– For a change, this could be useful –
From an editorial in Now Lebanon:
The national defense strategy is a chimera, a function that allows the Party of God to maintain its weapons while appearing to side with reason and debate. Does he honestly believe that Hezbollah would put its weapons at the disposal of the state when they are the very stick that allows it to beat the state whenever it feels like it?
I made that same argument before, but I think this conventional wisdom is worth revisiting in the wake of what’s happening in Syria and Iran nowadays: What if the national dialogue was Hezbollah’s chance to disarm without losing face?
Maybe this sounds too optimistic and more like a stretch of imagination. But let’s assume a regional war against Iran and an implosion of the Syrian regime take place in the coming years. With its two military crutches broken, wouldn’t Hezbollah prefer to transition into the role of normal Lebanese party that advocates a different kind of resistance –namely moral and economic– against Israel?
It would be a mistake to humiliate a weakened Hezbollah considering the place it has in the hearts of many in the Lebanese Shiaa community and considering the danger it could pose if it found itself cornered. A grand Lebanese bargain, as Michael Young had suggested in a previous National column, could be the wise course of action to take:
an increasingly insecure Hizbollah is also potentially a dangerous one. Now is the time for the party’s Lebanese rivals to consider innovative ideas for integrating Shiites into the political system. One such idea is to offer a swap – Hizbollah’s weapons in exchange for more political power for the Shiites – in the framework of a broader reform effort.
For reasons of self-interest, if not compassion, the rest of the Lebanese would do well to give Hezbollah a ladder to climb down on. The national dialogue would be the perfect theater to stage such an honorable exit
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What about those of us who believe in armed resistance against Israel until the full liberation of Palestine? If Hezbollah bows down, others will take the mantle. You believe that the Free Syrian army is allowed to use weapons against Syria, but you dontq believe the arabs are entilted to use weapons against Israel, i wonder why?
PS: I think out of all the Arab blogs I’ve followed the last 7 or 8 years this is the very first time I’ve seen somebody calling for Arabs to attack Israel “until full liberation of Palestine”. That’s not compliant with the fraudulent “Israel is the aggressor” or the “I’m a peace activist” meme at all, is it? I applaud your honesty. If more Arabs talked about how they really feel and what they really want when it comes to Israel the world may not have had to suffer through decades of this “peace process” fiction.
Hariri offered Nasrallah a comprehensive deal that factors the transformation into a purely political party (S-S); he (Nasrallah) refused it. Are you implying that he was unaware of the risks at the time? or that the decision of war and peace in Lebanon should be subject to weather changes?
Mus, this is not a video game; the S-S was one of the historical pivotal moments in the grand showdown, where decisions make or break.
Copycat,
I guess its lucky for you that Israelis aren’t as aggressive and violent as you are, eh? So, anyway, you really don’t see any difference between people rebelling against their own government and attacking a neighboring country? And then what happens if you get your way and Lebanese attack Israel and Israel invades Lebanon (again)? More crying to the UN and the international community about Israeli aggression and disproportionate force? Dude, arm yourself and go take on the IDF head to head. It’s not hard. Anyone can do it. Just make sure and make a martyr out of yourself right off the bat so any Lebanese who aren’t violent and stupid don’t have to pay the price for your aggressive behavior..
Craig, people like you are not peace activists or peace lovers. They are liars and undercover Zionists who want peace for the last Western colonial enterprise that has not been liquidated. Be sure, that this rabid Zionist project will be liquidated and Palestine will be restored to its rightful people.
You self-identify as “Jihad” and you think I want to talk to you? lol
As for the so-called national dialogue, I mean why not put the Islamic Resistance arms under the watchful eyes of Samir Geagea or Walid Junblat! What a joke. Plus, which state this silly journalist is talking about. As for Michael Young, if there is a state in Lebanon, he would and should be among the firsts to be kicked out of Lebanon. No to Zionists among us.
As a non-shia I think that hezbollah is our only effective military force. If they mature in their head and learn to live with us, they’ll be our only reassurance that Israel doesn’t invade when it feels like because some ant bit a settler who has just settled into a town of evacuated/liquidated palestinians
Craig, yes, I believe in the elimination of the state of Israel. I am yet to decide if the Israelis can stay or not after the liberation.
