Sunday, July 20, 2008

Lebanon Breaks the Mould


By Alberto Cruz
Palestine Chronicle

"Lebanon, thanks to Hizbollah, is breaking moulds in the Middle East. After Hizbollah's defeat of Israel in the war of the summer of 2006, it has again humiliated the Zionist State by making it carry out another exchange of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners like the one in 2004. (1) It has managed to weaken imperialist and Saudi Arabian strategy in the area with the show of force it made taking over Beirut in just four days. That brought about rapid mediation by various Arab countries, ending with the Doha Agreement by means of which Lebanon's patriotic and nationalist forces pushed through a government of national unity......

Lebanon has been pathfinding for Arab peoples for two years. The firmness of principle, the patriotic resistance and political unity for common objectives regardless of religious belief or political option is breaking the stereotypes of sectarianism with which Western so-called news-media and their Arab allies treat the situation. It worries them for the example it offers to other peoples in the region. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan all look with much concern at what is happening in this small country because their own future is there as well.

In fact, the most worried at what is regarded as a strategic defeat for imperialism and the sectarian Wahhabi project, the King of Saudi Arabia, at every opportunity (9) shows his frustration at the strength of Hizbollah and the patriotic nationalist Lebanese organizations. The elites in other Arab countries, meanwhile, look more and more concerned at the example being shown and at the almost unchanged support for Hassan Nasrallah in the Arab street since the 2006 war. Nasrallah has been compared ever since with the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, for example by the Egyptian progressive daily paper Al Destour. (10)......"

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