A bittersweet day: report from Lebanon
13/08/2006
- Opinión
Beirut.- The bittersweet mood in Beirut on this day
when the ceasefire took effect was perhaps best expressed by Rahul, a
taxi driver, who tells me, “We won, but at what cost? So many people
displaced, so many dead, so many buildings destroyed.”
The final toll of this war is still being counted but it is likely
that the death count will go above 1400 and the economic damage will
reach $6 billion.
As soon as the cessation of hostilities came into effect at 8 am, cars
and vans and trucks started to roll down to the South as people who
took refuge in the Beirut and other parts of the country went back to
their homes. “They'll most likely find their houses gone, but their
lands will still be there and there's really no place like home,” says
Anwar El Khalil, an MP representing the area of Marieyoun, the site of
the strafing of a civilian convoy by Israeli planes last week, who
himself is eager to return home. With a full third of the country's
inhabitants having been displaced from their homes, a massive civilian
movement is expected to bring traffic along the country's main
highways to a crawl in the next few days.
THE LOSERS
There is no doubt about who the loser is in this war. Everyone we
talk to in this day of national pride agrees with the editorial in the
Daily Star, Lebanon's liberal English language paper, that states that
“The Israeli government has been discredited and serious wrinkles in
the US-Israeli relationship have been exposed. The Israelis now have
to contend with a political arena that is in disarray.” With even
members of the government of Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert saying Israel
has lost the war, the Jewish state is indeed plunged into its worst
political crisis in years. Perhaps the prevailing mood in the Israeli
establishment is reflected in Haaretz commentator Zeev Schiff's call
for a “reconsideration of the military and strategic management after
the facts have proved that the army is no longer capable of adapting
to the kind of warfare imposed by Hezbollah.”
Nor is there doubt about who the other loser is. For many Lebanese
politicians and analysts, there is a strong conviction that this war
was planned by Washington way before the Hezbollah captured two
Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid in early July. During our
brief visit with him, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud tells our peace
delegation, “We know that the Israeli offensive was planned way in
advance, with the support of external forces.” MP El Khalil is not
shy about identifying the US as the real author of this war, and he
points to a recent article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh that
claims that US neo-conservatives had a grand plan for restructuring
the Middle East via Israeli military force as early as 1996.
Destruction of the Hezbollah was perhaps even more vital for the
United States than Israel, claims Henri Barkey, chairman of Lehigh
University's International Relations Department and a former member of
the US state department's policy planning staff. In a recent
article, Barkey claims that while Israel can live with a Hezbollah
driven north of the Litani River, the US would not. The key reason
has to do with the “Hizbullah model.” According to Barkey, “it
represents the nightmarish metamorphosis of a well supplied and
trained militia. If it can work in Lebanon, the model can be emulated
elsewhere around the world -- Hizbullah is far more sophisticated
and entrenched than Al Qaeda. It is impossible to defeat it without
inflicting civilian casualties. Therein lies Hizbullah's strength: it
calculates that the outside world will relent in the face of civilian
casualties.” In this view, the triumph of the Hezbollah over Israel is
the worst of all possible worlds.
THE VICTOR
For the Lebanese, the view is very different. In the thirty day war,
most of the country's political groups and most of the country have
come together in supporting the struggle against Israeli aggression
led by the Shiite Muslim-led organization. First among these is the
country's Maronite Christian President Emile Lahoud, who is not shy
about praising“the leadership of Hezbollah in the national
resistance.” Everybody acknowledges that Hezbollah's sterling
military performance is the source of what the Daily Star calls the
“unprecedented level of solidarity” of Lebanese society today.
Domestic critics who, at the start of the war, accused Hezbollah of
dragging Lebanon into war by capturing two Israeli soldiers for
prisoner-exchange purposes are quiet in these heady days of national p
ride.
If anything has been put to rest by the events of the last 30 days, it
is the lie that the Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Deliberate
Israeli targeting of civilian targets while Hezbollah fighters focused
on fighting Israeli soldiers has put the shoe on the other foot.
Indeed, there is now a massive clamor among international civil
society groups to try the Israeli political leaders and the army for
war crimes and state-sponsored terror.
It has not only been Hezbollah's military prowess that has been on
display but also its tremendous capacity to provide welfare services,
in this instance for the country's displaced population. Indeed, in a
country whose social services, especially for the poor, are very
backward, Hezbollah's social infrastructure is a model of efficient
modernity. It runs, for instance, 46 medical centers and a hospital.
Its Jihad for Construction, which supervised the material and social
infrastructure of South Lebanon in the 1990s, is now poised to manage
an even more massive post-war reconstruction.
Also on display on both the local scene and the international stage
have been the talented intellectuals and spokespersons of the
Hezbollah, among who is Dr Ali Fayyad, the head of the organization's
Consultative Center for Studies and Documentation (CCSD), which has
produced more than 300 reports on social, economic, political, and
administrative issues.
An urbane intellectual, Dr Ali explains to us that there were three
main reasons for Hezbollah's victory. One was the employment of
rockets to neutralize Israeli airpower and give Hezbollah an offensive
air capability without airplanes. The second was the Hezbollah's use
of guerrilla warfare, which stymied an Israeli Army used to fighting
conventional Arab armies. Third was the Hezbollah fighter who is “not
only a guerrilla trained in self reliance but is also filled with
ideological conviction that he is on the right track.”
Switching to another topic, Fayyad says that while Hezbollah's
policies are “of course, determined principally by internal Lebanese
considerations, we also consider the Palestinian struggle and
international solidarity.” It is this Arabic and internationalist
perspective that has given Hezbollah a great deal of resonance
throughout not only the Arab world but in other parts of the globe.
Hezbollah leaders speak with admiration of Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, and the admiration is said to be mutual.
Fayyad, a member of the Hezbollah's political bureau, became one of
the public faces of Hezbollah during the thirty day war, forcing him
to switch cars and lodgings almost every night since it was assumed
that he was a prime Israeli target.
Beirut in the evening of 14 August is a city filled with sorrow and
pride, with the latter clearly dominant. Throughout the city, there
are motorcades celebrating Hezbollah and its General Secretary Hassan
Nasrallah. Everyone tunes in when Nasrallah comes on television at
nine o'clock to announce what he considers a “tremendous strategic
victory for Lebanon” and announces Hezbollah's preparedness to
withdraw its fighters behind the Litani River.
As he speaks, a high official of the Lebanese Communist Party, perhaps
the epitome of secular politics in Lebanon, says of the man who is the
face of Islamic politics, “There is our Arab Che Guevara -- with a
turban.”
- Walden Bello is professor of sociology at the University of the
Philippines and executive director of the research and advocacy
institute Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok. He is one of
the members of the International Civil Society and Parliamentary Peace
Mission to Lebanon.
Source: Focus on Trade #123
https://www.alainet.org/de/node/116625
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