further fragmenting political and social regional structures based upon sectarian and ethnic divisions, in order to create a new Middle East in which – to put it simply – Israel can play boss over everybody.

The Iranian and the Syrian regimes naturally oppose this scheme as it targets them in the first instance, but Iran at least also opposes this for ideological reasons. For the surge of the neo-conservative ‘creative chaos’ strategy in Iraq and beyond, the war against Lebanon in 2006 was supposed to be the final blow to any resistance, especially as this occurred at a time when Iraqi resistance was starting to be divided, weak and marginal, and the American grip over Iraq was growing stronger. Hezbollah’s defeat of the Israeli onslaught stopped the American surge in its tracks. The tide has started to turn since that moment: since then, both the Lebanese resistance and its Syrian and Iranian allies have been strengthened.

At this point, for the Americans and the Israelis a new priority was established: to destroy Hezbollah by any means necessary. This conclusion is confirmed by one of the documents lately published on wikileaks where the heads of the CIA and the Mossad are to be observed contemplating a possible augmentation of the pressure on Syria to make it take its distance from Iran, in order eventually to weaken Hezbollah. In that conversation between Meir Dagan and Frances Townsend, Dagan conveys to his American counterpart the “advantage of such an approach” – that, “the legal ground is already in place for action by the UNSC.” It is in this context that one must read the actions of the international tribunal investigating the death of Rafik Hariri and the indictment of Hezbollah that it will be releasing shortly.

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Dahieh: flashpoint of the colonial and anti-colonial struggle

Rami G Khouri writes:

Who would have thought that a gynecologist’s office in the Hizbullah-dominated southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh would be the symbolic place where the colonial and anti-colonial struggles of the past century would reach their confrontational peak and bring to a head this long-simmering war? Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call Thursday night for all Lebanese to stop cooperating with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is investigating and will soon indict those it believes killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others five years ago, followed an attempt by STL officers to examine patient files in the doctor’s office in Dahieh a few days ago, presumably because the STL has evidence it believes implicates some Hizbullah personnel in the assassinations. Hizbullah supporters, mostly women, beat back the STL party and quickly heightened the political confrontation that has been brewing in the country for months.

Nasrallah’s open call to boycott and actively oppose the STL marks an historical moment of reckoning that is as dangerous as it was inevitable. This is because Hizbullah and the STL represent perhaps the two most powerful symbols of the two most important forces that have defined the Middle East for the past century or more: On the one hand, Western (including Israeli) interests and interventions that seek to shape this region in a manner that suits Western aims more than it suits indigenous rights, and, on the other hand, native Arab-Islamic-nationalist resistance that seeks to shape our societies according to Arab-Islamic worldviews as defined by a consensus of local actors, identities and forces.

Stripped to its core, this tension between Hizbullah and the STL is a microcosm of the overarching fact of the modern era in which Western-manufactured Arab statehood has generally failed to gain either real traction or sustained credibility; thus it has fallen on groups like Hizbullah to play a leading role in confronting Israeli and Western power in a manner that most Arab governments have been unable or unwilling to do.

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Ahmadinejad in Lebanon

While the Iranian president’s visit to Southern Lebanon is being portrayed in the Western media largely in terms of an act of provocation directed at Israel by an antagonist and intruding regional power, the historical ties between that part of Lebanon and Iran span centuries.

Nicholas Blanford writes:

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tours Lebanon’s border with Israel today, he may pause a moment to consider that Iran owes its existence as a Shiite nation to the ancestors of those living in these rural hilltop villages.

Iran wasn’t always the center of Shiite scholarship

In the early 16th century, the center for Shiite scholarship was in an area known as Jabal Amil, a rugged hill country that conforms closely to the geographical perimeters of modern-day south Lebanon. When Shah Ismael I, the Safavid ruler of Iran, introduced Shiism as the state religion in the 16th century, he turned to the scholars of Jabal Amil to help promulgate the new faith.

Dozens of scholars traveled to Iran, settling there, marrying, learning Persian, and involving themselves in the rivalries and intrigues of the Safavid court. It was the beginning of a linkage of families and learning between two Shiite communities lying at opposite ends of the Middle East that remains today.

Reports that Ahmadinejad received a hero’s welcome are put in perspective by Nussaibah Younis, who writes:

The support that Ahmadinejad enjoys in Lebanon’s Shia heartlands can be compared to the support that a corporate sponsor might expect from Manchester United fans: bored gratitude. The biggest cheer that Ahmadinejad’s speech managed to raise out of the crowd came when he thanked Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as a “dear warrior and scholar”.

Nasrallah was the real star of the show. Rumours that he might appear in person at the rally drew large expectant crowds. Though there was a sigh of disappointment when Nasrallah only appeared via video link, the forceful and impassioned clarity with which he spoke whipped the crowd into a flag-waving and slogan-chanting frenzy. Nasrallah spoke mindfully of his larger audience in Lebanon, and tried the novel approach of presenting Iran’s foreign policy as “unifying”. He praised Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for issuing a fatwa forbidding Muslims to react to the Qur’an burning-fiasco in the US with “similar acts”, claiming that Iran was acting in the best interests of Christian-Muslim unity.

He also congratulated the Iranian cleric for his handling of a highly controversial London conference in which a little-known Shia activist disparaged Aisha, the wife of the prophet Muhammad, who is highly revered by Sunnis but considered a traitor by many Shias. Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei had responded with a statement forbidding insulting talk about the wives of the prophet, thereby – according to Nasrallah – acting as a force for unity between Sunnis and Shias.

Many Lebanese would have a lot to say about claims that Iran is a “unifying force in the region”, but the speech did make clear that Nasrallah’s crowd appeal is unmatched and that his power among many Shias does not need to be enforced by Iran. If anything, Hezbollah deftly staged a welcome for Ahmadinejad designed to encourage the Iranians to dig deeper and give more generously to Hezbollah’s cause.

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How did 1938 turn out to be such a long year?

“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany and it’s racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” Benjamin Netanyahu declared four years ago.

By 1942, Germany had snared itself in the disastrous Battle of Stalingrad — but let’s allow Netanyahu some latitude with his metaphor and assume that it’s still 1938 and that Iran’s race has merely suffered a few interruptions.

So, it’s still 1938 and Iran’s Hitler has come to Israel’s border to survey the nation he intends wiping off the map.

In anticipation of this historic moment, Aluf Benn wrote last month:

Netanyahu will have a one-time opportunity to stop the new Hitler and thwart the incitement to genocide. Ahmadinejad will pay his first visit to Lebanon and devote an entire day to a tour of the southern part of that country. He will visit sites where Hezbollah waged battles against Israel and, according to one report, he will also pop over to Fatima Gate, just beyond the border fence at Metula. The route is known, the range is close and it is possible to send a detail across the border to seize the president of Iran and bring him to trial in Israel as an inciter to genocide and Holocaust denier.

