Sunday, January 11, 2009

Will Hizballah intervene in the Gaza conflict?

A Good Article and Recommended Reading

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, The Electronic Intifada, 11 January 2009

"While Israel fervently attempts to terrorize the Palestinians into submission in Gaza, many observers have started to wonder why Hizballah has refrained from stepping in militarily to assist its brothers-in-arms, Hamas. Such musings fail to take account of the constraints on Hizballah's room for action, as well as the circumstances under which Hizballah would ignore such constraints. The question that should be posed is not so much if Hizballah will act, but when.....

Over and above this political coordination, Hizballah must have helped Hamas ready itself for such an Israeli operation by providing weapons and training, as well as through joint military planning. Hizballah officials' strong confidence in Hamas' military performance appears to stem from an intimate knowledge of the organization's capabilities. This conclusion reveals itself in the assertion made by the head of Hizballah's parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, who claimed on 2 January that "the enemy will be surprised by the range of rockets found in the resistance's arsenal in Gaza." ......

Hamas' fighting style also seems to bear the hallmarks of the military tactics Hizballah used during the July War such as its use of underground bunkers and tunnel networks, as well as adopting similar rocket tactics, all of which suggest Hizballah's extensive training of Hamas' military forces. Nasrallah came close to admitting as much when he claimed on 31 December that "the resistance in Gaza benefitted more from these lessons [from the July War] than the Israelis." More than simply receiving military training, Hamas's military strategy appears to conform to the "new school of fighting" founded by Hizballah's assassinated military leader, Imad Mughniyeh (himself rumored to have personally trained and equipped several Palestinian groups over the years), which combines conventional and non-conventional, guerilla warfare.....

Not only did Hizballah coordinate its activity on the Gaza crisis with Hamas, but also with Iran. One such indication of this coordination was the fact that the Iranian campaign against Egypt's closure of the Rafah crossing was launched several days in advance of the one kicked off by Nasrallah.....

While many have conjectured that Nasrallah's threats suggest Hizballah's acquisition of advanced weapons such as anti-aircraft missiles, an equally valid conclusion (and one that doesn't rule out the former) would be that it has developed a new method or strategy of warfare involving a much larger number of fighters than has been used in the past. As declared by Nasrallah on 14 February 2008: "In any coming war, not just one Imad Mughniyeh will be waiting for you, and not just a few thousand fighters. Imad Mughniyeh has left behind him tens of thousands of trained, equipped and ready-for-martyrdom fighters." These fighters would display "an unprecedented method of fighting" which Israel had supposedly "never seen since its establishment," Nasrallah stated on 24 August 2008.

Regardless of Hizballah's readiness for war, and its potential to destroy Israel's military deterrence, what is certain is that for the movement and many of its supporters and allies, destroying the Zionist regime in Israel is no longer confined to the ideological realm but has entered the realm of strategic interests as well. Regional security requires that the perpetual threat that Israel poses to its neighbors be neutralized once and for all. While such logic may seem like a throw back to the 1950s and 1960s, the new thinking shares more in common with the American notion of "regime change" and one-state solution proposals rather than with "throwing the Jews into the sea." If the war against Gaza has achieved anything, it is that it has succeeded in drumming this logic in the Arab and Muslim political consciousness."

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