Issue No. 595
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18 - 24 July 2002 Issue No. 595 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Comparing apples and oranges
Washington and Tel Aviv are stepping up their war of words against Hizbullah. Michael Jansen reports
Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah last weekend denied that his movement has any connection with Al-Qa'eda, the group blamed for the 11 September attacks on the US. "There is no relationship with Al-Qa'eda -- not in the past and not now -- and not for religious or ideological reasons, but for political reasons." He continued, "Until now the American administration has not been able to present half a shred of evidence about the existence of a relationship of this type."
Nasrallah pointed out that the two organisations -- the Shi'ite Hizbullah and the Sunni Al-Qa'eda -- had different political programmes and "battle priorities", but did not elaborate. Nasrallah said he is not opposed to working with Sunni groups and said that Hizbullah had relations with Palestinian Sunni organisations.
Nasrallah's remarks followed the comments made exactly a week earlier by Grand Ayatollah Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, Hizbullah's spiritual mentor, on the absence of ties between the two organisations. Fadlallah said that US accusations of cooperation are "unreasonable... because Al-Qa'eda, according to its ideology and the proclamations by most of its leaders, does not consider Shi'ites to be Muslims. Instead [Al-Qa'eda] considers them a renegade faction of Islam". He accused Al-Qa'eda of killing Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan and asked, "How can there be coordination between a Shi'ite party, be it in Iran or Lebanon, and Al-Qa'eda?" Fadlallah gave the following explanation for US accusations: "There is an information war between America and Israel, on the one hand, and Hizbullah, on the other. During this war, it is natural for the Israelis and Americans to make such accusations to defame [Hizbullah] so as to justify their charges of terrorism against it."
While Washington has long held Hizbullah responsible for the 1983 bombings of the US marine base and embassy in Lebanon, which killed 260 US citizens, and for the kidnappings of Westerners during the 1980s, President George W Bush's administration recently stepped up verbal attacks on the movement and political pressure on Beirut and Damascus to curb its activities. By classifying Hizbullah as a "terrorist" group, the administration is trying to justify targeting the movement within the ambit of the "war on terrorism". And, by repeating often enough the false accusation, originally put forward by Israel, that Hizbullah is like Al-Qa'eda, Washington believes the accusation will stick.
In an article published on 30 June, The Washington Post called Hizbullah "one of the world's most formidable terrorist groups" and accused the movement of "increasingly teaming up with Al-Qa'eda on logistics and training". The source of this charge was said to be unnamed European and US intelligence officials and terrorism experts. (Such people always remain anonymous.) They claim that "cooperation is ad hoc and tactical... involves mid- and low-level operatives" and includes "coordination on explosives and... training, money laundering, weapons smuggling and acquiring forged documents". It is also alleged that Hizbullah trades in "war diamonds", which are fuelling conflicts in several African countries, and has an "external network" in Latin America and elsewhere which serves Iran's interests.
The most serious allegation is that Hizbullah could help Al-Qa'eda enhance its impaired ability to "launch attacks against American targets". The article quotes Bob Graham (D- Fla), chairman of the senate intelligence committee, as saying, "Hizbullah is the A-team of terrorism". This campaign reveals just how deeply the right-wing US political establishment identifies with the positions of Israel's right-dominated coalition. While Europe has not yet succumbed to this smear campaign, European attitudes towards Hizbullah have become increasingly antagonistic.
The campaign has both short-term and long- term objectives. In the short term, the US/ Israeli aim appears to be to compel Beirut and Damascus to force Hizbullah to disarm and disband its military wing.
To secure this aim, Washington and Tel Aviv are using the tactic of "phoney war" by propagating the notion that Hizbullah's activities threaten the stability of the Levant. In reality Hizbullah's activities in South Lebanon are already at a very low level. The movement's gunners confine themselves to firing shells modified to burst in mid-air over settlements in northern Israel whenever Israeli warplanes cross the UN-delineated "Blue Line" into Lebanese airspace or fly along the line.
These shells scatter fragments over the settlements of Shlomi, Metullah and Kiryat Shemona, sending residents scuttling into their shelters. The fact that Israel claims that rounds were fired into northern Israel on only 15 occasions during the past four months shows that Hizbullah is simply saying, "We're here", and "Don't violate the line". The spokesman of the UN force in South Lebanon, Timor Goksel, told Al-Ahram Weekly that all these firings have been in response to Israeli air activity either over the line or over Lebanon.
In addition to forcing the movement to close down its military wing, the US/Israel want it to end its verbal and media support for the Palestinian resistance. Coverage of Israel's suppression of the Palestinian people's resistance to occupation is continually broadcast to the region by Hizbullah's Al-Manar television station. The US/Israeli long-term objective is to provide pretexts for launching "surgical strikes" or even full scale military operations against Syria, which supports the maintenance of Hizbullah's "resistance profile" and Iran, which is accused of financing and arming the movement. Israel and the US claim that Syria and Iran are developing "weapons of mass destruction". Iran has already been categorised, along with Iraq and North Korea, as a member of what Bush has called the "axis of terror", and Syria has become a candidate for inclusion. The ultimate aim of the "phoney war" is to deprive regional powers with either a deterrent against Israeli attack or means of defending themselves against Israel's vast arsenal which includes the whole range of WMD, including 200-500 nuclear warheads, chemical and biological agents and sophisticated delivery systems.
The strategy of "phoney war" followed by "hot war" has been adopted to make the Middle East safe for Israel without compelling it to pay the price the Arabs have put on peace: withdrawal from all of the lands occupied in 1967.
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