The media effect will be dramatic: Ahmadinejad in a glass cage in Jerusalem, with the simultaneous translation earphones, facing grim Israeli judges. In the spirit of the times, it will also be possible to have foreign observers join them (David Trimble of the Turkel commission was a leader of the “try the Iranian president” initiative ).

There are also operational advantages: Iran will hesitate to react to its president’s arrest by flinging missiles, out of fear for their leader’s life. It will also be possible to capture Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who will no doubt emerge from his hiding place and accompany Ahmadinejad. Israel will have high-ranking hostages it will be able to exchange for Gilad Shalit.

And if the world has any complaints, it will be reminded that the Americans invaded Panama in order to arrest its ruler Manuel Noriega – and only for dealing drugs, a far smaller offense than incitement to genocide.

Of course, the idea also has disadvantages. Ahmadinejad might be killed in the action and Iran would embark on a cruel war of revenge. The precedent of arresting leaders would endanger Israeli personages suspected abroad of crimes against humanity or murder (according to the Goldstone report and the flotilla report ). Ahmadinejad could be acquitted and make Israel look like a bully and Netanyahu a fool.

Nevertheless, how can Netanyahu refrain from an action to stop Hitler’s heir, when the year is already 1939, if not 1940? According to Netanyahu’s reasoning, if he refrains from acting history will condemn him for “not preventing a crime,” as with Margalit Har-Shefi, who didn’t stop Yigal Amir from assassinating Yitzhak Rabin.

Benn’s point was not to advocate a reckless course of action but to underline the difference between rousing rhetoric and statesmanship.

For all those inside and outside Israel who swallowed Netanyahu’s rhetoric however, this is a telling moment to reflect on the proposition that the clown from Tehran — provocative as he might be — can seriously be compared to Hitler. Anyone who still clings to this notion must now consider its corollary: that if Ahmadinejad is Hitler, then Netanyahu — through his inaction — turns out to be a Chamberlain not Churchill.

So how truly significant is it that Iran’s president is currently now enjoying all the honors of a visiting head of state (even though he isn’t one)?

Rhami Khouri puts the drama in perspective and says:

[Ahmadinejad’s] visit represents a blow to Washington’s strategy of bringing Lebanon firmly into its orbit.

For most Arab governments, the Iranian-Hizbullah connection represents everything they fear for their own incumbency: armed Shiite movements inside countries where mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs dominated public life; popular resistance movements that do battle according to their own strategic calculations; Iranian meddling in Arab affairs; and, Arab mass movements that connect with compatriots across the region in their common opposition to and defiance of conservative Arabs, Israel and the US itself.

So at some levels it is understandable why so many people in the region and abroad are making a lot of noise about the Iranian president’s visit to Lebanon. At another level, though, that of substance vs. symbolism, this is a pretty routine event that does not necessarily break new ground, but mainly reflects and emphasizes existing political realities that generate frenzied, nearly hysterical, reactions on both sides.

The irony is that by elevating his importance on the international stage while his real challenges come from home, no one serves Iran’s president as more effective publicists than do Israel and the United States.

As Meir Javedanfar notes:

Ahmadinejad has never been more unpopular in Iran, not only with the public but also his conservative allies and the clergy. By going to Lebanon, he is going to one of the last places where the Islamic Republic still has genuine support. When he speaks in Bint Jbeil, unlike in Iran, schools won’t be closed and civil servants won’t be threatened with dismissal unless they attend the president’s speech. People will voluntarily turn up because they genuinely support the Islamic republic and will pay respect to almost any senior Iranian politician.

By going to Lebanon, Ahmadinejad will primarily be using the occasion to try to strengthen his support back home with the public, and with the Revolutionary Guards, whose support is important to him. He will also be trying to outshine his rivals such as Ali Larijani and Hashemi Rafsanjani by using the trip to say that he is the true face of Iran abroad, and not them.

This development will also benefit supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who is most probably very concerned about Ahmadinejad’s flagging popularity.

What is important to note is that such a visit did not take place when Khatami was president. If anyone deserves to be in southern Lebanon, it is him, and not Ahmadinejad. Israel evacuated southern Lebanon in May 2000 on Khatami’s watch, not Ahmadinejad’s.

However, Khamenei did not send Khatami to southern Lebanon because he was not worried about his unpopularity. In fact, compared with Ahmadinejad, he was far more popular. The opposite is true about Ahmadinejad and this is why Khamenei, for the sake of his regime, is sending him there.

The RealNews Network has an interesting report on Ahmadinejad’s posture as an anti-capitalist.

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Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech delivered in Lebanon today

The following speech by the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah was delivered today via video feed in front of a large crowd in Beirut. The translation provided below came in tweets (hence the format below) from Roqayah at iRevolt who did instant translating and tweeting while watching the broadcast.

We are celebrating our victory over the biggest terrorist army in the Middle East (i.e. Israeli Army).

I was going to begin my words with the words covering the July War but what happened today on the Land of Heroes (South Lebanon)

On the border with the Palestinians and the fight with our heroic Lebanese army;

[The Sayyed is now dividing his speech; 1st he will speak about the war, 2nd the tribunal and lastly what shall happen after.]

Since the war stopped there have 14,000 incidents wherein the Israeli’s have broken resolution 1701

The Israeli’s are always accusing Hezb’Allah of breaking the rules but we are telling the UN that the Israeli’s should respect 1701

What we saw today is another example of the Israeli’s breaking resolution 1701 (i.e. Lebanese Army border incident)

One of the Lebanese Press Personnel was killed today but this is not new to the Israeli’s as they have been killing people from the media

Since the start of this incident today, all of Hezb’Allah’s personnel have been put on high alert.

We put all Hezb’Allah personnel and fighters under the order of the Lebanese Army; Whatever you need,we are next to you & where you want us

Anything the Army Command needs from us, everything is under their disposal. We have also called Nebih Berri,Hariri and Sleiman

After we watched how the Lebanese army is suffering, we just stood by because anything done must use wisdom.

All of Lebanon will not forgive or forget any invasion or rule-breaking. We are not afraid of you (talking to Israelis) or your threats

The Lebanese Army fought with dignity & high spirits (in regards to the incident today).The Israeli’s accused the Leb. Gov’t of instigation

The Resistance is next to the army, ready at any time; staying in our country and our cities.

All the Lebanese citizens in the South are not afraid, unlike the people in Northern Israel who began to flee.

Today,we salute the Lebanese Army. We salute the Army Commander, especially after it was recently Army Day (3eid el Jesh)

Today we are watching; There are martyrs from the Lebanese Army and civilian martyrs.

Hezb’Allah is very patient today but we are ready. This is because we must be ready in case the Army needs our help.

