Category Archives: Israel

Lebanon hurtles toward crisis

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A story I filed for the _Singapore Strait Times_:

BEIRUT — Lebanon found itself hurtling fur­ther toward polit­i­cal cri­sis today, brought on by a head-on col­li­sion between pro– and anti-Syrian blocs over what appeared to be dis­putes con­cern­ing power-sharing in the gov­ern­ment and the approval of an inter­na­tional tri­bunal to try sus­pects in the mur­der of for­mer prime min­is­ter Rafik Hariri.
The ten­sions boiled over when five Shi’ite and one Chris­t­ian cab­i­net min­is­ters resigned from Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Siniora’s gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day and today after a new round of national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion talks broke down last week. The Shi’ites, rep­re­sented mainly by the mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah, are demand­ing a “national unity” gov­ern­ment with one-third of the seats in Siniora’s cab­i­net for them­selves and their pro-Syrian polit­i­cal allies, a dis­tri­b­u­tion of power that would give them veto power over any deci­sions the gov­ern­ment makes.
And one of the deci­sions con­cerns the approval of an inter­na­tional tri­bunal to try sus­pects in the mur­der of Hariri, who was killed along with 22 other peo­ple on Feb. 14, 2005, in a mas­sive car bomb in cen­tral Beirut. Siniora’s cab­i­net approved the tri­bunal Mon­day after a three-hour meet­ing down­town, despite the absence of the six pro-Syrian min­is­ters.
“Our aim is to achieve jus­tice and only jus­tice,” Sin­iora said after the meet­ing. The draft doc­u­ment now goes to the Secu­rity Coun­cil for endorse­ment.
But whether Lebanon’s prime min­is­ter can achieve any­thing with Hezbol­lah and its allies arrayed against him is ques­tion­able. Were Hezbol­lah and its allies to gain the veto power they want, the could scut­tle the inter­na­tional tri­bunal.
“We have been wait­ing for the court to take shape and to reach this day,” said Tourism Min­is­ter and Sin­iora ally Joe Sarkis. “If the inten­tions of all were pure, every­one should have par­tic­i­pated in uncov­er­ing the truth about who killed Rafik Hariri. … We should have all been united over this and they could have resigned tomor­row.“
Under Lebanon’s com­pli­cated rules of gov­er­nance, if one-third of the cab­i­net resigns, the gov­ern­ment col­lapses and a new must be formed. The remain­ing 18 min­is­ters seem loyal to Sin­iora, how­ever, and seem unlikely to resign.
That hasn’t stopped some oppo­si­tion fig­ures from from ques­tion­ing Siniora’s legit­i­macy. Pres­i­dent Emile Lahoud, a Maronite Chris­t­ian and Syr­ian ally, said Sun­day that Siniora’s gov­ern­ment was no longer legit­i­mate because the Lebanese con­sti­tu­tion requires that “all sects should be justly rep­re­sented in the Cab­i­net.” He fur­ther claimed that with the Shi’ite walk­out, all deci­sions of the cab­i­net were “null and void.“
Sin­iora says his gov­ern­ment has all the legit­i­macy it needs but with­out Hezbollah’s back­ing in Par­lia­ment, he will find it dif­fi­cult to get any leg­is­la­tion passed, espe­cially the inter­na­tional tri­bunal. After its endorse­ment by the Secu­rity Coun­cil, it is handed back to the cab­i­net for final approval, signed by the pres­i­dent and passed by par­lia­ment.
The Shi’ite mili­tia has threat­ened mas­sive street protests unless the cab­i­net is reshuf­fled more to its lik­ing, a polit­i­cal switch-up that the group says reflects its real sup­port among the Lebanese in the wake of this summer’s 34-day between Hezbol­lah and Israel, brought on by the group’s cap­ture of two Israeli sol­diers on July 12. It was a war that ended in what could best be called a stale­mate, but which Hezbol­lah sup­port­ers hailed as a “divine vic­tory.” Hezbollah’s ene­mies in the gov­ern­ment, how­ever, saw the war as a reck­less adven­ture into which the group dragged Lebanon against its will.
The Shi’ite group was embold­ened how­ever, and with what the United States says is back­ing from Iran and Syria, has made a polit­i­cal putsch against the cur­rent, pro-Western Sin­iora gov­ern­ment. There are many in Lebanon who feel that the inter­na­tional tri­bunal will impli­cate senior mem­bers of the Syr­ian regime, which relies on Hezbol­lah to guard its inter­ests in Lebanon and to serve as a van­guard against Israel.
How­ever, the fright­ful Israeli mil­i­tary response likely left Hezbol­lah more dam­aged than it’s will­ing to let on, and its ene­mies smelled blood in the water. This wasn’t some­thing Hezbol­lah could allow.
“Hezbol­lah is more con­cerned, more weak­ened,” said Reinoud Leen­ders, a for­mer ana­lyst for the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group in Beirut. The walk­out, the threats and the demands, he said, are intended to tie up the polit­i­cal process in Beirut and buy them time to rearm. “This ‘unity gov­ern­ment’ is clearly designed to par­a­lyze any decision-making process.“
Not so, coun­ters Nawar Sahili, a Hezbol­lah mem­ber of par­lia­ment but not a cab­i­net mem­ber. By walk­ing out, he says, they are fol­low­ing in the tra­di­tion of democ­racy in which oppo­si­tion par­ties don’t take part in gov­ern­ment.
“I don’t think this is very dan­ger­ous,” he said, but added that elec­tions aren’t sched­uled until 2009 and that’s too long to wait for the pro-Syrian bloc. “Why should we wait when we don’t have any power in the gov­ern­ment?” he asked.
He played down the pos­si­bil­i­ties of street protests, which have been effec­tive weapons for Hezbol­lah in the past. “Maybe it will come later,” he said.
But with these lat­est devel­op­ments, Lebanon has found itself back in an unwel­come role: as a bat­tle­field for regional and global pow­ers to play out their con­flicts. With Iran and Syria back­ing Hezbol­lah and its allies, and the U.S. and the West back­ing the Sin­iora gov­ern­ment, Lebanon’s polit­i­cal cri­sis is a another bat­tle in the new cold war shap­ing up between Iran and the United States for dom­i­nance in South­west Asia and its oil.

