Entangled
Insurgencies –
Hezbollah And Hamas
By Jim Miles
19 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In
the past year, two completely unexpected events have surprised all the
politicians and pundits who never even came close – in the material
that I was able to research – to predicting, even as a remote
possibility, the actual outcome. The first event was the surprising
victory of the Hezbollah forces against the Israeli attack in Lebanon.
The second is the recent surprise of Hamas taking full control of Gaza,
in spite of the overwhelming favour granted Fatah financially and with
armaments by Israel and the U.S. Behind these two actions is a history
replete with commonalities.
From the vary origins of
the concept of re-establishing a new Israel in the late 19th Century,
given formulation in the Balfour Declaration at the beginning of the
20th Century, a movement politically and literally developed for the
Jewish people to occupy and colonize the supposedly desert wastelands
of Palestine under the protective eye of the British occupation. The
Palestinians became fully cognizant of the impact of this settlement
as their lands were bought or simply taken possession of through old
Ottoman laws and the lack of records on traditional land uses that had
remained stable over many centuries. This resulted in the creation of
a Palestinian underclass of cheap labourers no longer working fields,
or cheap indentured farmers working land they had previously tilled
and harvested themselves, now doing it for others. Land dispossession,
lack of access to law and rights, civil mistreatment, and poverty eventually
lead to various protests, riots, fights, and wars that have been ongoing
and now lead us into the 21st Century with the terrorist actions of
Hamas – along with its democratic successes - creating much bewilderment
in Washington, D. C. and in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Lebanon’s situation
resembles this. Formed from the Ottoman Empire and under French occupation
and control after World War I, the country is a combination of Christian
Maronites, Sunni Moslem, and Shiite Moslem, with a government only currently
reformed to better reflect the demographics of the state. Included in
this mixture lay a large contingent of Palestinian refugees from the
1948 nakba in Palestine. Later, Yasar Arafat moved the newly created
Palestinian Liberation Organization and its militant Fatah wing from
Jordan to Lebanon, resulting in increasing Israeli concerns about the
area. With the PLO operating from southern Lebanon and in Beirut, they
became entangled with the ongoing civil war in the country.
Israel invaded in 1978 to
the Litani River then withdrew later to a twelve-mile buffer zone; they
invaded again in 1982 and attacked the PLO within Beirut itself before
settling in and occupying the south. Through all this, various militias
and coalitions formed and reformed, with Hezbollah rising with the final
Israeli invasion and occupation in 1982. After a long war of attrition,
the Israeli’s withdrew in 2000, but in the meantime Hezbollah
had established a reputation as one of assistance at the communal level
and effective resistance against the occupying Israeli forces.
Since then, Hezbollah joined
in the local politics and again produced the conundrum of a supposed
terrorist group acting responsibly in a democratic manner. Most recently,
their status as a defensive force reached new levels against another
invasion in the summer of 2006, receiving local accolades for successfully
resisting the much more massive military forces of Israel.
Common Threads
There are several obvious
commonalities to these two groups, apart from the western ideological
representation of them as terrorist organizations, commonalities that
clearly indicate imperial intentions with their various rationalizations.
While the west, in particular the United States, refuses to see the
underlying issues with each group, it is the commonalities that highlight
the poverty of the American position against them. Killing of innocents,
whether men, women, or children is fully reprehensible, but that reality
lies on both sides of terror campaigns, as there is much more terror
given and received, from helicopter gunships, fighter planes, cluster
bombs and phosphorous bombs as there is from a single person carrying
a single explosives package on his person into enemy territory. The
delivery technology of the powerful western states is far superior to
that of any terrorist organization, giving themselves the ability to
distance themselves psychologically from the masses of maimed, wounded
and killed that their attacks inevitably result in. It is still terror.
Occupation
The first commonality, is
of an invading force occupying territory and through their manipulations
of local structures create an indigenous rebellion against themselves.
Both of these ‘terrorist’
groups are responses to either direct or indirect American sponsored
invasions. Hamas and Hezbollah are insurgencies against direct Israeli
interventions, with Israel being recently unconditionally supported
by the Bush regime in their occupation of Palestinian territory and
the attempted re-occupation of Lebanon.
Not only are these areas
occupied, they have historically been occupied by previous empires,
most significantly for Hamas and Hezbollah the Ottoman Empire.
