Hezbollah

Lebanon is staring into the abyss

by News Sources 12.31.2010

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 [...]

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Threat of civil war looms in Lebanon

by News Sources 12.17.2010

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 [...]

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

by News Sources 12.07.2010

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 [...]

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Dahieh: flashpoint of the colonial and anti-colonial struggle

by News Sources 11.03.2010

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 [...]

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Ahmadinejad in Lebanon

by Paul Woodward 10.14.2010

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 [...]

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

by Paul Woodward 10.13.2010

“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 [...]

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

by News Sources 08.03.2010

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 [...]

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Israeli provocation on Lebanese border could trigger new war

by Paul Woodward 08.03.2010

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 [...]

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

by News Sources 08.02.2010

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 [...]

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Tension mounts in Lebanon

by News Sources 07.29.2010

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 [...]

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A source of emulation

by Paul Woodward 07.10.2010

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 [...]

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When honesty gets dangerous, liars succeed

by Paul Woodward 07.09.2010

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 [...]

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It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists

by Paul Woodward 07.04.2010

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 [...]

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Mainstreaming realism

by Paul Woodward 07.01.2010

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 [...]

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Hezbollah’s coalition partner meets Obama

by Paul Woodward 05.23.2010

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, [...]

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Talking to terrorists

by Paul Woodward 03.17.2010

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: [...]

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American hypocrisy on weapons in the Middle East

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

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. [...]

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Lebanon’s AK-47 index may be pointing to war

by Paul Woodward 02.04.2010

From The National: [Abu Mahdi, an arms dealer in southern Beirut] says the high point for the price of the AK-47 was in the period of major Sunni and Shiite sectarian tension that preceded the May 2008 clashes between Hizbollah and its allies against groups of Sunnis loyal to the government. “In the days before [...]

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Which is more dangerous: reckless or clueless?

by Paul Woodward 02.01.2010

When Obama took office, many citizens of this nation (including me) let out a sigh of relief, comforted by the thought that a reckless fool had been replaced a calm and sometimes inspiring realist. How can a year seem like such a long time ago? Engagement turned out to a piece of campaign pap that [...]

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Hizbollah’s new manifesto

by Paul Woodward 12.05.2009

Hizbollah’s new manifesto By Paul Woodward, The National, December 2, 2009 Hizbollah noted that the previous administration in Washington had made no distinction between terrorism and national resistance movements. The document said: “the Bush administration sought to establish a conformity between terrorism and resistance to remove the latter’s legitimacy and therefore justify wars against its [...]

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Why we should still talk with Iran

by Paul Woodward 11.27.2009

Why we should still talk with Iran By Marziar Bahari, Washington Post, November 26, 2009 Since I was released from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison last month, the questions have come again and again: Can we still talk to these people? Should the Obama administration engage in dialogue with Iran? What should the West do in [...]

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Hezbollah gears up for new war

by Paul Woodward 11.08.2009

Hezbollah gears up for new war By Mitchell Prothero and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, November 8, 2009 Hezbollah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel, fearing that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will attack Lebanon again prior to any assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Last week, Israeli commandos seized a ship in the [...]

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Report: U.S. stopped Israel from attacking ‘Hezbollah arms ship’

by Paul Woodward 11.06.2009

Report: U.S. stopped Israel from attacking ‘Hezbollah arms ship’ Haaretz, November 6, 2009 The United States informed Israel of a ship carrying tons of weapons allegedly en route from Iran to Hezbollah, but vetoed Israel’s plans to attack, the A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Friday. Israel raided the ship in the waters off the coast [...]

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Eavesdropping sparks fresh border tension between Lebanon and Israel

by Paul Woodward 10.20.2009

Eavesdropping sparks fresh border tension By Mitchell Prothero, The National, October 20, 2009 Hizbollah’s discovery of at least three eavesdropping devices planted in southern Lebanon by the Israeli military last weekend has inflamed an already tense border situation as the Lebanese armed forces fired anti-aircraft weapons at unmanned Israeli drones sent to survey the situation. [...]

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