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Tail Wagging The Dog……? Hardly.

There has been speculation over whether or not the Hezbollah is answerable to its mentors in Iran, and to those in control of that “weigh station” for Iranian weapons, …Syria. It is assumed by some that Hezbollah is little understood, and that it may not be as answerable to the major players of Iran and Syria as widely believed.

Back in theFall of 2002, Eyal Zisser wrote an interesting paper under the title of “The Return of Hizbullah”, that discusses many of the reasons why Israel did not directly engage the Hezbollah in the past, choosing rather to target Syria, to get its point across. It most certainly shows the amount of Syrian control over Hezbollah, especially when the stakes are high enough.

Finnish TV recently had interviewed Helsinki University lecturer, Hannu Juusola, who said on more than a few occasions that. “the Hezbollah is not taking directions from Damascus or Tehran”. In light of the amount of weight both Syria and Iran have over the of Hezbollah, (Iran annually funds over 100 million US dollars) its highly unlikely that their control over what Hezbollah can and cannot do, is limited.

The blogger Toby, at the Northern Light, includes a couple of links to a Jeffrey Glodberg ‘two part’ article that won an award for his reporting on the Hezbollah. Goldberg quotes Magnus Ranstorp, who says:

“that Hezbollah can be active on four tracks simultaneously—the political, the social, the guerrilla, and the terrorist—because its leaders are “masters of long-term strategic subversion.”

That is the key into undestanding the mentality of the different jihadi groups throughout the Middle East that are currently waging war on both the Jewish State of Israel and the West. They are in the fight over the long haul, and any talk of peace or truce, must be understood through this rubric. Any talk of “moderation” and of “pragmatism” must be viewed through the prism of the jihadi viewpoint, which does deem “time” as being a factor nor problematic.

Eyal Zisser continues by saying:

“True, throughout the 1990s, Hizbullah had made a great effort to establish itself as a political and social force, and in many respects it succeeded. From the outset, Hizbullah grounded itself in the Shi‘ite community in Lebanon, which provided thousands of recruits and a mass constituency. For many Shi‘ites in Lebanon, Hizbullah was and still is a legitimate force for social and political change. And it is true that Hizbullah today is something more than a quasi-military formation. Even were it to lay down its arms, it would continue to exist as a political and social movement.

At the same time, however, it is also obvious today that the military mission of Hizbullah, including its armed struggle against Israel and the West, is central to the organization’s world-view and practical agenda. Without it, Hizbullah would cease to exist as the heroic organization its followers have come to admire and support—a transformation that Hizbullah’s current leaders will go to every length to avoid.”

The Hezbollah and Hamas have very much the same outlook and agenda, in spite of their Shii’a and Sunni differences. That Hezbollah has made a move against Israel that mimicks the Hamas’, is not surprising since they both view the Jewish state with complete disdain and contempt(I do believe however, that the Hezbollah misjudged the Israeli response). Both view the withdrawals from S.Lebanon and Gaza as direct result of Islamic superiority, and serves to fuel both long term goals, the total destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

Daniel Pipes has a recent article that provides details of what is a work here. Only when Israel’s jihadi enemies are completely vanquished (convinced of their sound defeat), will there be a chance at some form of normality on these shared borders. KGS

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