Daily Alert Archives

Hizbullah Plays the Israel Card

(World Affairs Journal) Michael J. Totten - Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah briefly emerged from his underground lair on Friday and delivered his first public speech in years urging his enemies to stop fretting over his involvement in the Syrian war and worry instead about the Jews. "We Shiites will never abandon Palestine," he said. But they have abandoned Palestine - for now - and are fighting instead to save their collective backside in Syria. If Bashar al-Assad falls to the Free Syrian Army, Hizbullah will lose its weapons supply link with Iran and find itself cut off and encircled by enemies. Never before has Hizbullah faced so much internal pressure. On Thursday, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, for the first time ever, publicly announced he can no longer sanction Hizbullah's existence as an armed militia in Lebanon. Nearly all my Lebanese sources - Sunni, Shia, and Christian - insist that Hizbullah has always been more worried about Sunnis than Israelis and Jews. The Sunni-Shia conflict is more than 1,300 years old. Various Sunni-Shia wars have killed far more people during my lifetime - over a million - than the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hizbullah leaders know perfectly well that Israel is not going to randomly invade Lebanon one day just for the hell of it. They say Hizbullah's military capabilities deter the Israelis, but it's a lie and they know it's a lie. On the contrary, the threat from Hizbullah is a magnet for Israeli invasions. Nasrallah is telling his fellow Lebanese to focus on Israel while he's ignoring Israel and fighting in Syria. It's not going to work.
2013-08-05 00:00:00
Full Article