Nasrallah to U.S.: "Bring 'Em On!"

Hizbullah General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, at a rally in Beirut organized by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, stated April 1 that should the United States send troops to oversee Hizbullah's disarmament, that they would be beaten back in frustration, an-Nahar reports. Nasrallah added that he hoped that "[they] have the guts to come… I wish they would come." Nasrallah also mentioned that, "We are telling America and all those who want to take away the arms of the resistance, of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and the resistance in Palestine so as to protect Israel that this is 'mission impossible' and it is forbidden."

This is an interesting statement for a party that recently has claimed to protect national sovereignty and unity in Lebanon. It appears that George W. Bush is not alone in the tendency to make "bring 'em on"-like statements. Is your movement backed into a corner? Are you smarting from pressure from local and international opposition? Are you seeing the guarantor of the status quo in your neighborhood sneaking out the back door under pressure from within the country? Well, if you are, then it must be time to make some new allies, and Nasrallah seems to be trying to do this.

First and foremost, we must consider that Hizbullah's statements weeks ago about safeguarding national unity and sovereignty in Lebanon, as I fully expected, were completely meaningless. Hizbullah is not a Lebanese national movement, after all – it is a resistance movement that defines itself based on its religious foundations and on its antipathy toward Israel. It began as an attempt to export the 1979 Iranian revolution abroad, and it still maintains at its core a pro-Iran and pro-Shiite religious and political orientation. Hizbullah is concerned primarily with itself, and it has hardly wavered from its standard line of contempt for the multifarious nature of Lebanese political life. It would like nothing more than to continue to be able to do what it has been doing all along - to aggrandize itself at the expense of diminished prospects for long-term Lebanese stability. That said, with Nasrallah feeling a bit isolated now under the specter of a complete Syrian withdrawal, Hizbullah possibly stands to lose many of the gains it made within the Lebanese state under the post-civil-war order in Lebanon. Aligning themselves with Palestinian groups, namely those in the camps in Lebanon, makes quite a bit of sense under these circumstances. The Palestinians of these camps - who are politically isolated, armed, organized, radicalized, and basically deprived of any legal rights under the Lebanese state - were used for years as a bargaining chip by Syria with which to influence the Lebanese state; Nasrallah may find the same utility in them as well. Rest assured that whatever Nasrallah finds in them, it is for Hizbullah's reasons alone – not for the good of Lebanon, and certainly not for the Palestinians.

I guess this means that I am now back, albeit not in the original saddle from which I got this whole thing going. Apologies for taking so long - I assure you it couldn't be helped.