[News] Outside Forces Seeking Palestinian-Hezbollah Conflict

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Outside Forces Seeking Palestinian-Hezbollah Conflict*

Franklin Lamb
1/23/2014


Ain el Helweh camp, Lebanon

*http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=131910&cid=41&fromval=1&frid=41&seccatid=101&s1=0*


It isn't just the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine six decades 
after the Nakba; one can sense the carnivorous drooling from Tel Aviv to 
Amman, from Riyadh and the Gulf Kingdoms all the way to Washington DC 
and beyond---drooling and salivation over their project to promote 
tensions between the Palestinian Resistance and what is in some respects 
its historic offspring---Hezbollah.

The hostile forces gathered against the 
Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah-Palestine Resistance alliance are reportedly 
hard at work on yet another scheme to weaken, and possibly destroy, all 
four. It won't be easy, but it is a key game plan among those still 
seeking regime change in Syria.

Even as some of these governments deceptively play down their central 
goal of regime change in public, they appear to be fantasizing that by 
building up the Lebanese army---with a pledged $3 billion from 
Riyadh---that Lebanese troops can be induced to confront Hezbollah and 
its allies, this in what seems to be a "beat em or bleed em" strategy.

Patrick Cockburn, writing recently in the UK Independent and 
Counterpunch, gave a digest of anti-Shia hate propaganda being spread by 
Sunni religious figures, clerics financially backed by, and in some 
cases based in, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. Cockburn noted 
accurately that what is being painstaking laid is the groundwork for a 
sectarian civil war engulfing the entire Muslim world.

Efforts to egg on a confrontation between Palestinians and Hezbollah 
have increased over the past three months in Lebanon's camps, stemming 
principally from some of the local Sunni and Christian power centers. 
Support is being seen for various "militia of the month" groups, those 
terrorizing the population of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Moreover, the Takfiri Al-Nusra Front leader Abou Mohammed al-Joulani 
insists his organization is active on Lebanese soil in order to help the 
Sunnis, including Palestinians, face the "injustice" of Shiite 
Hezbollah. "Lebanon's Sunni are requesting that the mujahideen intervene 
to lift up the injustice they are suffering from at the hands of 
Hezbollah and similar militias," he said recently in an interview on 
Al-Jazeera.

Shiite-populated areas across Lebanon have been the target of terror 
attacks even before Hezbollah entered the fighting on the side of the 
Syrian government in May 2013, but those terror attacks have intensified 
recently. Four car bombings have targeted southern Beirut in recent 
months, while a number of IED attacks have occurred in Lebanon's Beqaa 
Valley.

The head of the Islamic Jihadist Movement in Ain al-Hilweh camp voiced 
fears on January 8 of a possible armed sectarian confrontation between 
Hezbollah and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon if the party did not 
revise its policies at home and in Syria. Sheikh Jamal Khattab told the 
Daily Star that should fighting erupt between Palestinians and Hezbollah 
the conflict could be even worse than the "war of the camps" (read: 
massacres) of the 1980s, when that conflict was not considered 
particularly sectarian. Today, says Sheikh Khattab, it would be 
different. Today it would be a Sunni vs. Shia war, with regional and 
international consequences, given the poisonous sea-change in sectarian 
relations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In Ain al-Hilweh and other camps, posters of local men killed while 
fighting alongside Takfiri groups in Syria, or against U.S. troops in 
Iraq, are tacked up throughout the camp. Lebanese security sources claim 
that Palestinian Islamist groups in Ain al-Hilweh have all finalized 
preparations to for a possible conflict with the Hezbollah's organized 
and trained "Resistance Brigades." These organizations include Usbat 
al-Ansar, Jund al-Sham, Fatah al-Islam, and other Salafist groups, and 
supporters of the controversial fugitive Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, and 
rumors abound that some of these elements are being financed by certain 
of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states as well as some Lebanese 
pro-Western March 14 parties.

Apparently the consideration among such groups and their sponsors is 
that conditions in Lebanon are ripe for an expanded war against "Shia 
infidels," and reportedly plans are now in place to bring it here, with 
several groups that are now fighting in Syria pledging to widen the 
Sunni-Shia war into Lebanon.


For their part, some pro-Hezbollah groups and many Lebanese citizens are 
suspicious of possible Palestinian involvement in recent terror attacks 
in Dahiyeh and the recent bombing of the Iranian Embassy. In point of 
fact, one of the two suicide bombers who attacked the Iranian Embassy on 
November 17 was Mouin Abu Dahr, a known pro-Palestinian whose mother is 
a Shiite and his father a Sunni. Ain al-Hilweh of course has also been 
in the spotlight with the arrest of Majed al-Majed, the leader of the 
Al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Majed is believed to have 
lived in the camp since 2012.

Clearly Israel and its new---as well as its longtime---allies seek a 
Sunni-Shia war, and the sooner the better. Also favored is a 
continuation of the Syria crisis for the reason that they consider 
Hezbollah to be squandering some of its best fighters and commanders and 
well as its weapons stores. Western Diplomats have spoken about 
US-Israeli hopes that Syria will be Hezbollah's Achilles heel and Iran's 
Vietnam, and Israeli media have commented on views by some officials 
that Hezbollah has shifted its attention toward Syria and away from the 
southern front with occupied Palestine.

Time will tell.

Hezbollah maintains it is using only five percent of its capacity to 
confront Israel, and according to one source close to the Resistance:
Hezbollah has self-sufficiency when it comes to the missiles, strategic 
and non-strategic weapons. All these weapons are quite abundant. Any 
additional equipment will constitute a negative factor because there is 
no need for them. All the weapons that are manufactured by Iran or owned 
by Syria are also available for Hezbollah. The land forces and the 
Special Forces fighting in Syria have acquired a lot of practical and 
intelligence related experience and a force of maneuvering on the land.  
This experience will be used when the war with Israel begins again.

The Sunni and the Shia, just as with the Palestinians and Hezbollah, 
need each other for many reasons, including confronting growing 
Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate propaganda, and the deepening and 
broadening apartheid occupation of Palestine.

All must work to tamp down their differences publicly and privately 
while endeavoring to neutralize sectarian provocateurs, Sunni as well as 
Shia---domestic and regional as well as international---provocateurs 
that today are seeking internecine and sectarian violence in order to 
weaken both sects, and even all of Islam.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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