|
Israel is simultaneously fighting two guerrilla movements, Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, which emerged in their present form in the 1980s and which preach an Islamist revolutionary message. Although Hamas is explicitly a Sunni movement, an evolution of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizbullah a quintessentially Shi‘ite movement (influenced by the Iranian Revolution of 1979, with a clerical leadership and with extensive financial and military support and training from Iran), both movements have certain features in common: commitment to an Islamic state, to armed resistance to Israel and a glorification of “martyrdom operations,” (though Hamas to a greater degree than Hizbullah), but also an activist role in providing services to the local population: schools, hospitals, relief services. In this latter field they have followed the lead of other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, seeking to endear themselves to the local population among which they recruit. Israeli and Western critics note that both Hamas and Hizbullah have stored arms in private homes, mosques, and schools, and that therefore these are sometimes targeted by Israel; from a Western, Geneva Convention sort of perspective this is a valid complaint, but from a revolutionary one, it is a case of (to use the Chinese slogan usually attributed to Mao Zedong or one of his generals) that the guerrilla is a fish and the people are the sea.
The Muslim Brotherhood pioneered this approach in Egypt as long ago as the 1930s, with a network of mosques and schools which filled a need that the government was ignoring. Hamas has followed suit in Gaza, where it was founded and where it built its base at Gaza University and in the mosques, and there (far more than in the West Bank, where it has been less entrenched for less time) it provides more of a semblance of the services of civil society than does the Palestinian Authority, still struggling with its legacy of corruption and infighting. In Lebanon, Hizbullah similarly is not just a guerrilla movement (though its military wing, trained and equipped by Iran, is highly effective and, as the world now knows, well-equipped with artillery rockets and even guided missiles), but also a political force and a social binding element in the Shi‘ite slums of Beirut and villages of the south. Hamas and Hizbullah are classic guerrilla forces in some respects, and use modern terror tactics in others, but they are something of an innovation in that each of them, despite the differences between them, emerged in societies — civil war Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority after Yasir ‘Arafat — which are weak, non-cohesive, and where central authority is absent, or corrupt, or both. They pose a different sort of enemy, harder to combat, precisely because they are rooted in their societies.
One instructive comparison is to contrast the “Fatahland” of the 1970s with the “Hizbullahland” of today: both were located in southern Lebanon; both were the base of operations against Israel, at least sporadically. But Fatah was always in, but not of, South Lebanon. The Palestinian fida’iyin who operated in South Lebanon before Israel’s 1982 invasion were drawn from the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, not from the villages of the South, which are mostly Shi‘ite and Christian. They were resented by the local population, who often suffered from Israeli reprisals. When the Israelis entered South Lebanon, they expected to be welcomed by the local populations. The Maronites did, to some extent, and the Israeli-trained and - armed South Lebanon Army became a key element in Israel’s occupation. But the Shi‘ite population did not, for the most part, join: instead they were soon the recruiting pool for the nascent Hizbullah. Today, in Hizbullah’s Shi‘ite strongholds — South Lebanon, Ba‘albek, the Dahiya or “suburb” of Beirut — Hizbullah is a genuinely popular movement, and their charismatic leader (or demagogic leader for those who oppose Hizbullah, Sheikh Hasan Nasrullah (Profile below) has his picture everywhere. The Fatah fighters may have enjoyed that kind of popularity in the refugee camps of Tyre or Beirut, but not in the villages of South Lebanon.
In part, of course, the difference is that many South Lebanese are Shi‘ites, and Nasrullah is one of their own, from a town near Tyre (though born in Beirut of southern parents). In part, Hizbullah has made itself a part of the social fabric of the region in a way that Fatah was not (except in the camps). With 14 deputies in the Lebanese Parliament and two members of the present Cabinet, Hizbullah is a political and social force, not just a military one. That makes it harder to eliminate its influence: it was one thing to expel the PLO leadership from Lebanon in 1982-83, and quite another thing to purge the Shi‘ite population of South Lebanon, the base upon which Hizbullah has built its support.
Hamas and Hizbullah have some elements in common, despite the fundamental difference between the Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood-derived Hamas and the Shi‘ite Hizbullah, modeled on the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Some common features:
Both are really products of the 1980s. The Shi‘ites of Lebanon, generally conceded to be the largest single confessional bloc in the country by the 1970s, had always been allocated a poor third place in the political system behind the Maronites and the Sunnis. With the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s, Imam Musa al-Sadr and his Movement of the Dispossessed became the populist embodiment of Shi‘ite rejection of continued oppression. After Sadr disappeared in Libya in 1978, his Amal party became more politicized and less populist, but after the 1982 its leadership split, with a pro-Iranian faction creating what became Hizbullah. Hamas, an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya), emerged from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza under the leadership of the late Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, later assassinated by Israel. In fact, Hamas and the Brotherhood had received some encouragement from the Israelis in the early years, thinking that an Islamist movement would be a rival to the nationalist PLO and weaken ‘Arafat. Hamas truly came into its own with the first intifada in 1987, when it was, along with Fatah and Islamic Jihad, part of the local coordinating body for the intifada.