If the Army,the Resistance and the people face the Israeli’s then we will be able to stop them.

Thank God that the issue finished right away (in regards to the incident today).

Sayyed Hassan said that if Hezb’Allah intervened they would accuse the Resistance of stepping in because of the STL [the United Nations’ Special Tribunal for Lebanon].

I will say this before all the politicians, all the Arabs and all the world – we cannot get away from our tradition, morals .

Any place which the Israeli enemy hits the army from now on the Resistance will not stand

We might be patient now but I will be straight forward; Any hand which will extend to the Lebanese army to harm it,we will cut!

Every good person will take this decision. The Resistance has the honor to protect the country the same way.

What happened today occurred before all of the world. This has been transpiring for four years; 316 Lebanese injured in 4 years.

The Resistance has destroyed 4M cluster-bombs. Until now we have millions of cluster-bombs still in the ground (planted by Israel)

We need to have the Lebanese Gov’t pressure the UN in order to get the maps from Israel as to where they’ve planted cluster-bombs

Israel has been working to get into all facets and workings of Lebanese via spy’s. The most dangerous being that of our communication system

This is much bigger than what people know as of now (spy cells).

What this means is that we have found more than 100 spy’s, many of whom have high positions. Who have worked long w/ Israel

Many of these individuals are well respected in our society. By finding these 100+ spies it is a big hit ag. the Israeli’s

The Resistance will stay under the control of the Leb.Army,those of whom found these spies.We’ll continue to find out more ab. the spies

We should not stop or remain silent if we find a spy. We should not cover anyone because of his status. We should not wait to execute them

This is another war; Many of these spies helped Israel during the 2006 – they slaughtered the Lebanese people by aiding Israel.

Whomever wants to stop another war in Lebanon must not allow Israel to recruit spies.

We have to work on a strategy to free the Kfar Sheba and all other lands occupied by Israel.

We must face the Israeli’s in order to free our last occupied land (Kfar Sheba/Shebaa Farms)

The Army, the Resistance and the people create the victory. Everyday Lebanon faces Israel in dif. ways

For the last week we have been hearing Askenazi stating that Hezb’Allah assassinated Hezb’Allah. As you know and I know, he is no journalist

Ashkenazi is the Commander of the Israeli Army; We hear the Israel media, how they are talking about the Int’l Court and Lebanon

The Israeli media were speaking happily in terms of how Hezb’Allah will be indicted; They spoke about how the Lebanese will fight together

We spoke,weeks ago,and told everyone – including friends of Lebanon – about the dangerous plan Israel is preparing for Lebanon.

[iRevolt: Damn it. My feed is out. Bear with me folks, I apologize for the inconvenience!
Back up]

We have clear accusations that Israel assassinated Rafik Hariri

Now because some may consider talking about the STL and the indicted – some may consider this increases tension.

For this reason I will delay this part; For now we will focus on our accusations ag. Israel.

During the last few months we did our utmost to do the following: 1st, it is clear where we are headed.

We have appointed a team/committee which will study and look at all details. On Monday I will present to you clear evidence

I will prove that Israel,via its spies,since 1993 has been using the political situations in Lebanon to its advantage.

Today,on the anniversary of your victory in the 2006 war,we have a right to accuse Israel of assassinating Rafik Hariri.

My accusations will be based on evidence. I say to you today – We accuse the Israeli enemy of assassinating Rafik Hariri in 2005.

On Monday I will provide evidence. I will answer all those people who say ‘you are accusing Israel,why don’t you provide evidence?’

After this press conference the Lebanese Gov’t cannot say ‘ I do not want to know the truth’.

We are ready to cooperate with the Lebanese Gov’t. If we cooperate with one another then we will save Lebanon from a division

We in Lebanon, have called for putting together a governmental committee or any committee and find out who created false witnesses.

What is the problem in forming a committee to question the false witnesses? Don’t we have a right to call on a committee?

I would like to tell you that Hezb’Allah will stand ready and committed to contribute

Regarding the issue of war and the current situation,we all realize the aims of the 2006 war were. The main aim to crush the Resistance

Crushing the Resistance is part of many steps to be taken to “draw a new Middle East” – All related to Palestine,Iran and Syria etc

We were part of the scheme to create a “new Middle East”.

A journalist had told Sayyed Hassan that there is a plan to “crush Hezb’Allah”, a simple decision.

One of the Arab officials,I will not mention names,who was part of the Arab Delegation which traveled to NY

This Arab figure told me that when they arrived to NY they were welcomed by John Bolton. He asked the Arab figure “what are you here for?”

Bolton stated “This war will only stop once Hezb’Allah is crushed or once Hezb’Allah announces it will surrender” – This is a quote

This war was about crushing the Resistance. So,here comes the miscalculations – I would like to speak to the Israeli Enemy

You will continue to make miscalculations and mistakes. You,the enemy,are a mistake.

Noam Chomsky stated that all Israeli wars on Lebanon were Israeli decisions with American approval, all but he 2006 war.

The 2006 war was an American decision with Israeli implementation.

In the 2006 war they waited for the Resistance to collapse or run away but they found that the fighters were like high mountains.

They waited to see the Lebanese Army dismantled but the witnessed them uphold honor, dignity and sacrifice.

They wanted to the Lebanese to surrender but they found out that you are honorable and shall stay like this.

They thought ghat other religious sects besides those in the South or East may abandon the Resistance. However they were also proven wrong

The Mosques, Churches and Synagogues opened their doors for the Lebanese.

Yes,we stood and we confronted and we all achieved victory. I will now continue with the story between Bolton.

After 10 days, 13 days, 14 days passed – the situation changed in South Lebanon. The rockets continued to be launched ag. Israel

The humans fought; this is to see how small the Israeli minds are. They waged battle in Bint Jbeil for what?

In 2000 we celebrated the victory in Bint Jbeil so Israel waged an attack on Bint Jbeil because I said:

The Israeli enemy is easier to penetrate than a spiders web.

Back to the story – The Arab member of the delegation exited the meeting held in NY and was approached by Bolton.

Bolton told the official that they wish to end the war. Bolton stated that The Israeli’s said they are incapable of continuing the war

The official said “No one can say that the security council stopped the war.The Israeli’s were crushed,they wanted the war to end.”

On the 25th of May,2000 – people in Syria and Iran helped us, but no one can say that they ended the war for us.

We achieved our territory. God only helped us, God only. No one else helped us. Our people, our martyrs, our solidarity.

When the whole world was against you, you were the ones who imposed on Israel to end the war so it will not end in a catastrophe for Israel

We used a new equation which protect our country; The possibility of war always exists because Israel is hostile in nature.

Normally, those who have experience have a right to be cautious and be afraid for Lebanon. But,does this mean a war is knocking on the door?

