Hezbollah's Crisis

Here you can read my op-ed on Hezbollah, in which I argue that the jihadist movement is neither capable of taking up the mantle of fight, not at an affordable price at least, nor it is prevailing as a deterrent.

For a resistance movement, bravado is not a substitute for actually fighting.

Hezbollah is no exception to this rule, and this is at the heart of the crisis within the party.

More than three years after the 2006 war with Israel and two years after the assassination of its top commander, Imad Mugniyah, in a heavily secured zone in Damascus, Hezbollah hasn’t launched one resistance operation. On the contrary, South Lebanon is enjoying the calmest period it’s had since 1978, according to UNIFIL’s recent assessment.

Even on the five or so occasions when Katyusha rockets were fired into Israel from South Lebanon since the July War, Hezbollah was always among the first parties to deny any involvement and has sometimes gone as far as to condemn the attacks.

Hezbollah’s leadership can't miss the signs their community sends during such incidents. Images of southern villagers fleeing in packed cars with their possessions strapped on top flutter across Lebanese TV screens every time attacks are launched from the Hezbollah-dominated South into northern Israel.

It is a normal reaction, given that the memory of the 2006 war is still fresh in southerners’ minds, something Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has noted in his speeches.

Yet in a recent address he called upon his audience "to withstand and fight" as Shia Imam Hussein and his followers did in the battle of Karbala back in the 7th century, should Israel impose the fight "upon us."

It is hardly an appealing invitation. The "Husseinis", as Nasrallah may recall, perished in the battle of Karbala, and their school of fighting, which Nasrallah is promising to imitate, ended with a crushing military defeat in which humiliated prisoners of war were forced to walk from the battlefield in Iraq to Damascus. It is a fight that goes down in military history as an example of how not to go to war.

Imam Hussein himself desperately tried to avoid the confrontation to save his people from such a fate.

Hence, the Shia community, which annually commemorates the slain Imam, aspires for a different future, and when they flee their homes it is not because they are gutlessly trying to avoid battle but because they fear for their safety.

Deterrence or delusion?

The Party of God is under attack from Israeli – and possibly other – intelligence apparatuses, which have struck the party in its most secure areas. Its operatives have been uncovered in Azerbaijan and Egypt, and arms shipments to the organization, like the weapons found onboard the Francop last fall, have been intercepted. In mid-October wire tapping devices exploded on phone lines that were part of Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network. The explosion in Hezbollah-controlled Haret-Hreik in December is believed to be an Israeli attempt on the life of top Hamas official in Lebanon Oussama Hamdan.

So Hezbollah is being attacked, and it hasn’t retaliated to any of the abovementioned offenses. Yet the party is under the delusion that it is a deterrence force against Israel.

The party’s updated political manifesto, which Hassan Nasrallah debuted on November 30, stated that the Resistance has gone from playing the role of the liberator to playing a “confrontation and deterrence role, in addition to its political and internal role as an influence in building a just and capable state."

However, the party is not playing its self-assigned deterrence role very well, as Israel, with its constant aggressions on Lebanon, is far from being deterred.

The UN Security Council listed 388 Israeli airspace violations against Lebanon in its report last June. The figure has grown since then.

Israel admits that it is conducting surveillance on Hezbollah's military activities and has threatened to take action against Lebanon as a whole should Hezbollah acquire advanced anti-aircraft missiles or any other large-scale weaponry.

So let's get this right: Hezbollah's deterrence force is so powerful that it is, ironically, becoming a pretext for permanent Israeli violations against Lebanon and possibly an inducement for a devastating war.

Nevertheless, with characteristic condescension, Hezbollah contemptuously dismisses the looming catastrophic conflict. "Resistance forces will ultimately triumph," Nasrallah said, addressing a conference of Arab and international Resistance organizations in Beirut a couple of weeks ago. He added that his party will “change the face of the region.”

Since Hezbollah considers Israel an "absolute evil" and its very existence a permanent aggression against the imaginary "Muslim nation", the party believes it has the legitimacy to take up the mantle of liberating Palestine and wiping Israel off the map.
So why the delay in accomplishing this "divine" mission?

Because it is undoable and Hezbollah knows it. This leaves the party with few options.

Hezbollah could either seek shelter in bravado while simultaneously concentrating on its sweeping domestic plans, as outlined in its manifesto, or it could involved in a serious national dialogue over how to give up its arsenal in parallel with an internal dialogue over how to turn itself into more of a political party that could excel through a democratic political process.

The Hezbollah leadership has never shown any interest in this second option.

Rather, Hezbollah has, against all odds, planted its long-range rockets deep into northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, as Washington Post reported last month, and the party’s leader seems to have no problem luring Israel into a major war fought on Lebanese soil.

While Imam Hussein tried to avoid conflict, Hezbollah isn’t, and it should think of its supporters in the ever-vulnerable Shia community before picking a fight.