Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa

MIDEAST: Lebanon War More Than a Shadow

Mona Alami

BEIRUT, Jan 9 2009 (IPS) - The eerie calm reigning on the green hills of south Lebanon was broken Thursday by the sound of explosions as three Katyusha rockets were launched into Nahariya and Western Galilee areas in Israel.

Israel fired back, according to local website Now Lebanon, but said the Lebanese militant group Hizbullah was unlikely to have launched the rockets. The ‘Party of God’ officially denied any involvement in the attack.

Unknown factions seem to be working on the creation of a new front in south Lebanon. While Salafist (radical Muslim factions) interviewed by IPS denied any involvement in the incident, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) neither denied nor confirmed a hand in firing rockets.

The attack has spotlighted the grizzly resemblance that the Israeli assault on Hamas bears to the 2006 war that pitted Israel against Hizbullah.

The Lebanon war erupted Jul. 12, 2006, after Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed three others. The conflict, lasting 33 days and resulting in the death of more than a thousand people and the displacement of over a million, ended with UN resolution 1701, which called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon.

“The political situation that prevailed in 2006 in Lebanon is very similar to the one in Gaza today,” says political scientist Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, author of ‘Hezbollah: Politics and Religion’. “Like in Lebanon in 2006, when U.S. foreign policy was prone to one faction (the pro-Western government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora) over the other (the pro-Iranian and Syrian minority dominated by Hizbullah) the U.S. is also now favourable to the presidency of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and very much opposed to the Hamas government. The Gaza attack is thus in many ways an extension of the July war.”

Hizbullah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah drew a parallel between both events by recently declaring that holding Hamas responsible for the war in Gaza was similar to accusations made against Hizbullah for provoking the July 2006 war. Nasrallah pointed to the irony of the choices faced by Hamas, which was forced, before the Israeli assault, to “either extend the truce with Israel and die of hunger, or end the truce and put an end to the siege.”

Arab and international reaction to both events has been similar, with little condemnation of the onslaught on Gaza voiced within Arab diplomatic circles. “There is an evolution in the policy of Arab states towards Israel since 2006,” says Saad-Ghorayeb. “It seems to have taken the form of an implicit partnership, as is witnessed from the increase in the level of Israeli aggression and the lack of a unified Arab stand on the issue.”

Israel claims that its ground offensive is aimed at ending years of rocket fire launched by Hamas on its southern towns. However, the real and unspoken objective may be to restore the IDF’s former lustre, which was smeared by the 2006 war that saw its reputation of invincibility damaged by Hizbullah’s efficient resistance.

“The attack on Gaza serves the purpose of restoring the army’s power of deterrence as well as its credibility,” says Saad-Ghorayeb. She adds that the Israeli army seems to have only partially applied the findings of the Winograd commission, which investigated the failings of the July war.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was accused by the commission of hasty decision-making in the 2006 war, has tried proving to the Israeli public that he has learnt his lesson, declaring that the Gaza operation was “unavoidable”. The operation had, according to the Israeli media, been planned for months, while troops have been training for a possible Gaza invasion for over a year.

As smoke billowed over Gaza, Lebanese were increasingly wary that their country could be drawn into the spiralling violence. Olmert declared Jan. 4 that he was “not interested” in opening up a new front in the north, Hizbullah’s traditional domain. As soon as the attack on Gaza was launched by Israel, the Lebanese army and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) commander Maj. Gen. Claudio Graziano called for self-restraint to avoid turning South Lebanon into a platform for battle, as eight Katyusha rockets set to be launched at Israel were defused on Dec. 25 by UNIFIL and the Lebanese army.

However, Nasrallah’s most recent declaration took a fiery turn when he told thousands of supporters gathered Jan. 7 for Ashoura – the Shia commemoration of the martyrdom of Hussayn Ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet – that they “have to act as though all possibilities are real and open with Israel, and be ready for any eventuality.” According to sources in the South, Hizbullah fighters have been missing from their hometowns for the past 10 days.

“Although Hizbullah has been accused by some of not actively intervening in the current Gaza events, it has certainly played a major role in the war by training and equipping Hamas over the last six months,” says Saad-Ghorayeb. Hizbullah is also now increasingly perceived as an efficient resistance movement and a fighting school combining guerrilla and conventional warfare, she says.

“Hizbullah will most probably not take a direct part in the war on Gaza – unless it feels that Hamas is bleeding and unable to sustain the Israeli offensive on its own, which can only happen if the party is fully decapitated,” says Saad-Ghorayeb.

Israel has said their offensive will not end until Hamas agrees to the destruction of all tunnels used for smuggling and to the establishment of an international force to prevent the smuggling of weapons from Sinai into Gaza. It wants Hamas to stop sending military commanders for training in Iran, and insists on the right to counter any renewal of rocket fire. If Hamas is defeated or loses its legitimacy by accepting a ceasefire that satisfies all Israel’s demands, Hizbullah will eventually be left vulnerable.