Lebanon is a fractured polity
from the old French empire, although the recent Hezbollah defence against
Israeli aerial bombardment followed by its ineffective ground attack
has led to a consolidation of sentiment in the people of Lebanon giving
approval and accolades to the defence. Hamas is operating in an area
of multiple empires but within modern times it has had to deal with
the British, American, and Israeli empirical demands. Unfortunately
for Hamas’ civic developments, increasing pressure from Israeli
forces and increasing pressure from the PA and Fatah appeared to be
weakening its support that it had harvested successfully in the recent
democratic elections. The recent armed revolt indicates a different
kind of strength as well.
Occupation is demonstrably
the over-riding significant similarity between the groups and in many
ways is reflected globally throughout the long history of imperial conquests.
Foreign monetary
and military support.
Another commonality is the
frequent complaints from Israel and the U.S. about the support given
to these groups through Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and various
overseas Muslim organizations and other governments. That reality is
clearly evident, but what is also clearly evident is the huge support
that Israel receives from the United States in terms of money, intelligence
sharing, and military equipment.
Civil structures
Within each occupied territory,
the supposed terrorist organizations function as much as possible as
a form of government, providing some form of civil service and structure
that the occupiers are or were not even trying to provide, a third and
very significant commonality among the groups.
After decades of Jewish subjugation
and destruction of local infrastructures, Hamas provided a civil structure
within Gaza Strip and in parts of the Westbank, and were initially supported
by the Israelis who “encouraged Hamas in its building of mosques
and social services as a rival to the ‘terrorist’ PLO and
the leadership of the exiled ‘super-terrorist’ Arafat.”[1][1]
The PLO by contrast increasingly became an Israeli subordinated armed
group for the internal control of the Palestinian people primarily in
the Westbank. Hamas was not officially organized until 1987, but its
roots developed much earlier with Israeli support of the Muslim Brotherhood
inside Palestinian territories. The Israelis established a series of
Village Councils that provided the civil infrastructure missing in the
territories as a counter weight to the PLO monopoly on Palestinian power.
With funding from various sources including Israel and Saudi Arabia,
with training from Shin Bet (resulting in a widespread cadre of informers)
the Village Councils grew in power, “Charity organizations proliferated…religious
endowments (waqfs) grew richer…the Palestinians were being Islamicized.”[2][2]
.
The Americans knew of this
as “U.S. diplomats and CIA officials were aware that Israel was
fostering Islamism in the occupied territories,”[3][3] but did
not act to prevent it.[4][4] There is a full parallel here between the
U.S. manipulation of Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan, and the
Israeli manipulation of the same in the occupied territories, both with
equally perverse and unexpected outcomes. Hamas has had to “navigate
between Israeli security forces…and the Palestinian Authority….[developing]
a mammoth social services and health care delivery system…in ways
the Palestinian Authority is too corrupt and inefficient to do.”
Further success came from Hamas’ “carefully calculated ideological
flexibility and willingness to work with other Palestinian forces,”
while “being careful to avoid direct intra-Palestinian conflict.”[5][5]
The latter statement from 2005, was clearly annulled a year and a half
later after Hamas’ success in the democratic elections led to
huge pressure from Israel, the U.S., Canada, Britain and a few others
to create such a conflict. More on that shortly.
Hezbollah’s rise to
significance followed a similar path as Hamas. Lebanon suffered through
a protracted civil war, combined with a large influx of Palestinian
refugees which in turn led to Israeli attacks and invasions, along with
significant war crimes and civic infrastructure damage (Chatilla and
Sabra refugee camps, under the direction of Sharon). The Shi’ite
population, mainly in Beirut and the south, were “downtrodden,
impoverished, and largely overlooked by a government in Beirut in which
they had inadequate representation,” and “were primed for
a leader who would promise them a better future”[6][6] From this
destruction, which has many parallels in world history and current events,
Hezbollah – the party of God - developed their own infrastructure
supports for the people of southern Lebanon. As a political party it
“runs a network of schools, clinics and other services that many
people rely on to fill the gap for what the Lebanese government doesn't
provide. It also controls an array of businesses, including bakeries,
banks, factories and an Islamic clothing line, as well as a satellite
television station and a radio station.”[7][7] From its 1982 start
from the Israeli invasion, “by the 1990s Hezbollah had developed
into a sophisticated political party while also funding free schools,
hospitals and social programmes for Lebanon's often impoverished and
rural Shia population.”[8][8]
The invasion against Lebanon
and the Hezbollah Shia areas in the summer of 2006, again accompanied
by immense support from the United States, Canada, and Britain, destroyed
much of the infrastructure rebuilt from the civil wars and previous
Israeli invasion. Immediately after the ceasefire, the Hezbollah leader
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, now strengthened in popular support throughout
the Arab world, (if not the support of the Arab political leaders),
“promised to help Lebanese civilians rebuild, pledging money for
civilians to pay rent and buy furniture.” Even as the truce was
being finalized, Hezbollah “workers were in the streets of Dahiyeh
on Wednesday, clearing streets and removing rubble. Some areas were
closed by Hezbollah members to protect the building from theft and only
residents were allowed to enter after getting special passes.”