Now if Hezbollah ends, or lays down its arms, you and Arab wahhabi liberals like Mustafa can rest assured. A thousand Hezbollah will emerge from its ruins! It is simple really. As long as Israel exists, resistance will exist. Even if 50% of the Palestinians surrender, 50 % will not, and will continue armed struggle, with at least 50% of Arabs and Muslims behind them. the Zionist project cannot survive as long as there is one Arab on this planet, and will meet the same fate as the Crusaders, sooner or later, even if much later and beyond our life spans.
Craig, also, after the revolution ends in Syria, who do you think the Islamists and Salafists will go for next? Are you and liberal supporters of the revolution too blind to see it? Who will sign a peace treaty with Israel in Syria after Assad? the Muslim Brotherhood? it would be political suicide. they may appease for a while, but those people are anti-Semitic in their charters and ideologies. Israel will feel nostalgic to Assad if those people took power. The way I see it, Israel is doomed, doomed, doomed in any scenario
Craig, judging from the opposing comments you are dealing with, I can only say that you are trying to reason with pre-programmed robots. They should immediately get the most recent updates and download them. The current picture of the region shows a desperate Assad regime and an Iran that is not only dependent on Syria in their quest for the “Shia Crescent”, but also has many other problems. As for Israel worrying about the Muslim group that replaces the current regime, I think that Hezbullah has a lot more to worry about for starters. The Syrian opposition is well aware of Hezbullah’s support for Assad and you can count on some “payback” time. Now, as for Hezbullah wanting to keep their arms to protect Lebanon against an “imminent” attack by Israel, they will be at a great disadvantage without Big Brothers Iran and Syria. Anyway, Israel is not looking to invade and eliminate Lebanon – just Hezbullah if they attack Israel. So, in summary, Hezbullah is facing a shaky future and, if they had some statesmen in their corner, they might consider the points in the article presented. But I’m not optimistic.
Iam a preprogrammed robot but you are blind. Hezbollah has an ideology that i completely disagree with as i am a secular leftist, but resistance to israel to me is sacred. Hezbollah will eventually go because its ideology is dead and doomed and appeals to no one outside its narrow sectarian base. But resistance to israel until liberation is here to stay and if you think that is not true please do a poll of the arab world abd lebanon and see how many arabs would recognize israel and how many believe in armed resistance and how many believe historic palestine must be restored tomits rightful owners, regardless of six million israelis. I am sure they are reasonable however, and a humane solution can be found but only after all refugees return or are compensated and thezionist apartheid is dismantled.
I think the myth that Hizballah is a resistance group was washed away a few years ago when they invaded Beirut. Whether you agree with their policies or not, resistance is not their reason for existing. I think it’s obvious that Hizballah is an Iranian proxy, and discussing them without that in context is a useless endeavor. Simply put, Hizballah will not lay down arms until Iran orders them to, which I can’t see happening. Can you?
I have recently read an excellent article aboutbthe demise of the crusade state in palestine. It took arabs over a century to liberate palestine and it will take us decades or a century but it will happen, israel is not viable. It is surrounded by a sea of hostiles and eventually we will find a weak point and defeat israel
People like Copycat are the reason there will never be peace. Copycat, you DESERVE to suffer for your cowardice. You deserve every bit of instability attitudes like yours create. You deserve to watch your family mowed down by bombs and bullets in front of your eyes. It’s too bad the world can’t put your type on some deserted island and let you all kill each other so the innocent people who just want to live their lives and raise their families and contribute something meaningful to society don’t have to suffer from your hateful, sociopathic mind.
There is no honor in “resistance.” There is only more suffering. Real heroes work for peace. Cowards propagate violence.
look, when peace is a euphemism for surrender, death is better. Look at the Syrian people. they traded peace and humiliation for death and dignity. Again I am not interested in a debate. Those who know know, and those who don’t know, don’t know. Peace for israel means a chance to systematically evict the Arab population slowly without violence but through softer kinds of coercion (like bulldozing their homes and farms). Why did Israel bomb the sea port and airport in Gaza for example? are these military structures? Look, we don’t trust Israel in peace, it never honors its agreements, and is ideologically committed to keeping the west bank and the jordan valley and jerusalem. we have tried ‘peace’ and peace didnt work. time to consider another avenue
your clichés and bromides notwithstanding ye3ni
There are 1,000 better things I would rather be doing right now instead of spending the time and effort to type and post this, but I feel I owe it to this blog’s readership, and most of all to CopyCat himself, to properly rebut Copycat and reveal how misguided his thinking is on the matter which he so candidly expounded on above.
