[News] Israel's multi-front war on Lebanese resistance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel's multi-front war on Lebanese resistance

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11465.shtml
Hicham Safieddine, The Electronic Intifada, 18 August 2010

The international coverage of border clashes between Lebanese and 
Israeli military forces earlier this month may have suggested the 
confrontation was a mere squabble over cutting a tree that went awry 
in a "trigger-happy" and "conflict-prone" region. Less than a week 
later, one of several recent speeches by Hizballah's Secretary 
General Hassan Nasrallah managed to get brief global media coverage. 
He presented visual and audio material suggesting that Israel may 
have assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.

However, both incidents were much more than a routine tug-of-war 
between two long-time foes. They were part of an ongoing war between 
Israel and resistance forces along Israel's northern frontier that 
continued even after the July 2006 Israeli offensive against Lebanon. 
The second phase of this war is being fought by other means and on 
more clandestine fronts. From spy networks that reached the highest 
echelons of Lebanon's security and political establishment, to war by 
proxy conducted via UN forces in southern Lebanon, to international 
blackmail through the UN-sanctioned tribunal into Hariri's death, the 
battle between Israel and Hizballah has taken on new dimensions. 
These dimensions have wide-ranging implications on the future of the 
struggle against Zionism and the success or failure of US regional 
imperial aims.

The 3 August border clash itself that left two Lebanese soldiers, one 
Israeli officer and a Lebanese journalist dead underscored several 
realities of the current political and military climate. Despite the 
incessant war-mongering by Israel over the past few months, the 
killing of one of its high-ranking officers -- a colonel -- did not 
translate into a massive offensive the same way Hizballah's capturing 
of two Israeli soldiers did in July 2006. This clearly undermines 
arguments blaming Hizballah for starting the July 2006 war. Wars are 
rarely improvisational affairs. Specific incidents are almost always 
pretexts rather than triggers of war. Israel was ready and eager to 
go to war in 2006. In spite of its rhetoric, this time Israel was not.

Another feature of this latest clash that instigated a circus of 
political posturing in Lebanon, Israel and the United States was the 
fact that the army, rather than Hizballah, was the party engaging the 
Israelis. In all three countries, the issue of arming the Lebanese 
military was a topic for discussion. In Beirut, Hizballah's opponents 
in the Lebanese government hailed the clash as living proof of the 
ability of the Lebanese army to defend the country and called for a 
campaign to better equip and arm the military. In a silly bid to 
start the campaign, the temperamental minister of defense, Elias 
al-Murr, and his father, a wealthy veteran politician, deposited half 
a million dollars into a newly established bank account for such a purpose.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government called on Washington to stop arming 
the Lebanese military. Unsurprisingly, several US congressmen 
complied and sought a review of US military aid to Lebanon. 
Meanwhile, Iran's top supreme guide aid Ali Akbar Vilayati was in 
Beirut offering his country's willingness to fill in the gap.

The fact remains that cutting US aid to the Lebanese army harms 
Israeli interests rather than serves them. Indeed, the 3 August 
incident was the exception rather than the rule of relations between 
Israel and the Lebanese army. Since Lebanon's formal independence in 
1943, US military aid has been significant only when the Lebanese 
army was an actual or potential ally to Israeli strategic aims and 
actions, from 1981 to 1984 at the height of the Israeli occupation of 
Lebanon and immediately after the July 2006 war. Even then, the 
amounts were meager -- $138 million in the 1980s and $220 in 2007 -- 
and excluded any weapons necessary to defend Lebanese territory. 
Rather, the funds boosted the army's internal security readiness that 
can be used against resistance forces or for the destruction of the 
Palestinian refugee camps. A cut in this aid will only hurt petty 
beneficiaries in the army ranks and diminish the army's ability to 
control radical elements inside Lebanon rather than face Israel.

The perception that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon 
(UNIFIL) colludes with Israel was reinforced by the 3 August 
incident. In the days that followed the tree incident, the Israelis 
quietly -- and without any Lebanese response or much media reporting 
-- cut, and with the consent and cooperation of the UN forces 
stationed there, not one but three trees. Over the past few months 
relations between UNIFIL and local villagers have deteriorated 
precipitously. Currently under French command, UNIFIL has clashed 
with villagers on several occasions as they conducted more intrusive 
and uncoordinated missions within these villages to enforce their 
mandate of ensuring that there is no "non-state armed presence" south 
of the Litani River. While this is indeed part of their mandate as 
defined by UN Security Council resolution 1701 that outlines the 
terms of ceasefire following the July 2006 war, UNIFIL's rules of 
engagement also stipulated that they were to coordinate their moves 
with the Lebanese government, something they have increasingly 
avoided or complained about.