Hezbollah has acted consistently to support the Shia population in Beirut,
the northeast corner, and Southern Lebanon where the majority live.
In return they have received increasing support politically in what
are considered by western standards to be free and fair elections within
the democratic process.
Participation in
the democratic process
Apart from the actual facts
of invasion and occupation, the most important commonality that displays
the lie of Israeli and American ideological rhetoric (along with several
of their fawning puppet states) is the democratic record of these groups
in comparison to the surprised over-reaction of the protagonists when
democracy proved to be messy and uncomfortable as the insurgents made
significant gains in the political realm. Both Hezbollah and Hamas participated
actively in the democratic processes so idealized by the American and
Israeli governments, only to have their participation demonized with
the reality that democracy in its fundamental messy form did not approach
the restricted controlled kind of ‘democracy’ that the imperial
duo actually wanted.
Hamas’ election to
power with 76 out of the 118 seats, and a voter turnout estimated to
be over 80%[9][9], was variously described as a ‘shock’
or ‘stunning win’ or less emotionally as a ‘dilemma’.
The almost immediate response from Israel, with full support from the
U.S., Canada, and a few European allies was to discount the results
with the notion that these governments would not negotiate with a terror
group. Other terrorist groups have been accommodated within the democratic
process, partially if not fully, and have experienced various ranges
of acceptance. Ireland is a prime example of a terror group gradually
giving way to a negotiated and somewhat more democratic process. Israel
used terror to establish its original roots in Palestine and then to
cleanse most of the green line territory of Palestinians, yet most arguments
view them as being democratic today (highly arguable in relation to
its internal Arab-Palestinian population and its dispossession of other
Palestinians through decidedly non-democratic methods).
The main surprise probably
stemmed from the decisiveness of the Hamas victory and the sudden realization
that all the previous rhetoric about freedom and democracy could not
be upheld in the context of the larger plans for the area. Unfortunately,
Hamas seemed somewhat surprised too, and, not wanting to compromise
on their position vis a vis Israel, lost some support as conditions
worsened under the aid embargo and as the infrastructure destruction
stifled even the basic amenities of everyday life. Former President
Jimmy Carter correctly identified the situation saying, "innocent
Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption
that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates
who are members of Hamas, the US government has become the driving force
behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public
of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life...
The additional restraints imposed on the new government are a planned
and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories,
in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure."[10][10]
It could readily be argued
that Hamas could not recognize Israel, as such recognition in the past
from the Palestinian Authority has done little good for the Palestinian
people, except serve as a negotiating cover under which Israel continues
its inexorable push towards full ethnic cleansing. The final result
remains the same – the Americans and Israelis exposed themselves
to the false rhetoric of freedom and democracy that only served its
purpose well when there was none. Hamas’ support did indeed collapse
during its attempts to form a coalition government with the Palestinian
Authority, again with full on interference from Secretary of State Condaleeza
Rice, and the complicit acceptance of such by PA leader Abbas. Divide
and conquer is easy when one side holds all the power and the other
side has nothing.
Hezbollah integrated itself
into Lebanese politics from the start, either supporting candidates
that supported their goals or by running their own candidates. “Hezbollah
is an active participant in the political life and processes of Lebanon,
and its scope of operation is far beyond its initial militant one. In
1992, it participated in elections for the first time, winning 12 out
of 128 seats in parliament. It won 10 seats in 1996, and 8 in 2000.