This is not clear yet.The Israeli enemy does not need an excuse when they want to wage war.Our responsibility for our country is to be ready

Today the Israeli’s initiated the confrontation yet THEY file a complaint.If no one vetoes then we may witness a res. which condemns Lebanon

When Israel commits massacres they are not condemned.

I want to end by saying that we must raise a new equation which protects the country. The Israeli’s believe what I say

For many reasons the Israeli’s have the information and they believe what I say.

I will not say anything new; land for land, navy for navy (the same equation). We will not reveal our capabilities in terms of the air force

We will use “constructive ambiguity” for the sake of protecting the country. We may put Lebanon in danger if we reveal certain issues.

I want to say that you will send the message to the Israeli’s. We found that the Israeli’s are focusing on the people of Lebanon

The Israeli’s are responding to our targeting of the Israeli front – we were able, based on facts and truth.

The Israeli’s wanted to wage a psychological war on the Lebanese front, to create an atmosphere of fear.

When the Israeli’s targeting the Imam Hassan (AS) compound,did it contain ammunition or weapons? or a civilian apt. building?

More than 100 Lebanese,Palestinian and Syrian labor workers were targeted. The Israeli’s do not need an excuse. They target civilians

After the 2006 war the Israeli’s will abandon the Resistance,that they are sick. Does any person become sick of preserving his dignity?

August 14th, the Lebanese returned to their destroyed homes. Our message to the enemy tonight and to those who make miscalculations:

The most honorable people cannot abandon the path of the Resistance!

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Israeli provocation on Lebanese border could trigger new war

An Israeli soldier being dangled like bait on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border today.

Update below

Border clashes between Israeli and Lebanese troops have left three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead. Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV, Al Manar, reports one high-ranking Israeli officer has been killed but this has not been confirmed by the Lebanese army or UN troops stationed in southern Lebanon.

As the photo above makes clear, this was a blatant act of provocation by Israeli forces — no one accidentally strayed over the border. This is more like kids tossing matches to find out whether a brush fire will start.

Tony Karon writes:

Should a new war break out, Israel is determined to strike a more devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last conflict, in which it failed in its objective of destroying Hizballah. It has publicly warned that it would destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and that Syria, as Hizballah’s armorer, would not be off-limits. But Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the Shi’ite militia. And, of course, amid regional tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, members of the self-styled “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah — have deepened their alliance, raising the possibility of any one of those groups joining the fray should any of the others come under attack from Israel or the U.S.

Although all of the main players have good reason to avoid initiating another war right now, the Crisis Group warns that “tensions are mounting with no obvious safety valve.” At some point, Hizballah’s growing deterrent could cross Israel’s red line. And the Western diplomatic boycott of the resistance camp is cause for alarm because there are no effective channels through which the various antagonists can be made to understand how their actions could produce unintended consequences — in the tragic tradition of Middle Eastern wars that erupted in part because the adversaries failed to understand one another’s intentions. Indeed, after proclaiming his movement’s “divine victory” in standing up to Israel’s 2006 offensive, a feat that made him a hero on the streets of the Arab world, Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah did admit that had he known Israel would respond with a full-blown invasion, he would have avoided the provocation of snatching the Israeli troops that started the showdown.

The danger posed by the lack of communication channels between the resistance camp and the Israelis explains why British Prime Minister David Cameron, a recent guest at the White House, last week went to Ankara to urge Turkey to maintain its ties with Israel and use its ties to the likes of Syria to facilitate communication that could mitigate an outbreak. Turkey has been pilloried in some quarters in the West — and certainly in Israel — for its diplomatic rapprochement with the likes of Syria, Iran and Hamas, but Cameron’s appeal was a tacit admission that the continuing Bush-era policy of refusing to engage with the region’s designated “radicals” has sharply diminished the ability of the U.S. and the European Union to influence events in the Middle East. Peace talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israelis are all very well, but Abbas is not at war with Israel, nor would he be even if a new round of fighting broke out in Gaza.

While it is widely assumed that Hezbollah would have a critical role to play in the event that Israel launches or instigates an attack on Iran, it likewise follows that the IDF will be tempted to decisively neutralize this threat preemptively. The problem, for Israel, is this: what happens if a preemptive attack fails, meaning, Israel comes under even heavier rocket attack than it did in 2006 and that Hezbollah survives an even more brutal onslaught than it suffered in that war? In such an outcome, the idea of subsequent military action against Iran becomes even more implausible than it already is.

Update: Ynet reports:

IDF Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari, 45, was killed in the border skirmish with the Lebanese army Tuesday.

Harari was an IDF reservist who served as a battalion commander in the sector where the clash took place. Another Israeli commander sustained serious wounds in the skirmish, the army said.

The fact that Al Manar reported this fatality hours before it was confirmed by the IDF, suggests that Hezbollah continues to effectively monitor Israeli communications.

Haaretz provides the quaint explanation that the violence was triggered “over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border,” though the Jerusalem Post said: “Other reports said the Israeli soldiers were attempting to plant cameras.”

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Drums of war: Israel and the “axis of resistance”

In a new report, the International Crisis Group warns that the situation in the Levant, four years after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, is exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous.

Of all the explanations why calm has prevailed in the Israeli-Lebanese arena since the end of the 2006 war, the principal one also should be cause for greatest concern: fear among the parties that the next confrontation would be far more devastating and broader in scope. None of the most directly relevant actors — Israel, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran — relishes this prospect, so all, for now, are intent on keeping their powder dry. But the political roots of the crisis remain unaddressed, the underlying dynamics are still explosive, and miscalculations cannot be ruled out. The only truly effective approach is one that would seek to resume — and conclude — meaningful Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese peace talks. There is no other answer to the Hizbollah dilemma and, for now, few better ways to affect Tehran’s calculations. Short of such an initiative, deeper political involvement by the international community is needed to enhance communications between the parties, defuse tensions and avoid costly missteps.

Four years after the last war, the situation in the Levant is paradoxical. It is exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous, both for the same reason. The build-up in military forces and threats of an all-out war that would spare neither civilians nor civilian infrastructure, together with the worrisome prospect of its regionalisation, are effectively deterring all sides. Today, none of the parties can soberly contemplate the prospect of a conflict that would be uncontrolled, unprecedented and unscripted.

Should hostilities break out, Israel will want to hit hard and fast to avoid duplicating the 2006 scenario. It will be less likely than in the past to distinguish between Hizbollah and a Lebanese government of which the Shiite movement is an integral part and more likely to take aim at Syria — both because it is the more vulnerable target and because it is Hizbollah’s principal supplier of military and logistical support. Meanwhile, as tensions have risen, the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbollah — has been busy intensifying security ties. Involvement by one in the event of attack against another no longer can be dismissed as idle speculation.

