"....This is extraordinary. It is also a huge mistake. Egypt, for all its flaws as a state, is not Lebanon. The security apparatus in Egypt is strong, and Egyptians -- no matter how much they dislike Hosni Mubarak -- did not much like it when Hassan Nasrallah called him out on television during the Gaza War. I do not believe Nasrallah wants Egypt to start cracking down on all the Shia Lebanese expatriates who pass through. In the same way, it is not in Hizballah's interest for the international community to come to the conclusion that Hizballah is not content to confine its operations to southern Lebanon. Because what could be dismissed as a sub-regional issue now becomes a regional issue. And that brings in more states and international actors.
So I think Hizballah has overreached here. And I think that they and the constituency upon whom they rely for support are going to pay a price for that overreach.
*The definitions of many domestic agencies about who can be considered "Hizballah" often conforms to legal definitions -- which are designed to include those who have given monetary support to the organization by way of donations -- but lack explanatory power because they fail to separate the actual activists from those who just happen to be Lebanese Shia expatriates who support Hizballah's agenda. As many Lebanese Shia expatriates tend to do. Case in point: the government of Germany claims it has 800 Hizballah operatives active in Germany. Do you see the problem here? That's almost as many men as Hizballah is estimated to have put in the field during the 2006 war. So either someone's math is off, or we need to tweak our definition of who is and is not "Hizballah".
**To be fair, support for the Palestinian resistance has been a constant of Hizballah rhetoric and policy and is nothing new."
Abu Muqawama, here
1 comment:
The danger of wishful thinking lurks in this interesting piece. However, the overreach is not by Hezbollah but by the Egyptian regime and oil monarchies who seem to fight a desperate and losing battle for survival. Obama's administration seems to be veering away from such 'respectable' allies in the region. King Abdullah's visit to Washington will shed some light on how things will turn. Meanwhile, one should not rule out the 'duplicity' factor in Egypt. One should not be surprised to see that the present position of the regime is being pushed by factions withing the army and security forces to create an untenable situation that will make 'change' mandatory. Affaire a suivre
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