More important than finding a scapegoat for the current violence, or patting ourselves on the back for being less brutal than our Zionist adversary, we should be using this crisis to come to terms with how quick we are to sabotage our future for more immediate gains and to turn our own backyards into killing fields.

The Plot Thus Far...

For those of us on the sidelines of the escalating crisis in Lebanon, there seem to be a number of shared reactions. Primarily, a saddened “Not again!” mingled with a refusal to accept the facts we’re being presented with. Among regional players in the Middle East, the Hizbullah track record has been almost exemplary and certainly shows more restraint, wisdom and political savvy than more mainstream players like the PLO or the former Baathist regime in Iraq. Or at least it did till this week. 

Local and world news is doing little to dissuade us from the fact that this latest Israeli siege of Lebanon was spurred by a cross-border Hizbullah sortie that resulted in eight Israeli troop deaths and two Israeli soldiers being kidnapped. That Israel is responding with excessive force is not what surprises and perplexes us. That's just business as usual. What confuses us is why, given the tenous balance of power in Lebanon, and the Middle East in general, Hizbullah decided to kick a coiled rattlesnake and bring this current destruction back upon its own doorstep. The response in Lebanon is a reserved criticism heavily outweighed by a highly emotional support for all of the Party of God’s past struggles in defense of their nation. It wasn't that long ago you could find banners throughout Lebanon proclaiming Hizbullah as her national resistance in spite of its Shi‘a roots and support base. They did, after all, succeed in freeing South Lebanon from Israeli occupation where all others failed. That calculated war of attrition that taught Israel an ongoing occupation simply wasn’t worth it, left a debt of gratitude among most Lebanese that is still collecting interest. In the rest of the Arab world however, official statements from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and Jordan are less reserved about what they see as Hizbullah’s recklessness as they go on to condemn the Israeli overreaction.

Even before most of Hizbullah’s communications infrastucture was shelled into flinders, the statements justifying the cross-border raid and kidnapping were sparse. General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah’s statements about Hizbullah motives for the kidnapping of Israeli IDF troops indicate the actions were an attempt to pressure Israel to release Palestinian prisoners and halt Israeli iron fist tactics against the new ruling Hamas administration in Gaza.

What doesn’t quite gel in light of Hizbullah’s history and growth from Shi‘a resistance movement to vital political entity in mainstream Lebanese politics, is how contrary such acts and rhetoric are to the strategies which secured them a place on the regional geo-political map in the first place. The current successes of Hizbullah can be traced quite clearly to party infighting in the late 1980s, when the Party was riven by two contending factions. One faction, led by Sayyid Subhi al-Tufayli, was far more rejectionist and refused to dissociate the struggle for Palestine with the struggles facing Lebanon. Although the embryonic Hizbullah in the late 1980s tended – on the whole – to be extremist and exclusivist, the faction which gained ascendancy, led by Nassrallah, quickly learned from the mistakes of trying to inject Shi‘a hardline policies into such a heterogeneous environment as Lebanon.  Rebranding the party as a Lebanese as well as an Islamic resistance, Nasrallah was able to entice other Shi‘a, Sunnis and even Christian and Marxist supporters into the resistance fold. An emphasis on Shi‘a sacred law that went so far as to shut down coffee shops and firebomb places selling alcohol gave way to a more socially proactive, multicultural Party, intent on focusing on Lebanon, and not trying to save Palestine at the expense of its homeland. Initiating scores of social programs and support in a country wracked by a grueling and interminable civil war allowed the former Shi‘a fringe players a place from which to influence Lebanese politics. Sidelining the Palestinian struggle for the time being, was a keynote in the Hizbullah platform and one of the key factors toward a wider cross-cultural acceptance on the Lebanese playing field.

Of methods and madness                                              

It is possible that, with Israel finally out of South Lebanon, and the rise of the Islamic Hamas party in Palestine, that another shift of focus is taking place.  Known as a well educated religious scholar, a sound tactician and a shrewd negotiator however, it is doubtful whether this latest move by Nasrallah was well thought out or entirely autonomous. What result a clearly antagonist and offensive raid on Israel at this time was supposed to accomplish could only be described by the actual result it did effect. That anyone would foolishly believe Israel would suddenly do an about face and decide to negotiate over the fate of Gaza to save two soldiers being held in South Lebanon is absurd. Israel has seldom done anything in its half decade history but respond to each and every provocation with excessive violence and extreme prejudice.