Reporting from Beirut, Borzou Daragahi adds:

a clandestine intelligence war between the Jewish state and the Iranian-backed militant group continues unabated, officials and security experts say.

Now, a strengthening Lebanese government is helping Hezbollah bust alleged spy cells, sometimes using tools and tradecraft acquired from Western nations eager to build up Lebanon’s security forces as a counterweight to the Shiite group, which since a 2008 power-sharing agreement has been a member of the governing coalition.

Although security officials here say they’re using newfound tools to ferret out spies watching Hezbollah, just like they would against anyone attempting to infiltrate the country, Western observers express concern.

“There are deep Israeli worries that anything the West gives the Lebanese armed forces and the Internal Security Forces could be used against them,” said Mara Karlin, a former Lebanon specialist at the U.S. Defense Department, now a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The United States and its Western allies play a delicate balancing game in Lebanon. Since 2006, Washington has given nearly $500 million in military aid to Lebanese security forces and has allocated $100 million for 2011, making Lebanon the second-largest recipient of American military aid per capita after Israel.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow met officials in Lebanon on Monday, emphasizing that continuing U.S. aid and training would allow the army to “prevent militias and other nongovernment organizations” from undermining the government.

Patrick Seale describes an initiative by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah:

King Abdallah bin Abdulaziz’s four-nation tour this week must be seen as a bold attempt to defuse a dangerous regional situation and assert the autonomy of Arab decision-making free from external interference.

According to Arab and Western diplomatic sources, the Saudi monarch’s visits to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have had several ambitious aims: to head off the threat of renewed civil war in Lebanon; to consolidate Syrian-Lebanese relations; to encourage Fatah-Hamas reconciliation at a decisive moment in Palestinian fortunes; and to signal to Washington the Arabs’ disillusion with President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, still grossly biased towards Israel.

The volatile Lebanese situation seems to have been the immediate trigger for the King’s wide-ranging diplomatic initiative. Hezbollah and its local opponents, notably diehard Christians and hard-line Sunni members of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Forward Movement, have engaged in a war of words — which seemed in imminent danger of degenerating into violence. At issue were their different attitudes towards the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

According to some alarmist reports, the STL is preparing to indict a number of Hezbollah members for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. Pointing to the recent uncovering of several Israeli spy rings in Lebanon — notably in the sensitive communications sector — Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, denounced the STL as an Israeli plot and vowed pugnaciously never to surrender any of his members to its jurisdiction. Hezbollah’s opponents, on the other hand, claim that unless the STL brings Rafik Hariri’s murderers to justice — whoever they may be — there can be no internal peace.

The issue extends far beyond Lebanon because Hezbollah clearly sees the reports as a sinister bid to blacken the resistance movement, spark internal fighting, and provide Israel with an opportunity to attack Lebanon, as it did in 2006, in a further attempt to destroy Hezbollah.

A tripartite summit in Beirut of King Abdallah, Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad and Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman — together with numerous side meetings — has somewhat reduced tensions and calmed fears of war. Among the implicit consequences of these contacts are Saudi Arabia’s recognition of the legitimacy of Syria’s involvement in Lebanon, as well as a warning to Israel that any further aggression would face a united Arab front.

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Tension mounts in Lebanon

Nicholas Noe (co-founder of Mideastwire.com) writes at Foreign Policy:

With the announcement from Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah this week that Hizbullah members may be indicted for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Raifk Hariri, one thing is now (publicly) clear, no matter what one may think about the integrity of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL): the militant Shiite party is both angry and concerned. Of course, this isn’t a wholly new development: the party has apparently been preparing for just such an eventuality at least since the summer of 2006 when the first media reports began circulating in this regard (interestingly, in Hizbullah’s analysis, these reports came just after Israel found itself unable to smash its bitter enemy in open battle during the July War).

At that time, and over the intervening years, the party was genuinely fearful that an STL indictment against it — for the murder of the leading Sunni in the country — might be added to an already formidable, though not insurmountable, “Cedar Revolution” cocktail of threats and weaknesses pressed by its many domestic, regional and international opponents. Indeed, more than the danger of another Israeli assault, it can be said that Hizbullah felt existentially threatened at the time by the prospect of an open civil war, aided and abetted by outside powers and fought along sectarian lines (mainly Sunni-Druze vs. Shiite). Hizbullah had learned, and painfully so, that its ultimate fight against Israel could not be properly conducted in times of internal bloodshed — such as during the Amal-Hizbullah engagements of the late 1980s — and that an STL indictment during a period of already high sectarian tension could tip the balance.

Now, however, the party has reached a fundamentally different — and more secure — position of political, diplomatic and military power, not to mention ideological coherence. Which is precisely why one should not over-emphasize Hizbullah’s concern vis-à-vis the STL’s current (purported) track — unless you are a partisan and/or polemicist and have a stake in shaping the course of the fight.

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A source of emulation

Jimmy Carter meeting Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Hezbollah-controlled Dahiyeh, South Beirut, June 9, 2009

Consider this: When Jimmy Carter visited Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut just over a year ago, protection for the former US president was provided not only by the Secret Service but also Hezbollah’s own security personnel, both of whom feared that Carter might be assassinated by Israel’s Mossad!

Fourteen years earlier Fadlallah escaped an assassination attempt — that time it was a CIA covert operation in which 83 people died and 283 were injured.

The two incidents highlight the subjective nature of “terrorism” — a term used in the contemporary era to refer almost exclusively to violence carried out by non-government entities, yet a term that could just as reasonably be used to describe actions by the two governments that most loudly trumpet the threat from terrorism: Israel and the United States.

With that in mind, let’s consider once more the life of a man who the US government still designates as a “terrorist”: Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

Rami G Khouri (who in confessionally fragmented Lebanon, it should be noted, is a Palestinian Arab Christian) writes:

Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s most influential Shiite Muslim leader who died in Beirut this past weekend, was a marja, or a source of emulation for Shiites, during his lifetime — just about the highest achievement a human being can attain in this world.

It would be doing Fadlallah a disservice only or mainly to see him as a gifted Shiite religious figure. His great achievement, I believe, was to provide a living example of the combination of the best qualities that any Arab or Muslim could aspire to in this era of great mediocrity, corruption, materialism, mindless violence and abuse of power throughout much of the Arab world.