In the general election of 2005, it won 23 seats nationwide, and an
Amal-Hezbollah alliance won all 23 seats in Southern Lebanon.”[11][11]
In 2006, under the pretext of rescuing two captured IDF personnel, Israel
attacked southern Lebanon. Initially the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain
‘allowed’ the offensive to continue, making ignorant utterances
about the “proportional” nature of the response and the
need for a “just and enduring peace” between Lebanon and
Israel (Condaleeza Rice again). Only after Israel realized that its
forces were not succeeding with their objectives did they accept a cease
fire permitting a UN force to act as barrier between the two sides –
and then with a last minute mass bombing of cluster bombs to make the
area even less hospitable than the regular attacks had made it. All
that raised Hassan Nasrallah’s leadership status immensely and
may have, over the larger view, returned Lebanon to its previous ethnic
civil wars in which no democracy existed. The cedar revolution died
with the Israeli attack and a democratic Lebanon is not the most likely
outcome.
Another consideration is
that perhaps the Americans and Israelis intended these conflicting outcomes
in their Middle East endeavours, nullifying any larger threat that might
launch a more dramatic attack against them. Unintended consequences
would defeat this as an ideological enterprise, as a series of smaller
insurrections will in no way permit the U.S. to safely extract the resources
it wants and will only exacerbate the situation locally as well as globally.
It does serve the function of maintaining the ‘war on terror’
fear that has become the mantra of the current – and probably
subsequent – administration. As long as the U.S. continues to
support Israel fully and completely, and as long as they continue to
try and impose democracy through the barrel of a gun in other countries,
little progress will be made for any sort of lasting peace in the Middle
East.
Oil, religion, and
suicide.
Neither of these three groups
is protecting or guarding or fighting against the inequalities and corruption
that oil resources have brought to other areas, yet they are all caught
up in the overall global American strategy of securing Middle East oil
resources for their own consumption and leverage in world markets.
Israel and Lebanon are entwined
in the Palestinian refugee problem as well as Israel’s interest
in the strategic value of the Golan Heights in Syria bordering on Lebanon
as well as the water resources that Southern Lebanon and the Golan provide.
For overall global strategy, Israel has no oil, but is has a powerful
(yet somewhat ineffective military if not for American support and ignoring
temporarily its nuclear weapons) ‘defence’ force and, if
not actual agreements, then tacit understandings with several of its
Arab neighbours that defuse any of their expressed interest in supporting
Palestinian causes - Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as neighbours to Israel
being the most complicit in this aspect. From this develops an American
sphere of influence over the oil resources of the Middle East, and while
the Arab governments still try to curry favour with America and Israel,
their position is becoming significantly more tenuous as the occupation
of Iraq and the success of Hezbollah create popular support among the
Arab and Muslim populations of the area.
From there, the global strategy
for oil has come up against a religious strategy for the creation of
a full and complete Jewish homeland – obviously supported by the
Jewish nation of Israel, but more recently compounded by the Republican
political harvesting of the Christian right in the United States, creating
a ‘crusade’, ostensibly against terror, but also supporting
the messianic beliefs in the second coming followed by the destruction
of Israel. What is important here is the combination of an invading
and occupying military force that is of a different religion than the
area being occupied.
The end result of this combination
of occupation and religion is the rise of suicide bombing. Suicide bombing
has been popularly designated as the desperate acts of the poor and
downtrodden and uneducated fanatics of fundamentalist ‘islamofascism’,
a wonderfully construed but meaningless political catch phrase. But
many fundamentalists and then those that go further into suicide attacks
do not by any measure derive mainly from the poor and uneducated.
Fundamentalism is a phenomenon
culturally widespread. It arises from several societal problems as perceived
by the groups involved and is similar within Protestantism in the U.S.
as it is with Islam in the Middle East: “urban migrants from the
lower class…put in an economically precarious position…subordinate,
turning in greater numbers to charismatic groups….economic insecurity
and an enormous loss in cultural prestige….the striving for upward
mobility is either disappointing or denied altogether….among the
most significant causes of mobilization is the public loss of validity
and prestige of traditional values and life conduct ideals…[leading
to] official degradation to the status of a subculture of….inferior
rights.”[12][12] The adherents to the fundamentalist point of
view “corresponds to their self-perception, which is based not
on economic interests but on common values and ideal ways of life.”[13]
[13] In sum, it is not a case of poverty but one of subordination (now
full on subjugation) and the perceived loss of one’s culture rather
than a class divide that leads to fundamentalism.
From there, fundamentalism
leads to a “movement of radical patriarchal moralism”, creating
a dualism “which divides the world and the nation into representatives
of the divine order and instruments of Satan….or as agents of
the “foreigner”.[14][14] It becomes, in American terms,
“you are either with you or against us,” and “this
crusade, this war on terrorism” become conjoined. In Islamic terms
it is expressed in the martyrs who destroy themselves and the enemy
in suicide bomb attacks.
