By Tony Sayegh
It has been interesting, even amusing, in the aftermath of Hizbullah's impressive performance in the face of the massive Israeli assault on Lebanon to watch the various states in the region and to observe their attempts to get some mileage from what took place or to deflect criticism of their performance.
It is very clear that the success of Hizbullah's strategy in confronting the forces of the Israeli state was due to adopting the structure, organization, weapons and tactics of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). The success of Hizbullah in confronting one of the most modern and technologically advanced state armies in the world, has firmly vindicated 4GW as the only way a non-state resistance movement can defeat a state power, no matter how advanced and powerful.
The Syrian state and the Iranian state wasted no time in claiming victory and implicitly taking credit for Hizbullah's success. On the other side, are the US client states of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the stooge Abbas (claiming to represent a pseudo state) leading the chorus which has maintained the decades-old myth that the Israeli state could not be defeated militarily. This defeatist chorus was openly cheering for the power of the Israeli state to defeat Hizbullah in order to eliminate all non-state resistance movements that they rightly perceive as a threat to their existence as illegitimate states. The Syrian president attacked the leaders of the defeatist states and he called them "half-men" whom he claimed came up with only "half-solutions." Not to be outdone, the defeatist state leaders shot back that the Syrian state itself has done nothing and while the Syrian Golan Heights remain occupied by Israel, Syria has not fired a shot in an attempt to liberate its territory since 1973. How true! Some, in a moment of wishful thinking, have urged the Syrian regime to follow a strategy similar to Hizbullah's in attempting to dislodge the Israelis from the Golan Heights. Not so fast! Those indulging in such shallow wishful thinking ignore the fact that Hizbullah has succeeded because it is a non-state movement with deep and widespread grass roots and popular support. The same can't be said about the Syrian regime or any other Arab regime for that matter.
We had already observed another example of the success of a popular resistance and the failure of another state power, prior to this latest success by Hizbullah, and that of course was and continues to be in Iraq. News reports now indicate that the Bush Administration is so frustrated by its quagmire in Iraq that it has given up on the latest puppet "government" of Maliki and it is considering doing away with pretensions of "democracy" and instead installing a dictator (or a "strongman" as he would be called) who would rule by brutal force. But it is too late for that! The state does not have the institutions and the power to impose its will by force any longer.
In Lebanon itself, the politicians of the feeble Lebanese state have started their squabbles and they are re-adjusting their positions in light of the new realities. Some have not learned a thing and are still calling for disarming Hizbullah, while praising the Lebanese state for repelling the Israeli invasion! Who are they fooling? The forces of the Lebanese state were fraternizing with the invading Israelis and serving them tea in the town of Marji'youn while Lebanon was being bombed into rubble by the Israelis! Later, Israel disarmed those same representatives of the Lebanese state and released them only after heavy intervention by France and the US. Israel later bombed those representatives of the Lebanese state who served the Israelis tea and killed six of them.
The important point in all of this is that the states, by their illegitimacy, corruption and incompetence have perpetrated a culture of defeat and that defeat was hammered in the heads of the populace as an objective reality that could not be challenged. As a corollary, the states have perpetuated a culture of subservience to the US and a pursuit of an illusory "peace process" that has led to further strengthening of Usrael and the loss of more and more Palestinian and other Arab territories. Now, in Iraq and in Lebanon the non-state resistance movements have taken on the two mightiest military powers of the US and Israel and fought them off to a standstill. All of a sudden the state players and their weakness are exposed as never before and their legitimacy will be challenged as never before.
With all of these fundamental lessons becoming clear, the Palestinians who do not have a state, seem to want to move in the wrong direction. Instead of absorbing the lessons from Iraq and Lebanon and putting into practice what has been learnt in order to build an effective Palestinian resistance movement, the Palestinians (including all factions) are fooling themselves by hanging on to a make-believe "government" and an Authority with absolutely no authority. Even the resistance movement of Hamas is indulging in the silly trappings of a "state" by having "ministers," a "parliament" and other state structures such as foreign service and security! This is not only a wasted effort but also, more seriously, indicative of inability to learn and to apply from what is happening in the area. If the Palestinians are to be taken seriously, they have to dissolve the wretched Palestinian Authority and to get serious building an effective resistance movement. Not surprisingly, that is why the most admired leader in occupied Palestine today is not a Palestinian: he is Hasan Nasrallah.
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