Fadlallah was — as Americans are fond of saying of sports figures who are talented, smart, humble, generous and personable — “the complete package.” He stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in Lebanon and most of the region because he combined several qualities noteworthy each on its own: profound theological and academic learning; an analytical and active mind; extensive social activism to assist the needy; nationalist politics to protect one’s sovereignty and support Arab causes, like Palestine; a commitment to resisting and fighting foreign aggression and occupation; political modernism that appreciated pluralistic and accountable governance; a rejection of one-man rule in favor of collective leadership based on consultation and consensus; a deep commitment to dialogue and solidarity with those of different faiths, ideologies or ethnicities; a progressive sense of the rights of women and youth; humility of spirit that prevented him from assuming public or official positions; and — I suspect from reading some of his writings, as I never met him — a twinkle in his eye and generosity in his heart that accepted the need to enjoy life, without hurting others or blaspheming core religious dictates.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Fadlallah had followers in many parts of the world, far beyond his native Lebanon or Iraq where he grew up. A key reason for his charisma and a source of emulation was his philosophy of the obligation of the weak and oppressed to struggle and if necessary to fight for their humanity, liberation, dignity and rights. By the examples he set in his own life and behavior — education, contemplation, self-assertion, honesty, generosity toward the needy — he showed others how they could aspire to achieve their full potential as human beings, individually and collectively.

His was a very Shiite life story, given that the Shiites of Lebanon in just two generations — from the 1960s to the 2000s — transformed themselves from the abused and subjugated downtrodden of Lebanese society into the single most powerful group in the country. His rise to prominence coincided with and partly inspired this epic transformation, that now sees Hizbullah as the dominant Shiite organization in the political, social and military fields. This change in status is also controversial for many other Lebanese who distrust Hizbullah and see it as an Iranian- and Syrian-manipulated menace to Lebanon’s collective sovereignty, identity and stability.

Fadlallah’s life story is so noteworthy because it transcends the Hizbullah-dominated dimensions of Lebanese Shiism. There was a convergence of sentiments and struggle between the man and the nascent movement and its forerunners, for a while, in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet he went beyond Hizbullah’s focus on resistance, to embrace and develop the totality of human, communal and national dimensions that he believed was the obligation of any Muslim and any human being.

His recipe was simple but effective, for those who could apply it: Read. Study. Discuss. Debate. Question. Learn. Work hard. Be generous. Respect others, especially those who are different from you. Stand up for your rights. Use your power to defend your people and country. And, always, remain humble.

Perhaps his greatest feat — as is the case with others of his ilk who joined God’s world with ours, like Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope John Paul II, or Bishop Desmond Tutu — was his ability to make Islamic religious ethics a springboard for personal and collective human betterment, rather than an isolated obsession or source of autocratic fanaticism.

The learned man moved back and forth from his books to his neighborhood, from lofty divine inspirations to mundane social, economic and political problems that needed resolution — in this lifetime, not the one to come. Faith, in his view and life practice, gave you the power and confidence to fix the flaws and injustices of our world, rather than only to bemoan and endure them. That, in the end, was not just a holy man, but a very modern man — a model Lebanese, Arab and Muslim who was rightly respected and emulated by many in his lifetime, because he showed us what we could become if we put our mind to it.

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When honesty gets dangerous, liars succeed

No, Ariel Sharon has not just died. But when he does, will Wolf Blitzer lose his job if he writes a tweet like the one above (a fake of course, created by yours truly)?

Certainly not, because as Glenn Greenwald correctly noted yesterday: “The speech prohibitions and thought crimes on the Middle East all run in one direction: to enforce ‘pro-Israel’ orthodoxies.”

Then again, Blitzer (who was at AIPAC and the Jerusalem Post before moving to CNN) will have no need to let his Zionist colors fly within the confines of a tweet. He’ll be content to report gushing praise for the former Israeli prime minister from President Obama or President Whoever, the day Sharon dies — a day when little if anything with be said in the Washington political/media establishment about Sharon’s personal responsibility in the slaughter of as many as 2,000 Palestinians killed in the Sabra and Shátila massacre in Beirut in 1982.

CNN’s Octavia Nasr, on the other hand, has been found guilty of praising Sayyid Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a man whose stature Sharon could never match — and for that offense, as has now been widely reported, the Lebanese-born journalist lost her job.

As Frances Guy, Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon, wrote in a blog post soon after Fadlallah’s death (a post she later removed “after mature consideration” according to the British Foreign Office):

When you visited him you could be sure of a real debate, a respectful argument and you knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith. Sheikh Fadlallah passed away yesterday. Lebanon is a lesser place the day after but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon’s shores. I remember well when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get a chance to meet Sheikh Fadlallah. Truly he was right. If I was sad to hear the news I know other peoples’ lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace.

So why did CNN’s Nasr lose her job for expressing sadness at Fadlallah’s death? After all, his name is not a household word outside the Middle East.

Nasr’s mistake may well not have been that she expressed appreciation for this particular eminent Shia cleric but that she referred to him as one of “Hezbollah’s giants.”

So here’s one of the many ironies in this incident: while the Israel lobby controls the mainstream media with a well-oiled censorship machine that would be the envy of Joseph Goebbels, freedoms that journalists are being terrorized to abandon are nevertheless being exercised inside the US military. At CNN Hezbollah cannot be mentioned without also being demonized, yet at CENTCOM there are those calling for the powerful militia to be brought in from the cold. As Mark Perry revealed last month, a recent Red Team report called for the integration of Hezbollah into the Lebanese Armed Forces.

As for Sayyid Fadlallah himself, Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri — an Arab leader of the variety much-loved in the West — praised the cleric as “a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity.”

One of the reasons Fadlallah has been condemned by successive US governments is because of his alleged connections to the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen, yet Robert Baer, who was himself a CIA field officer in Beirut, says: “there never has been a shred of evidence that Fadlallah was responsible for the Marine bombing, other than his preaching against foreign occupation.”

Opposing foreign occupation — this indeed was Fadlallah’s principal offense.

In his New York Times obituary, Fadlallah’s “extremism” was supposedly evident when in 2002 he told the Daily Telegraph:

[The Palestinians] have had their land stolen, their families killed, their homes destroyed, and the Israelis are using weapons, such as the F16 aircraft, which are meant only for major wars. There is no other way for the Palestinians to push back those mountains, apart from martyrdom operations.

Which reminds me of a line I came across on Facebook recently: a terrorist is someone with a bomb but no air force.

Fadlallah was also guilty of questioning the Holocaust — a commonplace attitude in the Middle East that must surely perplex many in the West. Even so, that attitude is, I suspect, much more one of sentiment than historical perspective. The Holocaust, as a justification for the dispossession and slaughter of Palestinians, has as much relevance as do the childhood traumas of a murderer when recounted to the murder victim’s family. This is context that does nothing to color the crime. Indeed, Holocaust doubt, thus provoked, can be seen as a direct effect of Holocaust exploitation.

Perhaps Sayyid Fadlallah is best remembered not through a tweet or a State department classification but in his own words:

Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and [I have supported] the oppressed… I think it is the person’s right to live his freedom… and [it is his right] to face the injustice imposed on him by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor’s injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female. God created the people free; thus no one has the right to enslave people and no one has the right to enslave himself for others. Imam Ali said “do not be a slave of others, as God created you free.”

