Hizballahland

Commentary Magazine ^ | July-August 2003 | Gal Luft

[quidnunc]

When Israel pulled out of its security zone in southern Lebanon three years ago, it was widely predicted that the radical Shiite group Hizballah, whose forces had relentlessly attacked the occupying Israeli troops, would close up military operations and henceforth focus solely on Lebanese domestic affairs. In the event, the exact opposite occurred: promptly declaring that its next objective was the liberation of the entire land of Palestine and the destruction of the "Zionist entity," Hizballah seized control of the 350-square-mile area that had been occupied by Israel, turning it into a de-facto state within a state. In Hizballahland, as the area might now be called, the group has managed to amass an impressive stockpile of weapons, including 10,000 rockets and missiles capable of hitting a quarter of Israel's population, and it has continued to launch numerous armed attacks across the border.

Indeed, ever since the inception of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000, Hizballah has persistently tried to provoke Israel into opening a second front on its northern border. In addition to armed attacks, the terrorist organization has instigated a water dispute between Israel and Lebanon by pushing an initiative to divert water from a tributary of the Jordan River. It has fanned the flames of the intifada itself by delivering weapons and know-how to Palestinian terrorist groups. And it has openly propagandized for the destruction of Israel by means of its media and Web outlets and through such wildly popular Hizballah-sponsored video games as Special Force (available in English and French as well as Arabic and Farsi), whose aim is to show "the defeat of the Israeli army and the heroic actions taken by the heroes of Islam's resistance in Lebanon."

This might soon have to change. Just as in May 2000, when Hizballah defied expert opinion by refusing to enter into hibernation after Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, so today it continues to march to the beat of its own drummer, its political and military calculus influenced more by the strength of its implacable convictions than by considerations of "prudence." Together with Syria and Iran, the organization appears bent on creating a unified anti-U.S. front in the Middle East, a kind of Shiite "axis" spanning the region from Tehran to Beirut and including a number of its sectarians in newly liberated Iraq. With anti-Americanism running high in the Muslim world, the possible takeover of Lebanon by a terror organization of global reach is becoming a pressing threat.

-snip-

[miltonim]

... its political and military calculus influenced more by the strength of its implacable convictions...

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