Jonathan Steele, writing in The Guardian from Tyre, Lebanon, argues that the three week-long of rocket and air strike exchange, no matter the outcome, is a victory for Hizbullah. "Hizbullah is already the hero, a desperately longed-for proof of success," against Israel’s image of invincibility. Versions of this opinion have been expressed already for the last few weeks, but now with 100,000 Shi’ite protesters in Baghdad, an elected, protected Iraqi government condemning Israel, Steele’s point that "Hizbullah’s victory may do less damage to Israel than to other Arab regimes" bears attention.
The success of a Shia insurgency will encourage other Shias around the region, including those in Saudi Arabia. To the consternation of his American protectors, Iraq’s Shia prime minister, Nuri al- Maliki, did not condemn Hizbullah. But the Sunni/Shia issue should not be exaggerated. Hizbullah’s appeal across the Arab world is a wider matter of Islamism and the struggle against corrupt despotism. Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Jordan - and even in the medium term Syria, which has backed and armed Hizbullah - will feel the shockwaves running through the Arab street.
Those who argue from their pulpits in the mosques that secular modernity inevitably means decadence and selfishness will have gained new followers. Those who say that only Islam can provide the pride and backbone needed to confront the west’s cultural and military interventions will be stronger.
Israel’s Lebanese adventure, and the Bush/Blair folly in supporting it, have done the west damage that will last for many, many years.
Read the rest here.
Something about Middle Eastern political commentary has me unsettled. Perhaps it is the knowledge that within the analysis and theories of how Baghdad might shape Beirut which in turn might shape Riyadh, or Cairo, are the thousands of dead bodies and hundreds of thousands of displaced ones. Considering how the Saudi government might cope with what other commentators have gloomily called a "Shi’ite crescent" from the Bekaa through Baghdad to Tehran overlooks, just like the New York Times and every other American media outlet, the appalling toll on Lebanon and Gaza. The complete devastation of a state and the continued leveling of any shred of modern, hopeful life in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli government are the obvious but shunned details in all of this political talk. In reading someone like Steele, I want to believe that he’s not treating the ruin of Lebanon and Palestine as just proof of a political theory, but rather another grim moment in the on-going and supported violence in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Most of all the damage of "Israel’s Lebanese adventure, and the Bush/Blair folly in supporting it" is that these officials, supposedly responsible leaders of free and democratic states, continued to endorse the dismantling of Lebanese life and society, and the deliberate, naive aggravation of anti-Israeli and anti-American emotion.