I’ll spare you all the tedium of proper paragraphs, so I’m going to try to summarize my arguments in bullet form. I’ll give it a genuine effort but I won’t dwell too much on it. I only hope the end-result proves somewhat coherent and convincing.
1) The Crusader analogy is completely anachronistic and doesn’t apply at all to present times. The Egyptian Ayyubid dynasty didn’t consist of 85 million people like today’s Egypt does, many of whom struggle in poverty and have no appetite for war. The Crusader Kingdoms didn’t have nuclear weapons.
More importantly, the Crusaders weren’t even Jewish. They were Christian, and they had a whole continent to retreat to, in the guise of Western Europe, when they finally threw in the towel on the Crusader project. The Jews of today’s Israel, in turn, have nowhere to go.
2) The Crusader analogy obfuscates the issue and obscures the only proper, peaceful and unhumiliated way, in my mind, for the Arabs to view Israel, and that is:
a) as an affirmative action for the Jews by granting them their own state in a territory which yes, while once was every bit as Arab as Lebanon, Egypt and Syria are today, is today in the grand scheme of things quite tiny, and more importantly not worth fighting for (here I am making an implicit but strong distinction between Palestine the land and Palestinians the people),
b) as a source of potential co-operation and peaceful competition that should help bring out the best in the Arabs instead of the worst,
c) as a preservation of Middle Eastern Jewish culture for the enrichment not just of the Jews but of all peoples of the Middle East (let us not forget that it was the Jews after all who came up with Abraham and the many who came after him in not just the Jewish but also the Christian and Muslim religious traditions), and finally
d) as a tragic but somewhat fair exchange for the Arab and Muslim World’s largely emptying out of their considerable native Jewish populations in the years after 1948.
3) CopyCat talks about Israel being unviable. Well, let me tell him something. The Arab World is ALSO UNVIABLE. Let’s first start by discussing matters of war.
a) Surely I am not the only person who’s been watching 2012 go by and gradually internalizing the shocked realization that the Arabs have simply no capability to put an end to the senseless violence in Syria.
From matters of war to security to deterrence to occupation to governance, the Arabs seem completely inept. In the post-colonial era from the mid-20th Century onwards, only Egypt has had any capability in this regard, but even then it wasn’t very good, and it learned its lesson over several wars and by losing the Sinai to the Israelis that it better behave itself from here on out. A smart Egypt will not wage war for the foreseeable future on ANYBODY. And without Egypt, the rest of the Arab World, including and perhaps especially Syria, won’t wage war on ANYBODY EITHER (of course, the disgraceful Syrian regime interprets ‘anybody’ to mean those who can actually fight back, restraining itself in the case of Israel but letting loose the violence when dealing with weak neighbours like Lebanon or dissenting and rebellious internal populations like those of Homs).
b) Let’s discuss Gulf security. The Gulf is not only severely water-impoverished, and therefore food-insecure, but also its resource mega-infrastructure is amazingly vulnerable. This basically means that the Gulf is in no position to wage war, nor should it be expected to. You want to bring Saudi Arabia to its knees ? Just bomb the Ras Tanura loading terminal in the Persian Gulf (look it up on Google Maps), or the desalination plants that supply water to re-pressurize the aging Ghawar super-oil field in Eastern Saudi Arabia. This is an open secret. I’m not saying anything that the smart money doesn’t already know.
In fact, putting the Israeli hysteria about Iran aside, Israel is NOT the strategic prize in the Middle East. The Gulf oil vertical infastructure from production to refinement to distribution is! And that self-evident vulnerability goes a long way to explaining the wary anti-Iranian attitudes of the Gulf sheikhdoms, robust American military presence in the Gulf, as well as the reasonable American insistence that Iran never acquire nuclear weapons.
It’s an oft-quoted statistic in the news these days that 20% of the world’s oil goes through the Straits of Hormuz. That statistic is absolutely correct. We’re talking at least 15 million barrels a day out of a global oil supply of around 85 million barrels a day. This proportion is only set to increase in future decades.
4) Let’s talk about the future. During the Crusades, Arabs could reasonably expect to see another 1,000 years on the planet. But I am not so sure that today’s Arabs can afford that luxury.
40-70 years! That’s how long the Arab oil will last. Yes, technology keeps getting better but how much more time can we buy ? It’s going to run out at some point. And then what do you think is going to happen ?
