Saturday, 3 January 2009
Hezbollah and the Limits of Its Function
Elias Harfoush Al-Hayat - 02/01/09//
With the exception of passionate speeches and popular gatherings, the Lebanese resistance, until now, has not come close to getting involved in the ongoing war in Gaza. Perhaps this is a sound indicator for evaluating the role that Hezbollah plays in Lebanon's political make-up. This role has raised many questions whenever the country's defense strategy and the goals that Hezbollah wants to achieve by retaining its arsenal of weapons are being discussed.
If Lebanon's borders represent the limits of the use of these weapons and the function of these weapons is therefore a national function, then it becomes easier to reach an understanding about these limits and the party's function - easier than if Hezbollah sees its role from a regional perspective and believes that it is responsible for liberating Palestine, from Lebanese territory, while considering this goal no less important than liberating the occupied Lebanese territory.
For reasons that are well-understood, the party's leaders have been determined to keep the functions of these weapons and the limits of their use vague. This is likely to strengthen Hezbollah's negotiating position at home and support the position of the sect it represents in the domestic power structure; it also retains the link between the party's domestic slogans and the slogans of the Iranian sponsor that considers the Palestinian issue to be central. This is despite the gap that lies between these slogans and the lack of any serious opportunities for the Palestinians to benefit from them on the ground, when they come under Israeli aggression.
This has been obvious during the recent aggression in Gaza. While the Palestinians are being martyred by the hundreds, the Iranian role has been limited to volunteers filling applications to undertake suicide missions in Israel and senior Iranian judges forming "revolutionary courts" to try officials who are "leaders of the Zionist regime" for their role in the massacres in Gaza. One could consider such news a type of joke, were it not for the fact that it is a confirmation, for those who still require such confirmation, of the difference between the price paid by those who trade in such slogans and brandish them from a distance, and those who are being killed by bombs and rockets.
Hezbollah is supposedly realistic in dealing with the latest attack on Gaza - even if this has positive aspects with regard to the situation in Lebanon, since it spares the country a new disaster like the one of the summer of 2006. However, there is another aspect, having to do with the image that the party wants for itself, and this should not be ignored. This party's leaders are proud that they have upgraded their arsenal of rockets since the 2006 war; they now have more than 30,000 rockets, most of which can strike deep into Israel. Even so, these rockets and missiles have remained silent as the Palestinian people are subjected to attacks that Hamas leaders have described as being the fiercest since the June 1967 war, when Israel faced three Arab armies. Hezbollah's Secretary General did not hesitate to describe the rockets recently discovered in the UNIFIL area of operations in south Lebanon as "a trap" that was meant to drag the party into a confrontation. He did not rule out that "Israeli agents" were behind planting these rockets.
What would be the difference in such an event between the "supporting" role that Hezbollah plays in the central (Palestine) issue and the less-than-satisfactory role that it accuses certain countries in the region of playing? If Hezbollah has the right to put the interest of its country before its entanglement in a "war of others" (a view for which we should thank Hezbollah!), is it not logical that these states that it accuses of not doing enough do the same thing themselves, since history proves that they have not been negligent in their duties toward the Palestinian cause?
