Strength in unity

WASHINGTON - Hopes by the George W Bush administration for the emergence of an implicit Sunni-Israel alliance against an Iranian-led "Shi'ite crescent" have faded over the past week as Arab public opinion has become increasingly united by outrage over the Jewish state's continuing military campaign in Lebanon and Washington's refusal to stop it, according to Middle East experts.

Fueled by saturation television coverage of the destruction and suffering wrought by Israel's attacks, popular sentiment in both Shi'ite and Sunni communities has moved strongly behind Shi'ite Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has become a symbol of resistance to Israeli and US power, these analysts agree.

"Resistance rises above sectarianism," said Graham Fuller, a former top Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Rand Corporation. "Sunni masses by and large are not concerned whether Iran, Syria's rulers, or Hezbollah are Shi'ites; they applaud them for their steadfastness and willingness to fight and even die."

The growing Sunni-Shi'ite unity in support of Hezbollah defies hopes by Bush administration officials and their Israel-centered neo-conservative supporters in Washington that fears of an Iranian-led Shi'ite axis stretching from Lebanon across Syria to the new Shi'ite-dominated government in Iraq would provoke Sunni-led states to form a de facto alliance with Israel.

Those hopes were bolstered when, in a break with traditional Arab solidarity over any confrontation with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt denounced Hezbollah for "adventurism" in abducting two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border, the incident that precipitated the current violence and destruction.

Their statements, which were welcomed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as evidence of the emergence of a "new Middle East", were also cited as evidence, particularly by neo-conservatives, that Iran, believed to be Hezbollah's most important source of arms and external funding, had displaced Israel as the Sunnis' greatest threat.

The theory was most eloquently expressed by Michael Rubin, a hardline neo-conservative at the American Enterprise Institute. "Across Lebanon and the region, Arab leaders see Hezbollah for what it is: an arm of Iranian influence waging a sectarian battle in the heart of the Middle East," he wrote in a July 19 column in the Wall Street Journal titled "Iran against the Arabs".

"An old Arab proverb goes, 'Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; and me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger,'" he went on. "Forced to make a choice, Sunni Arabs are deciding: the Jews are cousins; the Shi'ites, strangers."

But most regional specialists now dismiss this analysis, at least at the popular level. If anything, they say, the impact of Israel's military campaign in Lebanon has confirmed its status as the "stranger", while Hezbollah's resistance has elevated it and those who support it to "cousin", if not "brother", to Sunni Arabs.

"In fact ... there is more of a rapprochement between the Sunni and Shi'ite," said Jean Francois Seznec, a specialist on the Persian Gulf region at Columbia University, who noted that Shi'ite Hezbollah and Iran both support Sunni Hamas in the Palestinian territories and that Sunnis in Syria could be expected to rally behind the Alawi Assad regime if Damascus, which also supports Hezbollah, is drawn into the current conflict.

"The real split here is between the Sunni autocrats and their very own citizens," wrote Fuller in an article for Global Viewpoint. "These Sunni regimes are terrified that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and even Sunni Hamas are all creating inspirational models of independent mass resistance against reigning US and Israeli power in the region."

That Sunni leaders now feel compelled to follow public opinion was made evident by several developments this past week, beginning with Egypt's rejection of Washington's proposal to hold Wednesday's emergency international conference on Lebanon at Sharm el-Sheikh. As a result, the conference, at which Rice found herself completely isolated in rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire, was held in Rome instead.

Tuesday's angry and unusually harsh denunciation by Saudi Arabia of what it called "unremitting Israeli aggression", which also warned Washington in particular of unpredictable "repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one" if a ceasefire is not quickly achieved, was also taken as a major reversal of its previous views.

"The Saudis thought they could get a ceasefire and be the heroes," said Marc Lynch, a Middle East specialist at Williams College who follows the Arab media closely. "When it became clear that that wasn't going to happen and public opinion was getting really mobilized, then they did a 180-degree turn. That is very significant."

Finally, Thursday's appearance on Al-Jazeera of a new video by al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he implicitly called for unity between Sunnis and Shi'ites against the "Zionist-Crusader alliance", suggested that the most radical Sunni jihadis were not only eager to identify themselves with Hezbollah's resistance, but also see the current crisis as an opportunity for broadening their base.

"Just as Iraq served al-Qaeda's strategy by supplying an endless stream of images of 'heroic mujahideen' fighting against 'brutal Americans' - and became less useful as images of dead Iraqi civilians began to complicate the picture - the Lebanon war offers an unending supply of images and actions which powerfully support al-Qaeda's narrative and world view ... without the complications posed by [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi's controversial anti-Shi'ite strategy in Iraq," wrote Lynch on his blog.

"In that regard, al-Qaeda's open support for Hezbollah might even help to heal the Sunni-Shi'ite breach which Zarqawi worked hard to open [in Iraq] against [Osama] bin Laden's and Zawahiri's advice," he said.

Even before the current Israel-Lebanon crisis, al-Qaeda had been trying to undo the damage caused by Zarqawi's anti-Shi'ite campaign. In his most recent audio message released on July 1, several weeks after Zarqawi's death, bin Laden referred to Shi'ites as "cousins" and called for al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia, as Zarqawi's group is known, to make US forces and their collaborators - rather than the general Shi'ite population - its primary target.

"The Sunni-Shi'ite divide is real, and it's not just being invented by the neo-cons, but if you look at mainstream public opinion, a lot of the Sunni-Shi'ite stuff that the neo-cons and the press are picking up on is the invention of the [Sunni-led] regimes, especially in the Gulf, where Sunni leaders really are afraid of Iran and their Shi'ite populations inconveniently happen to live on the oilfields," Lynch told Inter Press Service.

"For the Arab regimes, playing on Sunni-Shi'ite differences is really a divide-and-conquer [strategy] to prevent the rise of a unified movement against them. But the fact is you're now seeing even very Sunni movements like the Muslim Brotherhood rallying to Hezbollah as the fighter against Israel, while these corrupt, impotent, pro-American governments aren't doing a thing."