*Per­sonal obser­va­tions:*
The feel­ing here is one of ner­vous ten­sion among the Sun­nis and the anti-Syrian Chris­tians (mainly Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces) and con­fi­dence among the Shi’ites and their allies, includ­ing the Chris­t­ian Michel Aoun. (He really wants to be pres­i­dent and sees an alliance with Hezbol­lah as the way to get there.)
Ulti­mately, how­ever, this is a proxy bat­tle in the cur­rent tus­sle between the U.S.-Western alliance, which includes Europe, Israel and the United States, and an Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis. This is an idea I’ve been pro­mot­ing for most of 2006. The idea was sparked by the May _contretemps_ between Hezbol­lah and Israel fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of two Islamic Jihad mem­bers in Saida and a cou­ple of Katyushas got tossed at Israel in retal­i­a­tion. The Jew­ish state responded harshly, with air raids across the south, caus­ing Hezbol­lah to counter-strike.
I said at the time, “Iran’s activ­i­ties in Lebanon are part of its larger plans for the region. By work­ing through and with local Shi­ite com­mu­ni­ties, which are found in Bahrain, Iraq, east­ern Saudi Ara­bia and stretch­ing through Syria to Lebanon and Israel’s north­ern fron­tier, Tehran is well on its way to cre­at­ing a ‘Shi­ite Crescent’ — a regional axis that allows it to hold most of the cards in any con­fronta­tion with the United States or Israel. And nowhere else, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Iraq, is Iran so well posi­tioned as in Lebanon.“
The May con­fronta­tion set­tled down after a day. But obvi­ously ten­sions remained — until they finally boiled over July 12, when the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group cap­tured two Israeli sol­diers and sparked a 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 peo­ple and left up to 4,000 wounded. Lebanon was dev­as­tated by the Israeli air force, but Hezbol­lah emerged polit­i­cally stronger.
Since then, they’ve been flex­ing their mus­cles and try­ing to force their way into posi­tion in the cab­i­net that would give them the veto over any deci­sions — a recipe for gov­ern­men­tal grid­lock that would main­tain their free­dom to do what they please in the south with­out inter­fer­ence from the U.S.-backed Sin­iora government.

