by Dr. Reuven Berko
The Sunni-Shiite conflict exposes Hezbollah as a hostile Iranian tool
To mark the 10-year
anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
delivered a speech from his bunker hideout and attacked Saudi Arabia
for moving closer to Israel while sacrificing the "Palestine problem" in
exchange for normalizing ties with the Jewish state. Nasrallah's
comments came in the wake of a visit to Israel by a Saudi delegation,
headed by retired Saudi Maj. Gen. Anwar Eshki (and additional contact
with Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal). The speech was broadcast prior to
the screening of a documentary about the war and the 2006 abduction of
Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev that ignited it. The
film was intended to highlight the terrorist organization's
capabilities, but essentially revealed the fact that Hezbollah's
situation has never been worse, indicated by Nasrallah's choice to link
the events surrounding that war to his castigation of Saudi Arabia.
Nasrallah's ire toward
Saudi Arabia stems from a regional picture of apocalyptic conflict
between Sunni Gulf States and Iran, which has resulted in Hezbollah
losing a considerable portion of its capabilities and reputation as a
force of influence in the region. From boasts of "liberating Palestine,"
Hezbollah is pinned down in the middle of the Sunni-Shiite conflict,
exhausted and bloodied from its Sisyphean battles against opposition
Sunni Islamist forces in Syria, all for the purpose of preserving the
lifeline stretching between Iran through Syria to Lebanon. There is no
desire whatsoever to start a fight with Israel along the way.
Veterans of Israeli
military intelligence, who served before and during Operation Peace for
Galilee (the First Lebanon War) in 1982, will testify that many of the
Shiite activists in south Lebanon at the time, who now wear the
Hezbollah uniform, were Israeli agents who provided the IDF with
information that helped prevent Palestinian terrorist attacks from South
Lebanon and ultimately led to the banishment of Yasser Arafat's PLO
from the country. These activists and their wives welcomed the columns
of Israeli tanks with flowers and rice, to thank the soldiers for saving
them from the Palestinian terrorists taking their homes and cars to
carry out terrorist attacks in Israel.
Due to Iranian
indoctrination and funding, the Shiite villages throughout the years
transitioned from belonging to the IDF Liaison Unit in Lebanon's
association of villages to the Amal terrorist group and finally
Hezbollah. Prior to this Iranian indoctrination, the Shiites in Lebanon
never viewed the Palestinians favorably and never aspired to help them.
The pretension of Hezbollah's promise to "liberate Palestine and
Jerusalem," therefore, was merely an Iranian con intended to drug the
Palestinians and Sunni Arabs, direct them toward the "Zionist enemy" and
thereby distract them from Iran's infiltration of Syria, Iraq and
Lebanon -- as part of the Islamic republic's goal of achieving regional
dominance, which also includes Yemen and other Gulf states.
The IDF's forced
withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was an achievement for Hezbollah,
despite the fact that it was always inevitable. Had Hezbollah acted with
Lebanon's true interest at heart, the Israeli withdrawal would have
sufficed. Its leaders, however, along with many across the Arab world,
among them Palestinians, were swept up by the megalomaniacal ethos of
victory and pinned their hopes on Hezbollah liberating "Palestine and
Jerusalem." The calamity suffered by Hezbollah in 2006 led Nasrallah to
declare that had he known the Israeli response would be so destructive,
he would not have ordered the operation to abduct the IDF soldiers. Ever
since, Israeli deterrence against the murderous organization has
persevered (similar to the situation with Hamas following Operation
Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014). Hezbollah's bloody intervention
alongside Iran in Syria, Yemen and other Arab states is kindling
increasing criticism from home in Lebanon, which will endure as long as
the stream of Lebanese sons killed in action continues to flow and the
conflict in Syria increasingly encroaches into Lebanese territory.
The cat is out of the
bag, and Hezbollah's involvement as an Iranian instrument of war against
Sunni Arab states has emerged as an obvious threat. The Sunni-Shiite
conflict exposes Hezbollah as a hostile Iranian tool (similar to Qatar,
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida). This conflict has made the
Palestinian problem a nuisance, has led Saudi Arabia to rescind billions
of dollars in aid to Lebanon and has signaled rapprochement between
Sunni Arab states and Israel, who find themselves in the same foxhole
against the Iranian menace -- and this is what is troubling for
Nasrallah.
Meanwhile, even as
Sunni Arab states define Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, Joint
Arab List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh and some of his contemporaries in the
Knesset insist on calling it a "liberation organization."
Dr. Reuven Berko
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16851
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