Without the firepower, the
physical space, the economic force, nor any of the attributes of a civic
society except for the basics covered by the fundamentalist groups,
one of the few options left, other than giving up in total subjugation,
is to fight back, any method of which is essentially suicidal due to
the overwhelming firepower and technical superiority of the invading
force. Contrary to most popular attempts to define the suicide bomber
as a raving lunatic, any studies done on the subject indicate that the
“suicide attackers are normally well-educated workers from both
religious and secular backgrounds….they resemble the kind of politically
conscious individuals who might join a grassroots movement,” as
compared to wayward youth and religious fanatics.[15][15]
For Hezbollah, Israel “is
a religious monolith [with] a doctrine of territorial expansion with
biblical justification,” leading them “to assert that Israel’s
main purpose in Lebanon was to seize control of the Litani River and
to uproot the local Shia from the land so as to resettle Jews there
in the future.”[16][16] Hezbollah’s success both in the
long years of occupation and in the shorter recent Israeli invasion
displays how a well developed asymmetrical approach to warfare can have
significant consequences for an invading force, an idea that history
reinforces over and over again with the lesson never being learned.
Hamas developed in Palestinian
territory under the continual occupation of the IDF and its many depredations
on their society; this was countered by a “network of social service
organizations [making] an essential contribution to the legitimacy of
suicide terrorism,” with the main argument being “that martyrdom
is justified by its instrumental value in protecting the local community
from a foreign occupation.” With no recourse to any other alternative
to occupation other than giving up hope, suicide attacks, while horrific
and seemingly perverse acts of terror, are an asymmetrical response
to fight back against an overwhelmingly powerful opponent who uses the
basic elements of war as terror.
Webs of deceit and
conceit
The Middle East is now more explosive and hostile than ever before.
With mistake compounding upon mistake, the region is set up for even
more serious and potentially world-shaking events. The American crusade
will continue to roll while the combination of oil, big business, and
the military are incapable of acting in any manner other than the use
of brute force to instil democracy on other peoples. The entanglements
of greed and ignorance, or religious sanctions for eliminating the ‘other’,
of basic political and humanitarian ignorance, and an immorality of
action hiding behind rhetorical nonsense, the ‘what you do speaks
so loud I can’t hear what you say’ syndrome, are leading
the world into even deadlier scenarios than currently exist. I will
not allow myself to succumb to historians common faux pas of conjecture
about what might have been or what is to be, but the imperatives of
a truly human morality that treats everyone equally needs to be emphasized
before worst case scenarios can breed and blossom.
[1] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation – The Conquest
of the Middle East. Fourth Estate, London, 2005. p. 498.
[2] Dreyfuss, Robert. Devil’s Game – How the United States
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt
and Co., N.Y. 2005. p. 195.
[3] Ibid, p. 198
[4] See also – Hanania,
Ray. “Sharon’s Terror Child – How the Likud Bloc Mid-wifed
the Birth of Hamas.” Counterpunch, January 18/19, 2003.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hanania01182003.html
[5] Kamrava, Mehran. The
Modern Middle East. University of California, Berkely. 2005. p. 231.
[6] Jamail, Dahr. “A
fight to the finish,” Asia Times, August 10, 2006. www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH10Ak04.html
[7] Van Camp, Jon. “Who
is Hezbollah?”, Counterpunch, September 23/24, 2006. www.counterpunch.org/vancamp09232006.html.
[8] Brandon, James. “Factfile:
Hezbollah.” Wednesday, July 12, 2006. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
27EDF072-1581-48CE-812D-A34D7C89A333.htm
[9] ____________ Hamas wins
Gaza elections, Al-Jazeera, Friday, January 28, 2005. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
BC77A1D4-1EB3-4761-B755-B2C16EC22EAD.htm
[10] Carter, Jimmy. Cited
in Fisk, Robert. “The Age of Terror – a landmark report”.
The Independent, October 09, 2006.
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/
profiles/article1814840.ece
[11]www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service
ID=10029
[12] Riesbrodt, Martin. Pious
Passions – The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the Untied
States and Iran. University of California Press, Berkely. 1993. p. 185-192.
[13] Ibid, p. 184.
[14] Ibid, p. 199.
[15] Pape, Robert. Dying
to Win – The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Random House,
N.Y. 2005. p. 218.
[16] Ibid, p.136-7.
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