Horrors of war linger…

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BEIRUT — Thought you might like to see a por­trait of the south I did for the Newark Star-Ledger. I have to say I was very pleased with the edit­ing process and these guys gave great play for a story that I would have thought most Amer­i­can media were no longer fol­low­ing much.

HORRORS OF WAR LINGER IN LEBANON

MAROUAHINE, Lebanon — For 34 days this sum­mer, the Israeli and Hezbol­lah rock­ets and mor­tars whis­tled through the lit­tle vil­lages like this one all across South­ern Lebanon. More than 1,000 peo­ple, includ­ing many Lebanese women and chil­dren, were killed. Far­ther north, con­crete cities were flat­tened. And then, the war ended on Aug. 14.
Or did it?
Nearly two months after a frag­ile cease-fire was announced and nine days after Israeli promised it had with­drawn the last of its troops from Lebanon, cit­i­zens in these south­ern vil­lages are skep­ti­cal. And angry.

You will have to enter some demo­graphic infor­ma­tion to see the whole story, but it’s not too odi­ous a require­ment.

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War’s Deadly Aftermath

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cluster_bomb.jpg
An unex­ploded clus­ter bomb lies in a field near a pri­vate house in Majd es-Slim, south­ern Lebanon. It’s about the size of a D-cell bat­tery.
© 2006 Chris Allbrit­ton, all rights reserved.
MAJD ES-SLIM, South­ern Lebanon — Ali Herz didn’t think he had any­thing to worry about when he went to check on his neighbor’s house in the south­ern town of Majd es-Slim. After all, the cease-fire between Hezbol­lah and Israel was two days old and it seemed to be hold­ing.
But as he pushed open the heavy black iron gate to enter the gar­den that morn­ing, some­thing hap­pened. A sharp explo­sion threw him back­ward as shrap­nel pep­pered his legs, face and chest. Con­scious but in pain, he started to cry out for help to any­one in the area.
“I thought that my legs might have been cut off and I felt some­thing had been knocked out of my mouth,” he said almost a month later as he sat in his par­ents’ home. He suf­fered a wound to his head and he couldn’t open his eyes, “because of the blood.“
Herz, 26, a mechanic, had stum­bled across what may be the biggest dan­ger fac­ing res­i­dents of south­ern Lebanon now that the war is over: unex­ploded clus­ter bombs. Accord­ing to the United Nations Mine Action Coor­di­na­tion Cen­tre South­ern Lebanon (MACCSL), there are up to 1 mil­lion of the tiny but deadly unex­ploded muni­tions lit­ter­ing the south, many of them Amer­i­can made. Herz was one of the lucky ones. As of Sept. 21, in addi­tion to Herz, 89 peo­ple have been wounded, and 14 killed, accord­ing to cen­ter spokes­woman Dalya Far­ran in Tyre, the head­quar­ters for the cen­ter.
Clus­ter bombs work by launch­ing a con­tainer of sub-munitions or “bomblets” against a tar­get. When the container-which can be deliv­ered either via air­plane, artillery or rocket-bursts open in air, dozens or hun­dreds of smaller sub-munitions are scat­tered over a wide area. A rib­bon attached to the arm­ing pin deploys, both sta­bi­liz­ing the bomblet and arm­ing it. When it strikes the ground, the trig­ger slams into the det­o­na­tor like a fir­ing pin on a pis­tol, caus­ing the bomblet to explode. In some cases, a shaped charge in the bot­tom, like a minia­ture ver­sion of what is found in the IEDs in Iraq, increases the lethal­ity of the bomblet.
Most of the clus­ter bomblets iden­ti­fied so far have been Amer­i­can made, Far­ran said. The muni­tions include Amer­i­can m42s, m77s, m85s and Chinese-made MZD-2s. Some of the m85 muni­tions are Israeli copies of Amer­i­can designs, she added, but she wasn’t sure of the num­bers.
A spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces said, when asked to com­ment on Israeli use of clus­ter bombs, “All the weapons and muni­tions used by the IDF are legal under inter­na­tional law and their use con­forms with inter­na­tional stan­dards.“
He declined to com­ment fur­ther.
Although there is no inter­na­tional ban on clus­ter weapons in gen­eral, the United States has strict rules about the use of its clus­ter muni­tions against civil­ian tar­gets as laid out by the Arms Export Con­trol Act. Addi­tion­ally, the U.S. and Israel report­edly have secret agree­ments about their use, accord­ing to a report in the New York Times. The State Depart­ment has opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the use of clus­ter bombs by the Israelis vio­lates either the AECA or the secret agree­ments.
“What we’re doing is seek­ing more infor­ma­tion regard­ing alleged improper use of clus­ter muni­tions by the Israelis,” said Nancy Beck, a depart­ment spokes­woman. “Based on the infor­ma­tion that we gather we will take appro­pri­ate mea­sures, if required by the Arms Export Con­trol Act.“
The IDF spokesman also declined to com­ment about the State Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion.
While the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing, a ship­ment of M-26 artillery rockets-cluster weapons-has been held up, accord­ing to the New York Times.
Since 1976, Israel has been the sin­gle biggest recip­i­ent of Amer­i­can for­eign aid, accord­ing to the World Pol­icy Insti­tute in New York. From 2001 – 2005, Israel received $10.5 bil­lion in For­eign Mil­i­tary Financ­ing– con­gres­sion­ally appro­pri­ated grants given to for­eign gov­ern­ments to finance the pur­chase of American-made weapons, ser­vices and training-and $6.3 bil­lion worth of direct U.S. arms sales.
“Being able to pur­chase arms from the United States, at least under U.S. law, is not a right,” said another State Depart­ment offi­cial who requested anonymity in order to dis­cuss the inves­ti­ga­tion. “If we find that that these weapons are not used for the appro­pri­ate pur­poses, the U.S. may decide not to sell or pro­vide weapons in the future.“
In 1982, Con­gress cut off the sale of clus­ter bombs to Israel, fol­low­ing an inquiry that showed they had been improp­erly used against civil­ian tar­gets in Israel’s inva­sion of Lebanon that year. Pres­i­dent Rea­gan lifted the ban six years later.
It was these mines and unex­ploded muni­tions left over from the Israeli inva­sions of 1978 and 1982, as well as those planted by var­i­ous war­ring fac­tions in Lebanon’s 1975 – 1990 civil war, that MACCSL was formed to deal with. “But after the war, we dis­cov­ered we had a huge prob­lem with clus­ter bombs,” said the U.N.‘s Far­ran.
Despite the IDF’s offi­cial state­ment, there are signs that some within the Israeli mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment have had sec­ond thoughts about the use of the weapons. In an arti­cle in Ha’aretz, Israel’s lead­ing left-leaning daily news­pa­per, an unnamed com­man­der in the IDF’s MLRS (Mul­ti­ple Launch Rocket Sys­tem) unit expressed regret at the use of the clus­ter bombs.
“In Lebanon, we cov­ered entire vil­lages with clus­ter bombs,” the com­man­der is quoted as say­ing. “What we did there was crazy and mon­strous.“
In the clos­ing days of the war, he said, his unit launched up to 1,800 clus­ter rock­ets into south­ern Lebanon con­tain­ing up to 1.2 mil­lion bomblets. The U.N. also esti­mates that another 32,000 artillery shells with clus­ter muni­tions were fired, adding more unex­ploded bomblets to the area. An unknown num­ber of clus­ter bombs were dropped from the air. Far­ran saiid more than 1 mil­lion unex­ploded bomblets could still be on the ground.