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It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists

Rami G Khouri writes:

This nagging issue just will not go away: How do local or foreign governments best deal with leading Islamist groups in the Middle East and South Asia? Do you engage, negotiate with, ignore, or actively fight politically and militarily against Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other such groups that range widely along the spectrum of cultural and political activism and occasional armed militancy?

Since the rise of this generation of Islamists, native and Western governments alike have adopted two major strategies: politically containing movements like the Muslim Brotherhood by allowing them to have limited representation in toothless parliaments; and opposing or fighting more powerful movements like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Taliban and others that use military force for various reasons.

The results have been inconclusive, indeed largely unsatisfying. The Islamist movements continue to grow in most cases, to assert their power and legitimacy and share power in some countries, or to break away and rule on their own when that is the only option left to them. Only in Turkey have they assumed power nationally through a credible democratic process.

Two intriguing reports from the United States and Afghanistan in the past few days suggest that more realism may be creeping into the toolkit used to address this issue. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai is reported to have approved a plan designed to reintegrate low-level Taliban foot soldiers and commanders into the government forces, while simultaneously making peace with more senior leaders and their backers in Pakistan. This effort hopes to succeed where previous ones failed, by offering community leaders jobs, education and development programs that might bring an end to local fighting. Karzai sensibly assumes that foreign military power cannot prevail against armed nationals who believe they are fighting to liberate their country from foreign occupation.

The two key elements in the new approach are the acknowledgment that the Taliban are a credible force that must be engaged in negotiations for power-sharing, and that local developmental needs must be seriously addressed. In other words, both the Afghan government and its NATO backers acknowledge the political legitimacy and core grievances of the Taliban and their supporters.

In the United States, according to Mark Perry, blogging at the Foreign Policy website, a team of senior intelligence officers at US Central Command (CENTCOM) has just issued a report titled “Managing Hizbullah and Hamas,” that questions the current US policy of isolating and marginalizing these movements, and instead suggests a variety of approaches that would integrate them into their Lebanese and Palestinian mainstreams.

Perry notes that the most controversial finding is the one stating that “[t]he US role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizbullah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities – the government of Lebanon and Fatah – that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.”

The report says that while Hizbullah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.” Perry adds that, “there’s little question the report reflects the thinking among a significant number of senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters – and among senior CENTCOM intelligence officers and analysts serving in the Middle East.”

That such ideas are being pondered by analysts and officers who actually know the realities of the Middle East – as opposed to staunchly anti-Islamist Washington politicians and pro-Israel proxies masquerading as American think tank analysts – is an important early signal of possible policy changes. Most Islamist movements indeed are pragmatic and opportunistic, as recent decades of their evolutions have shown; they are also heavily political and nationalist in nature, rather than mainly religious.

Most importantly, Islamist groups of all kinds – from the docile reciters of holy scripture and purveyors of charity to children, to the militant resistance fighters of Hamas and Hizbullah, to the occasional Al-Qaeda-type terrorists – are deeply driven by practical, identifiable grievances. These grievances are anchored in three main spheres: national socio-economic conditions, the autocratic policies of national governments and out-of-control security agencies in the Arab-Asian region, and the policies of foreign governments and armed forces (mainly American and Israeli) in the same region.

Addressing and ultimately relieving those underlying grievances is the key to dealing with these Islamist groups, most of which will transform or wither into other, non-militant organizations in the wake of a redress of grievances. It is heartening that some people in positions of authority and power in Afghanistan, NATO and the United States armed forces are now considering this rational approach to conflict-resolution, which seeks to promote peace and stability by politically addressing basic needs of justice and dignity.

What took them so long to embrace the obvious?

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Mainstreaming realism

It was widely assumed that George Bush’s departure from Washington would coincide with a revival of strength for the reality-based community — the people the neocons swept aside for the sake of empire. But though the neocon dream was quick to perish, the reality-based community is still struggling to assert itself — at least inside the nation’s capital.

It turns out that Tampa, Florida, where CENTCOM is headquartered (and where General David Petraeus was in charge before being sent to Kabul), is more amenable to the expression of realism.

Since its publication in Foreign Policy yesterday, a report by Mark Perry has been causing a stir. In “Red Team — CENTCOM thinks outside the box on Hamas and Hezbollah,” Perry writes:

While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like Hizballah and Hamas in official Washington circles (to say nothing of Israel), that is exactly what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command — CENTCOM — has been doing. In a “Red Team” report issued on May 7 and entitled “Managing Hizballah and Hamas,” senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial — and at odds with current U.S. policy.

Among its other findings, the five-page report calls for the integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian security forces led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Red Team’s conclusion, expressed in the final sentence of the executive summary, is perhaps its most controversial finding: “The U.S. role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities — the government of Lebanon and Fatah — that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively” (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to note that while Hizballah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.”

To call the Red Team report a “deliberately provocative piece” — as Spencer Ackerman describes it — is to misinterpret the intelligence team’s brief in providing what they do call “unorthodox analysis.”

A Red Team’s approach merely attempts to look at an issue from a broader perspective than the one that military culture engenders. The goal, nevertheless, is objectivity. This isn’t simply an exercise in creative thinking.

Consider, for instance, this uncontroversial observation in the report (written before the recent international outcry demanding a swift end to the siege of Gaza):

The hardships in Gaza may be radicalizing more people, especially the young, and increasing the number of potential recruits for HAMAS. This is the opposite effect Israel thought the blockade would have in Gaza, hoping instead that people would see HAMAS as the cause of their suffering and turn against it.

Yet even today while it is clear to rest of the world that Israel’s divide-and-rule strategy in Gaza has failed, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon wrote on Twitter: “Our position is to differentiate between Hamas, the occupiers of Gaza, and the civilian population.”

Gaza under occupation — by Hamas!

Ayalon might imagine he’s cleverly modifying the concept of “occupation” but the twist will persuade no one in Gaza, which — an ease to the restrictions on the flow of goods notwithstanding — remains the world’s largest prison.

Indeed, the seeming intransigence of Hamas has been in response to this very fact: that the reward for the moderation that the Palestinian Authority has already exhibited and in whose footsteps Hamas is being implored to follow is not self determination but an occupation with no end in sight. In this respect, Hamas, far from representing the extreme position it is claimed to hold, exhibits a sober realism, which is to say, it sees little evidence that concessions by Palestinians are matched with concessions by Israel.

CENTCOM’s Red Team may have concerned themselves only with the issue of “mainstreaming” Hamas and Hezbollah yet the possibility of that happening may depend less on the internal workings of each Islamist organization and more on the extent to which realism can be mainstreamed inside Washington.

