'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

HC and FT on Hizbullah

I got my paper copy of the April-May issue of Boston review in the middle of the week. It has my big piece on Hizbullah in it. It looks pretty good, except they insisted I take out the footnotes. Waaaah! I love footnotes! A writer can have an entirely different kind of a conversation with the reader if she is allowed to use footnotes... But no. The copy-editor, Josh Friedman, said they "want to look more like the Atlantic Monthly", or something.

Oh well. Even worse news is that they haven't put my piece up on the website yet. I thought maybe when they do, I'll upload my footnoted version here, and y'all can choose which one you want to read.

Meanwhile, however, Roula Khalaf of the Financial Times has snagged an intriguing interview with Hizbullah #2 Sheikh Naim Qassim, in which he suggests that Hizbullah could find a formula for its militia to coordinate even more closely with, or become a "reserve wing" of, the Lebanese Army-- but not until after Israel pulls its forces out of the Shebaa Farms district, a tiny and almost unpopulated portion of land that both Lebanon and Syria say is Lebanese, but Israel and the UN say is Syrian.

Khalaf writes:

Mr Qassim confirmed that one potential alternative would be for Hizbollah fighters to become a kind of “reservist army”, co-ordinating activities with the Lebanese authorities.

...The sticking point is likely to be Shebaa Farms, occupied by Israel but claimed by Lebanon. “We will discuss [Hizbollah's] arms after Shebaa but on condition that a credible alternative is found to protect Lebanon. A reservist army doesn't mean the resistance becomes part of the army but it's a formula of co-ordination with the army. It's resistance by another name.”

Well, the fact is that coordination with the Lebanese Army would not be new at all for Hizbullah, since each force already has its own clearly defined area of operations and set of responsibilities in south Lebanon, though redesignating some or all H units as part of the a new LAF "reserve wing" would be formally new and could potentially result in many Hizbullah militia people being put on the LAF payroll. It is actually a proposal I thought of myself, a while back now; but I never wrote about it at all.

It could, however, be a neat way for both Hizbullah and the Lebanese government to end up in formal compliance with the (extremely intrusive and bossy) stipulation in Security Council resolution 1559 that calls for the disarming of all Lebanese militias (i.e., Hizbullah's, since that is the only one.)

In my article-- when y'all can read it!-- you will see that one of the main arguments I make is that it was Hizbullah's extremely effective political organizing throughout the 1990s that assured it of victory in the decisive battle that Israel forced upon it in 1996-- the battle that clearly paved the way for Hizbullah's landmark victory in 2000 in bringing about a near-total (or total, if you don't count Shebaa Farms) withdrawal of the IDF/IOF forces from Lebanon on a completely unilateral basis.

So yes, Hizbullah's smart and youthful party bosses certainly do know a thing or two about political organizing.

Khalaf writes,

Mr Qassim admitted that the weakening of Syrian influence in Lebanon had also reduced the support to his group from a strategic backer. But he said Hizbollah's strategy was to compensate for the loss of Syrian support by expanding the party's political role in Lebanon.

“Hizbollah has to do more to make up for this political loss and this is what we're doing with our political activities in the last two months.” He said it was “possible” that Hizbollah would one day join the government a move that it has avoided until now.

“But we haven't decided yet. Being in the government is tied to the type of government and to its programme and to our ability to influence it.” Last month Hizbollah staged a massive street demonstration in central Beirut to counter the protests of the opposition and strengthened its alliance with the “loyalists”, the pro-Syrian parties.

At the same time, however, it initiated a dialogue with the anti-Syrian opposition. Hizbollah leaders now have almost daily meetings with opposition figures.

The opposition has been divided over whether Hizbollah should be disarmed. But in recent days some prominent opposition leaders have issued statements to reassure the party that the fate of its military wing will be decided in an internal dialogue and without international interference.

“The other elements of 1559 are domestic Lebanese issues and the Lebanese voice is now almost in consensus that Hizbollah's arms would be discussed between the Lebanese without going back to the UN resolution,” said Mr Qassim. “So we don't consider that we're confronting the international community because we're applying an understanding between the Lebanese.”

He denied, however, that the party's shift toward stressing its political activities and seeking a formula to downplay its direct relationship with its militia constituted a surrender to the demands of the US:

"[I]t wants to take with politics what Israel could not take with arms,” he said.

“But they don't understand the problem it's occupation and Israeli expansionist ambitions and they're not treating the problem. They want to break the ability of any group to confront Israel and this is something we reject.”

As for the Shebaa Farms issue... Well, you can read more about that in my BR article, too-- hopefully soon.

But the "big" bottom line there is that once Israel is ready to conclude a serious peace agreement with Syria-- on the only legitimate basis for such a peace to be concluded, i.e. land for peace-- then whether Shebaa Farms is Syrian or Lebanese will become truly a matter for only those two countries to worry about. The only reason it's an "international" issue at all these days is because Israel wants to hold onto all of the occupied Golan area of Syria's national territory for as long as it can, and it claims that Shebaa Farms is part of that territory, not part of Lebanon...

(See next post)