And that’s one of the main prob­lems. No one is really sure just how many strikes there were — “Each day the new tar­gets are adding up,” said Far­ran.
As of Sept. 26, sur­vey and emer­gency ord­nance dis­posal teams had found 590 con­firmed clus­ter bomb strikes, she said. A sin­gle strike could be one attack on a house or a vil­lage or area.
The offi­cial fail­ure rate of the bomblets is 10 per­cent, said Far­ran, which means that 1 in 10 bomblets will fail to explode on impact but remain armed. How­ever, she said the sur­vey and emer­gency ord­nance dis­posal teams had found that almost 40 per­cent of the recov­ered bomblets had failed. Tak­ing the num­bers from the IDF, that means there are still up to 480,000 unex­ploded bomblets from the IDF’s rock­ets, she said. And that doesn’t include clus­ter bombs dropped from air­planes or fired from artillery.
Those on the ground doing the dan­ger­ous job of clear­ing the bomblets agree.
“I’ve never seen so much like this,” said Mag­nus Bengts­son, the super­vi­sor on an EOD team clear­ing clus­ter bomblets from a neigh­bor­hood in the small town of Hanaouay, 5.5 miles south­east of Tyre and eight miles from the Israeli bor­der. “It’s more than I expected.“
Bengts­son and his team are with the Swedish Res­cue Ser­vices Agency, a group the UN con­tracted for mine clear­ing but which has been pressed into ser­vice to help with the imme­di­ate dan­ger. As he walked through an empty field the size of a soc­cer pitch, Bengts­son pointed to a small, D cell-battery sized object on the ground. It’s an American-made m77, he said, which is designed to take out both peo­ple and armored vehi­cles, includ­ing tanks. The shaped charge can pen­e­trate up to 5 inches of armor, and the cas­ing is scored so it sends out deadly shrap­nel to a radius of about 20 feet.
Bengts­son and other groups tasked by the MACCSL with col­lect­ing and dis­pos­ing of the unex­ploded muni­tions are con­cen­trat­ing on the roads and homes in the affected vil­lages right now. After that, they will start a phase known as bat­tle area clear­ance (BAC) that will attempt to clear all the bomblets from the agri­cul­tural fields through­out the entire south. It’s a job the UN hopes will be com­pleted by the end of 2007.
There is no blan­ket ban on clus­ter muni­tions, but the Geneva Con­ven­tions for­bid their use against civil­ian tar­gets. When asked if he had seen any evi­dence that Hezbol­lah had been fir­ing Katyusha rock­ets from Hanaouay and draw­ing Israeli fire, Bengts­son, who served in the Swedish army in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq as a demo­li­tions expert, shook his head no.
Res­i­dents of the south are grate­ful to the UN and its EOD teams, but they worry that a delay in get­ting to all the bomblets will lead to the loss of tobacco and olive har­vests, the main­stay crops of the south.
“We hope they can clear the fields because we rely on them,” said Ali’s mother, Mariam Herz. “We lost the sea­son for the tobacco … and we had a few cows that were killed.“
Today, Ali Herz walks slowly with a limp, and when he shows his legs and chest, the shrap­nel wounds are so numer­ous he looks like he suf­fers from chicken pox. He still has two pieces of shrap­nel in his left thigh, he said, and he has to put cush­ions between his knees in order to sleep. He can­not work because he has to get under cars, some­thing his injuries pre­vent him from doing.
Still, he wor­ries about oth­ers and the remain­ing bombs. “After I hear an explo­sion,” he said, “I want to go and see if anyone’s been hurt because I don’t want any­one to go through what I’ve been through.”

