Two Views Of Hezbollah

WHICH IS IT? Is Hezbollah a homegrown political movement that has organized the downtrodden Shia of Lebanon into a political force, as Bronwen Maddox and others propose? Or is it a overweening satrapy of Iran and Syria, a force of disorder in a weak and suffering land of Lebanon, as Fouad Ajami writes?

What is clear is the Hezbollah has had a ton of money from Iran. You don’t build all that military infrastructure on the benevolence of strangers. And now Hezbollah is in a full-out war with Israel.

Write Maddox et al,

Has Sheikh Nasrallah miscalculated? Many assume that in seizing Israeli soldiers he hoped to win the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel, as Hezbollah had done before.
...
But Israel may have also have made a misjudgment. It does not want to withdraw without success, but more fighting will kill more civilians, radicalise more Lebanese and test Israelis’ nerves and the patience of its allies.

In the opinion of Ajami,

A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin.

Right now the Europeans are singing the song of Israeli “disproportion.” After another week President Bush may find it hard to allow Israel to clean up its northern border and give its people the right to live free of rockets from Lebanon courtesy of Sheikh Nasrullah and Hezbollah.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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