It all depends on how the world and the Arabs manage the post-oil transition. And let me tell you something, if 2011 and 2012 are anything to go by, so far they are bungling the transition big-time. I won’t dwell on the nightmare scenario, but look at countries like Yemen and Somalia and you’ll have an idea of what the region might look like if TECHNOLOGY doesn’t save the day. I am an engineer with two undergraduate degrees and one graduate degree and I can tell you with supreme confidence that the post-oil challenge will be a BITCH to solve, if it can be solved at all! (pardon the profanity, I’m trying to emphasize a point)
5) Where does that leave countries like Lebanon and Syria ? Well, I am all about them being able to defend themselves, and preventing their land and airspace from being encroached on by Israeli forces, but this STUPID and THUGGISH talk of liberating Palestine has GOT TO STOP! The Palestinian refugee problem should be solved immediately and regionally. It’s unreasonable to expect that the Palestinian refugees be returned to either Israel or the Palestinian Territories. It’s also unreasonable to expect that Lebanon naturalize all of them. They have to be dispersed and assimilated throughout the entire region.
Yes, you can shed a tear for what I wrote above, rage and accuse me of being a sell-out on Palestine. I am proud to wear that label. For the record, I sold out Palestine even before a single beautiful child, with huge brown eyes and crazy, curly hair, lost its life in Syria over the past year, to its OWN GOVERNMENT no less, in a senseless slaughter at least partially “explained” and “justified” by the regional intransigence and belligerence over Palestine. What a sham! And yes, what a shame!
But trust me, if the future plays out anything like I think it will, the region will have a lot to contend with in future decades of far more significance than Israel and Palestine. The Arabs can’t afford to be stupid. They have to be smart. Because only by being smart do they increase the odds of being successful, while also increasing the reassuring back-up odds of being aided by a far-more-capable West should they fail, which as things stand I’m sorry to say is extremely likely.
Surely I don’t need to remind everyone how grave the stakes are.
A Zionist with an Arab name. Any Arab person who defends Israel’s right to exist is a de facto Zionist. That is if you are indeed Arab. I really have no time to debate you and no interest either. Years and years of thinking over the Arab-Israeli conflict has led me to one conclusion: This conflict can only be resolved through armed resistance, not empty meaningless debate. It is an existential conflict. May the best man (or woman) win.
CopyCat, you’re a deranged fraud hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, playing a sick game of pissing people off, thinking you’re being clever, when all you’re really doing is wasting people’s time and turning this earnest blog into a slum!
Mustapha, this is the LAST post I make to your blog! I am not going to continue sullying my name by freely associating it with such irredeemable trash on the Internet.
you don’t need to be a drama queen about this. you said yourself you ‘sold out on Palestine’.
Look i read your long diatribe and it doesn’t make any sense. so because oil is peaking and our economic indicators are down the drain, we should forget about palestine, and focus on making money? is that your point? because you can’t make money and have any economy without first liberating occupied territory. why? because israel will never allow true democracy to emerge in itsneighboring countries precisely because the people will always vote in anti-Israeli leaders and pursue pro-Palestinian policies. You beat a lot about the bush but it is obfuscation. You don’t make any realistic points except to remind us that you have three degrees (good for you) and that should somewhat give your rant some authority. Well, it doesn’t. im sorry, it just doesn’t make any sense. Israel itself does not want peace, so you are basically asking us to give up Palestine altogether and move on, because there is no other way. But how do we know Israel will stop at that? Parts of Jordan and Egypt and Syria and Lebanon are also in their claims so if they occupy them again, then what? we give in? they are settling people in the Golan, yes or no? They tried to settle people in the Sinai, yes or no? Why is it Arabs that have to compromise all the time? It is Israel that must compromise, or face a more radical generation in the future that will not accept its existence.
As for your rants on peak oil, overpopulation, economic non-viability and so forth, they are off topic. Indeed, these are problems faced by the whole world, no one is doing anything about global warming or the collapsing form of capitalism, the whole world is nonviable if it continues in this fashion, but what does that have to do with questions of self-determination and national sovereignty. go tell the people of scotland that they should not bother seek independence from the UK because oil may peak soon and they’re going to be shafted if they leave the UK because in 50 years their oil will run out…
puhlease
Samer, I have just spent the last 30 minutes reading through your posts. They are thoughtful, intelligent and humorous. It appears that there is no other outlet for you to continue your rants (unless the broken samernasser.com site is yours), so please reconsider your decision to abandon this blog, there are some readers that appreciate your work.
FYI a better domain name might be samerthehammer.com
that’s 30 minutes you’re never going to get back