In effect, the heavy presence of the Lebanese army and that of UNIFIL 
in southern Lebanon are two sides of the same coin: a last-resort 
strategy by Israel to drain and weaken Hizballah in every possible 
indirect way after the most direct one -- outright total war -- 
failed to crush the movement in 2006. The heavier the non-Hizballah 
military presence, the more eyes and ears and bodies there are to 
disrupt the "sea" of people where the "fish" of the resistance 
survive and grow. Hizballah's official position has remained 
supportive and encouraging of the Lebanese army presence and 
lukewarmly tolerant of the international one.

The real threat to its power, Hizballah's cadres declare, lies 
elsewhere. First, in the open spy war whose extent and impact 
continues to unravel daily in Lebanon. Second, in the ramifications 
of decisions by the international Hariri tribunal expected to 
implicate high-ranking members of Hizballah's military wing in the 
2005 assassination.

By any standards of espionage, the extent of the spy war and its 
unraveling is of staggering proportions. Dozens of alleged and 
convicted Israeli spies have been exposed and arrested in Lebanon in 
the past couple of years. International media would have been buzzing 
with stories about them had they been less than a handful but accused 
of spying for Syria or Iran or any of the usual "Axis of Evil" 
suspects. The reach and role of these spies is tremendous according 
to local media reports. They have managed to infiltrate the 
communications networks and the security apparatus of Lebanon at the 
highest levels. Both fields are essential to safeguarding the 
operations of the resistance. These fields are also the gateway to 
conducting clandestine operations in Lebanon such as assassinations 
or tampering with evidence pointing to perpetrators of such acts. It 
is this reality that links the spy war to the international tribunal 
that has prompted a public and diplomatic offensive by Hizballah 
lately in the form of a series of appearances by its leader Nasrallah.

The first volley of this offensive was largely focused on 
discrediting the international tribunal by showing the unreliability 
of any evidence it presented based on phone communications (now shown 
to be controlled and manipulated by spies) or false testimonies -- 
now clearly the work of conspirators keen to manipulate public 
opinion to extract political prices from Syria or Hizballah. The 
credibility of these witnesses that formed the backbone of earlier 
reports by the tribunal pointing fingers at Syria is baseless. Key 
witnesses accusing Syria and its allies in the Lebanese security 
services have since then recanted their testimonies or were shown to 
be mercenaries receiving fat sums of money from political parties 
aligned with Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated 
former prime minister. Despite the exposure of these witnesses and 
the gravity of the consequences of their testimonies, the tribunal 
has refused to investigate who was behind concocting these false testimonials.

By focusing on the tribunal's inaction in this matter, Nasrallah was 
attacking local rivals, namely the Hariri camp, which provided the 
political and possibly material cover for the witnesses. If Hizballah 
is going to be put on the hot seat by the tribunal, Nasrallah will 
put his opponents on a hotter seat domestically. If the false 
testimony file was about the tribunal's questionable past, 
Nasrallah's second volley was about the reliability of its future 
actions. Nasrallah presented video recordings showing Israeli spy 
planes tracking Hariri's whereabouts and routes of transportation 
prior to the assassination. The findings were the result of 
Hizballah's success in intercepting, in real-time, aerial streams of 
surveillance footage being broadcast from Israeli spy planes roaming 
Lebanese skies back to headquarters inside Israel. Nasrallah was 
clear that the footage was not a smoking gun but enough grounds for 
the tribunal or any investigative body to subpoena Israeli officials 
and investigate the possibility that Israel was behind Hariri's 
killing. Daniel Bellemare, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, filed a 
formal request with the Lebanese government to obtain all the 
material in Hizballah's possession relating to this footage. Although 
Hizballah agreed to the request, it explicitly stated that it was 
only doing so in compliance with the Lebanese request and will only 
hand over the material to the Lebanese government. But the latter has 
so far acted as a mailman in this case, and the tribunal could easily 
serve as a conduit of all this material to the Israelis without 
committing to investigating them.

The tribunal's report implicating Hizballah members in the Hariri 
assassination is expected in the fall. Hizballah's pre-emptive attack 
on its credibility and its local cheerleaders has led to Syrian and 
Saudi efforts to seek a compromise. The Saudis might try to petition 
Washington so that the report is delayed until the spring. But 
anything short of a complete restructuring of the tribunal to 
eliminate the possibility of international manipulation or to 
neutralize its effects locally (which requires bringing down the 
current Lebanese "unity" government if it doesn't continue to 
equivocate on the matter), may only put things on hold for a year or 
so. Without a complete takeover of the investigation by Lebanese 
authorities, as Hizballah has called for but so far not insisted on, 
the tribunal will remain a sleeping cell of international pressure 
activated at the opportune time to justify whatever larger aims, 
including new wars, the US administration and Israel have in store 
for the Middle East. By then, regional conditions -- at least in the 
eyes of Washington and its Israeli and Arab allies -- may seem ripe 
for another round of sowing "constructive chaos" from Tehran to Tel 
Aviv, and there will be no shortage of trees -- of different roots 
and fruits -- to cut.

Hicham Safieddine is a Toronto-based researcher and journalist.



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