© 2006 Chris Allbrit­ton All Rights Reserved.

NOTE: If you’d like to reprint this in your pub­li­ca­tion, please con­tact me for nego­ti­a­tion of fees. If you’d like to donate, please hit the link below or to the right.

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Tales from the South, sort of…

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TYRE — Greet­ings every­one. I’m in Tyre at the moment, about as close to the front line as you can get if you’re not an active fighter. The growl of Israeli jets over­head is con­stant, as is the whine of the sur­veil­lance drones. Every morn­ing since I’ve been here, I’ve heard the thump-thump sound of the pam­phlets being dropped by jets.
To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbol­lah is launch­ing Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s pass­port, and they’ve already has­sled a num­ber of us and threat­ened one.
Most vil­lages across the south are now inac­ces­si­ble because the Israelis have turned many of the roads around the cities into kill zones. “Two ambu­lances were hit Sun­day night”:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/25/MNGJCK4N0A1.DTL&hw=allbritton&sn=001&sc=1000. Last night, the Israelis hit the United Nations post at Khiam, site of an infa­mous prison run by Israel’s proxy army dur­ing its occu­pa­tion, the South­ern Lebanese Army.
With all that, I’d like to pro­vide some links to recent sto­ries I’ve done. My inter­net con­nec­tion is very bad here, and I’m unable to get online much. My apolo­gies. I’m also not able to get the larger story, as my access to the wires and what’s hap­pen­ing is lim­ited. But here they are:
* “War with Israel helps bridge sec­tar­ian divide”:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/23/MNG98K42651.DTL&hw=allbritton&sn=002&sc=420
* “Road to Nowhere”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1218556,00.html
* “Flee­ing Bint Jbail”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1218838,00.html
* “Hezbol­lah Nation”:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1218049,00.html
More later, inshal­lah. I am well, and Tyre would be beau­ti­ful under bet­ter conditions.