The Obama administration’s support for the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of a ridiculously broad interpretation of the meaning of “material support” (as applied to so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations and thus both Hamas and Hezbollah) is not a promising sign.

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Hezbollah’s coalition partner meets Obama

At the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Schenker writes:

On Monday, Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri will visit Washington for a meeting with President Obama. In announcing the meeting, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called it “a symbol of the close and historic relationship between Lebanon and the United States.” Indeed, between 2005 and 2009, bilateral ties were never closer or more consequential, with the Cedar Revolution ending nearly three decades of Syrian suzerainty in the country. Over the past year, however, Hariri has had to govern in coalition with Hizballah. The Iranian-Syrian backed Shiite militia will be the elephant in the Oval Office during Monday’s meeting.

Prior to becoming prime minister, Hariri was a frequent visitor to the Bush White House as head of Lebanon’s ruling March 14 coalition. This will be his first visit as premier, his first meeting with Obama, and his first trip to the White House since last year’s seeming reversal of the Cedar Revolution. Although Syria no longer has troops stationed across the border, President Bashar al-Asad’s allies in Lebanon have retrenched in recent months and once again wield preponderant political influence. Meanwhile, the March 14 coalition has been dramatically weakened by attrition and defections at home and abroad that have led the movement to moderate its pro-Western stance and embrace — at least rhetorically — Hizballah’s “resistance” doctrine.

Phil Sands, at The National, adds:

Syria and Lebanon have agreed they will present a united front of opposition to Israel and support for Hizbollah, when the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, travels to Washington next week.

Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, held talks with the Lebanese leader in Damascus on Tuesday. In contrast to Mr Hariri’s first prime ministerial visit to Syria in December, when he was joined by a large government delegation, this time only senior aides accompanied the two.

Bussaina Shaaban, a Syrian presidential adviser, said the meeting was designed to “co-ordinate policy” ahead of Mr Hariri’s trip to the United States, expected to take place on Monday.

There’s little question that like all other Lebanese politicians, Saad Hariri depends for his survival on a good measure of expediency and pragmatism, but even so, are we really to believe that he is tightening his bonds with the people who killed his father? Or is it time to acknowledge that whoever was benefited by the assassination of Rafic Hariri, it wasn’t Syria.

As Bill Van Auken wrote in 2005:

If one asks the question, “Who benefits?” the answer is clear. The destabilization of Lebanon, the mobilization of the US-backed opposition to the pro-Syrian government in Beirut, and the vilification of Damascus all serve to advance US and Israeli strategic plans long in the making.

It is not just a question of motive, however. Israel has a long history of utilizing assassination as an instrument of state policy. The Israeli regime has not infrequently carried out acts of terror and blamed them on its enemies.

And that was written before the assassinations of the Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in 2008 and of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January this year, both of which killings were attributed to Mossad.

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Talking to terrorists

The Washington Post has a passage from Mark Perry’s new book, Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage With Its Enemies. As Perry notes, talking to groups that the US government has labelled as “terrorists” is not only necessary but is a choice that has already been pursued and shown highly effective. As he recounts: “the real gamble in Iraq was not in deploying more troops to kill terrorists; the real gamble in Iraq was in sending marines to talk to them”.

This is how that happened:

On July 23, 2005 Marine Corps Colonel John Coleman was sitting at his desk at Camp Pendleton, Calif. when he received a telephone call from Jerry Jones – an assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Jones was frantic, telling Coleman that a group of Iraqi insurgents were battling an al-Qaeda militia at al-Qaim – an Iraqi city on the Syrian border.

“They need help,” Jones said. “It’s night there now, but they’re surrounded and if we don’t do something they’ll be wiped out.” Coleman acted quickly, placing a call to the Marine Corps headquarters at Camp Fallujah in Iraq.

The next morning, at sunrise, a “package” of Cobra helicopters attacked the al-Qaeda fighters, killing dozens and scattering the rest into the desert. “It was pretty nip and tuck there for awhile,” Coleman remembers, “but I had real confidence in the Marines.”

The little-known Marine intervention in al-Qaim is now seen as a turning point in America’s war in Iraq. It was the moment at which al-Anbar tribes – the insurgents — “awakened,” turning their guns on al-Qaeda and siding with the Americans.

But the Anbar Awakening did not happen suddenly.

For eighteen months prior to the Battle of al-Qaim, U.S. Marine Corps officers had been talking to the leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a series of meetings that began in Amman, Jordan in July of 2004. The meetings were opposed by senior State Department and Pentagon officials, who castigated the Marines for “talking to terrorists.” The Marines vehemently disagreed, quoting an insurgent leader whom they had met in Amman. “We are not your enemy,” this leader said. “Al Qaeda is your enemy. We’re different. We’re not terrorists, we’re the insurgents. There’s a difference.”

Can what the United States did in Iraq serve as a model for a larger strategy – one that will bring stability to the entire region? More specifically, should America recruit the region’s more moderate Islamist parties (like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood) to help in its fight against al Qaeda?

For most Americans, the suggestion seems outrageous; but for increasing numbers of policymakers, there are stark differences between the three groups and al-Qaeda: each of the movements has participated in national elections (Hamas won the parliamentary vote in the Palestinian territories in 2006, while Hezbollah and the Brotherhood hold seats in the Lebanese and Egyptian parliaments), each represents a distinct and growing constituency (and provides services for them), and each has rejected al-Qaeda’s Jacobin revolutionary ideology – and is targeted by bin Laden and his followers for actually endorsing democratic principles.

“Our habit of lumping all of these groups together, of putting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in the same class as al-Qaeda is a terrible mistake,” former Pentagon official James Clad says. “Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are the three most important movements in the region today – and we don’t talk to any of them. I can understand not talking to al-Qaeda, they’re dead-enders and don’t represent anyone, but refusing to have a dialogue with groups that are respected in their own societies is short-sighted and counter-productive.”

Former Marine John Coleman would agree. In the wake of the Battle of al-Qaim, Coleman points out, the Anbar Awakening united 42 Anbar clans against al-Qaeda and transformed the war in Iraq.

“Our strategy was not simply a shift in American tactics, but in American thinking,” Coleman says. “It meant abandoning the easy language of the war on terrorism for a more sophisticated strategy.” Which is to say: the real gamble in Iraq was not in deploying more troops to kill terrorists; the real gamble in Iraq was in sending marines to talk to them.

Maybe that’s what we should be doing for the entire region.

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American hypocrisy on weapons in the Middle East

Haaretz reports:

The U.S. administration has asked Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately stop transferring arms to Hezbollah. American officials made the request during a meeting Friday with the Syrian ambassador to Washington.

Al-Hayat reports Hillary Clinton sent a message to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on the need to curtail arms smuggling to Hezbollah. “Not a problem” said Berri, but that the US must also stop arming Israel with weapons and equipment.

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