Both are active in social and educational matters. In this, Hamas has maintained the tradition of its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood, while Hizbullah has carried on the tradition of Musa al-Sadr’s movement in Lebanon, from which it in one sense evolved.
Both have armed wings. This aspect should hardly need to be emphasized to anyone who has followed the modern history of either movement.
Both are now engaged in electoral politics. Hizbullah entered the electoral lists as long ago as 1992, in the first Lebanese Parliamentary elections held after the civil war; Hamas only chose to take the plunge with the Palestinian Authority elections at the beginning of this year, but they won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council on their first try, largely because of disgust with the corrupt, faction-ridden, inefficient Fatah. Both movements have portrayed themselves as the only real resistance to Israeli occupation; since 2000, Hizbullah has claimed responsibility for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and Hamas has tried to claim the same thing about the withdrawal from Gaza.
Both rely on asymmetric warfare to fight. Each relies on the inability of Israel to counter terror tactics such as suicide bombings; each clearly fights asymmetrically.
On the other hand, there are some obvious differences. Hizbullah’s links to Syria and Iran are profound; its military wing is trained by the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, both in Iran and in Lebanon, and Hizbullah has generally been a strong supporter of Syria’s position in Lebanon. Hamas has accepted support from Iran and other countries but has nothing like the same kind of organic and ideological links. Though its leadership is in Damascus, its links with the Muslim Brotherhood make it an unlikely ally for the Syrian Ba‘ath, notorious for their extirpation of the Syrian Brotherhood.
Hamas has portrayed itself as the real resistance to Israel; while Hizbullah has portrayed itself as the liberators of South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, it had claimed — until the cross-border raid that sparked the present conflict — that it was purely a Lebanese movement and only was attacking Israel within the disputed Shab‘a Farms region, which it claims is still occupied Lebanese territory. (The United Nations disagrees and has said Israel completely left Lebanese territory.) Why Hizbullah changed its tactics to attack inside Israel is in fact one of the questions that has not yet been clearly answered about the present conflict: suggestions have been that it was seeking to win captives in order to exchange to free its own prisoners held by Israel (its own explanation), or to divert attention from Iran’s nuclear program (which it clearly did, but at considerable cost to itself), or to show solidarity with Hamas in Gaza (which seems an unsatisfactory explanation, somehow).
Hamas has been unable to find a formula allowing it to deal directly with Israel, which complicates its role as the leading force in the Cabinet of the Palestinian Authority, which has multiple international agreements calling for cooperation with Israel in many areas, including security. Attempts by Palestinian President Mahmud ‘Abbas to find a way to either solve this problem or blunt Hamas’ power were overtaken by events with the Israeli move against Gaza, but the issue remains. Hizbullah can be a member of the Lebanese government without itself having to directly deal with Israel, but the nature of the Palestinian Authority makes it virtually impossible for Israel and the PA to have an evolving relationship (let alone peace talks); as a result the PA has been under an economic siege since Hamas’ win.
The fact that one movement is Sunni and the other is Shi‘ite certainly is visible in the very different responses of the Arab states and the Arab League to the events in Gaza and those in Lebanon. While expressing support for the Lebanese government of (Sunni) Prime Minister Fu’ad Seniora, the Arab states (except Syria) have refrained from supporting Hizbullah and have openly criticized it (and to some extent Iran) for upsetting the status quo and creating a crisis without the approval of the Lebanese government. Although there is plenty of suspicion of Hamas among the Arab leaders (especially in Egypt, who see it as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood at home), it goes unsaid at Arab meetings, while criticisms of Hizbullah are much more open.
The two movements, despite their differences, both represent a new and somewhat different sort of guerrilla movement, with broad-based social services and educational roles alongside revolutionary military action. (In this they do model themselves to some extent, consciously or not, on the Chinese Communists, the Viet Minh, and other similar movements of the 1940s and 1950s.)
Such movements are, as already noted, harder to suppress, since if the guerrilla swims in the sea of the people, there is no easy way to defeat the guerrilla except to drain the sea. It is probably almost impossible to eliminate Hizbullah from South Lebanon; Israel’s occupation from 1982 to 2000 could not do that, and there is little reason to think that a renewed occupation (let alone the arrival of the Lebanese Army) could do so.
It is, however, another matter to separate forces, which seems to be the favored approach of diplomacy at the moment: either a UN or Lebanese force would take charge of the border. And, of course, the Israelis seem intent on removing the thousands of artillery rockets (and some guided missiles) from South Lebanon and assuring that no more will be launched. (For more on these issues, See the Lead Story on Page One and Defense Briefs on Page Four.)
