What was [Hizbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah thinking of, when he decided to cross the border and carry out the guerilla action [on July 12] that started the current Witches' Sabbath? Why did he do it? And why at this time?
Everybody agrees that Nasrallah is a clever person. He is also prudent. For years he has been assembling a huge stockpile of missiles of all kinds to establish a balance of terror. He knew that the Israeli army was only waiting for an opportunity to destroy them. In spite of that, he carried out a provocation that provided the Israeli government with a perfect pretext to attack Lebanon with the full approval of the world. Why?
Possibly he was asked by Iran and Syria, who had supplied him with the missiles, to do something to divert American pressure from them. And indeed, the sudden crisis has shifted attention away the Iranian nuclear effort, and it seems that Bush's attitude towards Syria has also changed.
But Nasrallah is far from being a marionette of Iran or Syria. He heads an authentic Lebanese movement, and calculates his own balance sheet of pros and cons. If he had been asked by Iran and/or Syria to do something – for which there is no proof – and he saw that it was contrary to the aims of his movement, he would not have done it.
Perhaps he acted because of domestic Lebanese concerns. The Lebanese political system was becoming more stable and it was becoming more difficult to justify the military wing of Hezbollah. A new, armed incident could have helped. (Such considerations are not alien to us either, especially before budget debates.)
But all this does not explain the timing. After all, Nasrallah could have acted a month before or a month later, a year before or a year later. There must have been a much stronger reason to convince him to enter upon such an adventure at precisely this time.
And indeed there was: Palestine. (my emphasis)
Read the whole thing, including his observation about Bush, Tony Blair and the other members of the G-8.
Avnery is trying as always to be a voice of reason and restraint. But there's an obvious question that jumps out at me from his argument. Specifically, from this: "Nasrallah could have acted a month before or a month later, a year before or a year later."
Actually, Hizbollah did act last November, attempting to do a similar operation, seizing Israeli soldiers as prisoners to bargain for a mutual prisoner release, of the kind which has negotiated at various times dating back to the 1950s.
There may have been some specific timing considerations involved, including the one Avnery suggests. But it could also have been Hizbollah seeing an opportunity and taking it, to do something they had been threatening, planning and attempting to do for quite a while.
Avnery speculates that Nasrallah may have seen Israel's assault on Gaza as an opportunity for him to become the hero of the Arab world by standing up to Israel, a role played for a time by both Egypt's Gamal Abd-el-Nasser and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Avnery thinks Israel's maximum aim of destorying Hizbollah as a political and military force is unlikely to be achieved:
Hezbollah is the authentic representative of the Shiite community, which makes up 40% of the Lebanese population. Together with the other Muslims, they are the majority in the country. The idea that the weakling Lebanese government – which in any case includes Hezbollah – would be able to liquidate the organization is ludicrous. ...
At most, this war – with its hundreds of dead and waves of destruction – will lead to another delicate armistice. The Israeli government will claim victory and argue that it has "changed the rules of the game." Nasrallah (or his successors) will claim that their small organization has stood up to one of the mightiest military machines in the world and written another shining chapter of heroism in the annals of Arab and Muslim history.
No real solution will be achieved, because there is no treatment of the root of the matter: the Palestinian problem.