Bombs and Politics

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BEIRUT — Why, oh, why do peo­ple with access to really big bombs con­tinue to think they can change people’s loy­al­ties by drop­ping those big bombs on their homes and fam­i­lies?
Israel’s strat­egy in Lebanon is pretty clear now: Make the pain of “sup­port­ing” or “har­bor­ing” Hezbol­lah so great that the Lebanese will deal with the group. That was also the idea behind the attack on Gaza and Hamas as well as the so-called Bush Doc­trine — the U.S. will make no dis­tinc­tion between the ter­ror­ists and those who har­bor them. It’s also the hot air for the trial bal­loon often floated in D.C. regard­ing regime change in Iran: Bomb the mul­lahs and watch the pro-American youth embrace the _Pax Americana_!
Except… it almost never works. I mean, George Bush was con­sid­ered barely qual­i­fied to make cof­fee at the White House in August 2001. (Remem­ber that?) And then, boom, 9/11 hit and he’s sud­denly the best wartime leader since Churchill. Was there a rethink­ing of Amer­i­can pol­icy on the part of the masses and a call for chang­ing those poli­cies? Or even, dare I say it, remov­ing the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion from office because the con­se­quences of hav­ing a nin­com­poop in office had grown too painful? Hell, no! Amer­i­cans ral­lied around the flag and the leader. In fact, the only inci­dent that I can think of that involved bombs lead­ing to the vic­tims blam­ing their lead­ers and pun­ish­ing them was … Madrid.
So why do Wash­ing­ton and Tel Aviv think Arabs would react any dif­fer­ent? (Maybe a bit of cul­tural chau­vin­ism?) Did the Iraqis turn on Sad­dam Hus­sein through 13 years of sanc­tions? No. Did the Pales­tini­ans turn on Fatah after the start of the 2001 _intifada_? That’s a neg­a­tive. The Gazans this year? Nope. Will the Lebanese turn on Hezbol­lah? Not likely, and cer­tainly not in the short term.
Another rea­son the “bomb ‘em and they’ll love us” strat­egy won’t work here is that Hezbol­lah is not the PLO. An his­tor­i­cal digres­sion, if you’ll allow me: Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 in two attempts to dis­lodge the PLO from Lebanon, where it was using the coun­try launch attacks on the Jew­ish state. The Pales­tini­ans had devel­oped a state-within-a-state in the south, which was often called “Fatah-land.” (Sound famil­iar?) In 1983, Israel finally pushed the PLO out and Yasser Arafat and his fol­low­ers fled to Tunisia. Still, the Lebanese war dragged on for another seven years as var­i­ous mili­tias — some sup­ported by Israel, oth­ers by Syria and Iran — before finally end­ing in 1990 from exhaus­tion. Lebanon was shat­tered and Israel ended up occu­py­ing parts of the coun­try for 22 years, spawn­ing Hezbol­lah.
This is impor­tant. Hezbol­lah was not _started_ by the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard. It was _organized_ by them out of the dis­parate Shi’ite groups that popped up to resist the Israeli occu­pa­tion. Iran helped merge them together, but they’re a Lebanese cre­ation.
This means Hezbol­lah is an indige­nous group, not a for­eign body like the PLO was. Say­ing that Lebanon “har­bored” Hezbol­lah is like say­ing the United States “har­bors” white suprema­cists or anti-government mili­tias. You prob­a­bly hate them and despise their goals, but you can’t they’re alien par­a­sites on Amer­i­can soci­ety. Like Hezbol­lah in Lebanon, they’re an inte­gral if extreme part of the polit­i­cal and social fab­ric. End­ing of expelling Hezbol­lah is akin to ampu­ta­tion rather than lanc­ing a boil.
I’ve been in love with Lebanon since 2004 when I took a flat here and began immers­ing myself in the place when­ever I could take a break from Iraq. In March, I set­tled here for the fore­see­able future. I have a wide vari­ety of friends, not just upper-crust Chris­tians, and while I’m not a polling com­pany, I think I have a decent grasp of the zeit­geist here.
Before this damn war, Hezbol­lah was los­ing sup­port. It wasn’t drain­ing, but it was ebbing. The polit­i­cal process was stut­ter­ing along, but it was mov­ing. Many peo­ple here hated Hezbol­lah… Many peo­ple also loved it. The soci­ety was split but there was a con­sen­sus the prob­lem had to be set­tled judi­ciously and polit­i­cally because no one wanted another civil war.
When the first Israeli bombs fell, some Shi’ites even blamed Hezbol­lah. I met a guy in the south­ern sub­urbs last Sat­ur­day, just four days after things started. He’s a Shi’ite from Nabatiyeh in the south and hated Hezbol­lah. He thought they’d screwed up big-time. These days, when I talk to him, he says he hopes Hezbol­lah rips the Israelis apart. Another friend of mine, one of those upper-crust Chris­tians, told me last night that as much as he hates Hezbol­lah, he hates the Israelis even more now.
The Lebanese are clos­ing ranks in the face of an exter­nal threat, just like peo­ple all over the world do — with the excep­tion of Spain, I guess. They’re no dif­fer­ent from any­one else, and the same thing hap­pened in the ini­tial days of Iraq. The same pat­tern would play out in Iran, too, if this war gets that far east. The West has no monop­oly on unity, patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism.
That said, unity rarely lasts. In the case of Amer­ica, it led to a polar­ized pub­lic where the pub­lic debate seems to involve scream­ing “trai­tor!” when some­one votes for a Demo­c­rat for the school board.
In the Mid­dle East, things rarely stay at that level. Once that unity breaks, we’re left with civil war. (See, Lebanon, 1975 – 1990 and Iraq, 2003-present.) And in civil wars, lots of peo­ple die and the sit­u­a­tion that needed to be fixed is usu­ally worse. (Does any­one think Iraq is a more sta­bi­liz­ing force than it was?)
Which is why it’s impor­tant to end these things before they start.