Living on a Hair Trigger
The recent claims of alleged active Israeli spy rings in Lebanon may be nothing more than an indication that Hezbollah wants to ramp up the climate of paranoia it has so successfully cultivated in the South over the past quarter of a century, even if by declaring a pandemic of Israeli moles, it is knocking its own claim that nothing moves in South Lebanon without its knowledge.
But elections are nigh and it’s time to once again grind out the well-worn refrain that Israel, with the backing of the US government and other Western bogeymen, is the single biggest threat to Lebanon, that it wants to annex our land, take our water and eat our babies. (If you don’t believe it, its all written down in a very trustworthy book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a vile document that has been dismissed by most of the sane world as utter guff, but which still serves as a major reference for extreme right-wing Nazis and, sadly, the Arab street).
March 8 officials have been quick to talk up the role their bloc plays in the nation’s defense against the Zionist threat. On Tuesday, March 8 MP Abdellatif al-Zein from the Development and Liberation bloc told Prime Minister Fouad Siniora not to fear the Resistance’s weapons, which he said “are only directed toward Israel and its agents in Lebanon.” Zein either has a short memory or is living denial. He should cast his mind back to May 7, when Hezbollah did turn their guns against Lebanese, specifically against Siniora’s government.
What is more alarming is Zein’s reference to “agents” in a week in which they seem to be popping out of nowhere. Surely he could not be planting the idea in our heads that Hezbollah will protect us from the Mossad operatives allegedly running amok in the South. Now Hezbollah is not only the army we never had, they are also the ideal chaps for counter intelligence work.
History has taught us, however, that there is much to “fear” – on many levels – from Hezbollah’s weapons. Fear for the future of a state that cannot control an armed group that owes allegiance of varying degrees to two other nations – Iran and Syria – and which since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 has only succeeded in bringing death, destruction, fear and instability to Lebanon.
Zain also comforted us by saying that Hezbollah’s aim was to “safeguard the people”, who should rest assured that they would be allowed to vote freely on June 7, now promoting Hezbollah as the nation’s policeman, guaranteeing there will be no violence. Zein was talking as if Hezbollah is the state, and it is possible that, somewhere deep in his unconscious, he believes this.
Yes, Israel has left its bloody thumbprint on our history and should be no friend of Lebanon, given its culture of repression and ethnic cleansing within its own borders, and the legacy of suffering it has wrought on the lives of thousands of Lebanese. And yes it has made land grabs and stolen vital resources. But the part of the blame for the climate of violence in South Lebanon today must be shouldered by Hezbollah, whose aggressive posturing and boasts of rearming have created a mini-iron curtain along that small strip of land. The war in 2006 claimed the lives of over 1,000 Lebanese, people who would all be alive today if Hezbollah, in 2000, had given up its weapons and stuck to mainstream politics.
For its part, Israel claims that a terrorist outfit runs South Lebanon, and there are enough members of the international community to, rightly or wrongly, accept that claim and make it stick. Rather than protecting Lebanon, Hezbollah’s presence as a non-state actor, an actor that one must remember does not have the overwhelming support of the Lebanese, is in reality placing the people of Lebanon in even greater peril.
We live on a hair trigger.