So, there's the rub. While the op-ed columnists and Beltway Middle East “experts” duke it out and paint elaborate conspiracy theories there are only really two under discussion that bear any scrutiny at all. And the first is a bit of a stretch: Hizbullah willfully incited this mayhem in order to table discussion of disarming the Hizbullah militias still controlling South Lebanon. A catastrophe of this week’s proportions would certainly put such a dialogue on hold, but more importantly it would ignite a very real, but very emotion-based fervor towards South Lebanon’s “saviors.” Remember what September 11 did for Bush? Now multiply by ten. It would also illustrate the need to have a strong military presence bordering Israel given that Beirut is still not in a position militarily to deploy the Lebanese Defense Forces throughout the entire country. Thanks to Hizbullah, the South has been quite stable and running under its own steam for several years now. If it’s not broke, why fix it? That Nasrallah would gamble plunging the entire region into splintered alliances and expect the chips to fall into patterns convenient to any possible Hizbullah agenda is inconsistent with the past two decades of political adaptability and maturity he has thus far displayed. Although his detractors would love to believe that, it begs credibility in light of the facts at hand. There is always the chance that the Chairman is privy to some facts not yet apparent to other regional players and has seen variables to this gamble that the rest of us haven’t. But the evidence before us still whispers that this is not the behavior of the same man who led his party from being a rag tag militia funded out of Iran, to a contender in Lebanese politics.

And then, there’s Iran. Forget for a moment that it has become unfashionable to mention Iran without Syria. These days, much of the Western based media is flooded with constant references to one, the other or both. This week’s events finally allow those entrusted with shaping public opinion to say them in one breath without breaking a sweat. Forget Syria for a moment. There is little at the moment that anyone except the White House would be interested in there. Despite the allusions and accusations following the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, there has been little in the way of proof and few reasons – at the moment – for Syria to rattle chains and point attention to herself. There has already been substantial deployment of Syrian troops from Lebanon, as Lebanon moves closer to true self-governance and it makes zero sense for Damascus to incite their Hizbullah allies to wreak sufficient chaos for Syria to reoccupy Lebanon in the name of “regional security.” As a ruler, Bashar Assad has been quite low key as local politicians go and like Nasrallah, has probably not suffered a sudden pathological mania of some sort.

Which leaves Iran, as one of the few cast members with sufficient leverage to tamper with Hizbullah’s  strings and a desire to  divert world attention off Tehran’s nuclear aspirations.

That Iran would have much to gain by recent events, is evident. If we ignore the Iraqi civil war and the continuing chaos in Afghanistan hemming in Iran’s borders, they are far enough from the epicenter of the Lebanese crisis that it could just buy them some diplomatic time and weight to throw around as possible referees in a Shi‘a-centric diplomacy match. That Hizbullah began thanks to handouts from Tehran, and linked Shi‘a aspirations in Central Asia to the Mediterranean by way of Lebanon, is ancient history. We would need a bit of proof, however, before laying the blame solely on Tehran’s doorstep and risk further aggravation of the always fragile Sunni/Shi‘a divide in the Muslim world.

With few of the pieces in this fiasco falling into neat, convenient and comprehensible little boxes, we are faced with a number of disturbing questions about our corner of the world. The answers, when they come may not be what we wish to hear, but no matter how painful the self-analysis, it can never be as painful as the side effects of our calculated, habitual and willful avoidance of those same questions. Whoever said ignorance is bliss never lived in the Middle East.

Options

Options? When we try to make sense of this week, we need to keep in mind that accusations, militant bravado and threats can all too easily add gasoline to the flames, raise the already high paranoia quotient and add to the body count. When things go terribly wrong, the regional response is to lay the blame upon some nefarious secret plot, some arcane conspiracy. Anything but call ourselves to account and learn from our mistakes.

This week could be a simple lesson should we choose to heed it. On some very fundamental level these events have nothing to do with Israel. Israel is simply doing what they have always done, and what we can reliably predict they will continue to do. It is our provocation of that Spartan military state, and the fallout afterwards that defines what we as an Ummah are capable of – and whether it is our capacity to establish a just peace and security in the region, or our capacity to shoot ourselves in the foot to teach our adversary a lesson, that we are exercising.