Gaza is a somewhat analagous problem, though the population density and the narrowness of the strip of land have always made it the most volatile Palestinian territory. Assuming that Ehud Olmert, having withdrawn from Gaza, has no desire to re-occupy it, finding a way to stop attacks from Gaza into Israel, or the firing of Qassam rockets against Israeli towns, is a complex one. Mahmud ‘Abbas gives every indication of wanting to find a way to move forward, but of lacking the resources, forces, or military will to do so.
Hamas and Hizbullah may represent a new kind of Islamist resistance, one with some echoes in the Iraqi insurgency as well: rooted among the population, willing to accept considerable punishment and sacrifice manpower to make their enemies bleed, they pose major challenges. Israel has so far responded in the way it historically has responded to cross-border challenges, with military force. That may not be the most effective way to respond to this new sort of challenge. For the Hamas leadership, See the Profiles pages “Who’s Who in Hamas: A Few of the Key Figures” in The Estimate for January 30, 2006.
Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyid Sheikh Hasan Nasrullah
Even those who despise Hasan Nasrullah — and there are plenty of Lebanese who do so — recognize that he may be the most charismatic political figure in Lebanon today. In a political environment marked by old zu‘ama, the often hereditary “Godfathers” of Lebanon’s confessional and political fiefs, Nasrullah is young (not quite 46), a fiery orator, and gives the impression of being a true believer in his message. To his followers he is the centerpiece of “resistance” to Israel; to others in the Lebanese arena, he is a demagogue. For years he has balanced his role as a revolutionary guerrilla leader with the more complex one of a political player in Lebanon’s electoral politics. Until the present upheaval, Hizbullah has carefully calibrated what it can (and cannot) do in southern Lebanon. This time, Nasrullah may have overplayed his hand; Israel says he has been in a bunker since the beginning of its attacks, and he does not appear to have anticipated the strength of the Israeli response or the degree to which Israel was prepared to attack Lebanon’s state infrastructure.
Nasrullah is not your typical Shi‘ite cleric: he does not come from an old clerical family, but is the eldest son of a vegetable vendor. (He is, however, a sayyid or descendant of the Prophet, entitled to wear the black turban.) He was born on August 31, 1960, in the poor Shi‘ite Karantina suburb of East Beirut, to a family which originated in Bazuriyya in south Lebanon. In 1975, as the civil war was erupting, the family moved back to southern Lebanon. There, Nasrullah came under the influence of the Movement of the Dispossessed, founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr, prior to the latter’s disappearance on a trip to Libya in 1978. He was already active in political affairs and held local posts in Bazuriyya even while completing his secondary education.
On the advice of a local Shi‘ite cleric, Nasrullah went to study at Najaf in Iraq, where he studied with Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and came to know ‘Abbas Musawi, a student of Sheikh Husayn Fadlallah and a fellow Lebanese. Musawi would later become Secretary-General of Hizbullah. When Saddam Hussein began pressuring the clergy in Najaf, Musawi and Nasrullah returned to Lebanon and Nasrullah pursued his studies under Musawi in Ba‘albek. He also rose through the ranks of Amal, the political movement originally founded by Musa al-Sadr, and joined its Political Bureau. As Amal became less charismatic in the wake of Musa al-Sadr’s disappearence, Nasrullah was expelled from Amal for criticizing its lack of resistance to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. When Hizbullah emerged from this split in Amal, he was associated with it, and the new movement took both its name (“Party of God”) and inspiration from the Iranian Revolution. Originally heading Hizbullah’s local branch in Ba‘albek, he moved to the Beirut area in 1985. A close ally of Musawi from the beginning, he was both a political leader and a major field commander for Hizbullah, and in 1987 commanded Hizbullah militias against Amal’s militia in internecine Shi‘ite fighting in Beirut. In 1989, he was sent to Qom, Iran, to complete his clerical studies. He returned to Lebanon within a year and was wounded in militia battles there. He also served briefly as Hizbullah’s “Ambassador” to Tehran.
In 1991 ‘Abbas Musawi became Hizbullah’s Secretary-General, but in February 1992 he was killed in a helicopter attack by Israeli commandos. His longtime protégé, Nasrullah, succeded him as Secretary-General. At the age of 31 Nasrullah thus became one of the most powerful figures in Lebanon.
In the 1992 Lebanese Parliamentary elections, the first following the civil war, Hizbullah ran as a political party, a decision made by Nasrullah as the new leader; it won 12 seats. Its strength has continued to grow; it holds 14 seats in the present Parliament. Hizbullah has two members in the current Cabinet of Fu’ad Seniora (the Minister of Energy and Water, and the Minister of Labor, and at least one additional Cabinet member (Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh) is a sympathizer endorsed by the party.
Nasrullah is married to Fatima Yasin and is the father of five children. One son, Hadi, was killed fighting in southern Lebanon against Israel in 1997. There are three other sons: Muhammad Jawad, Muhammad ‘Ali, and Muhammad Mahdi, and a daughter, Zaynab. |
