Interview with journalist and author Deborah Campbell
"NEW YORK, Aug 18 (IPS) - Since the Israel-Lebanon 34-day war two years ago, and particularly after the Doha accord in May which restored Hezbollah to the Lebanese government and essentially gave it the veto power it demanded, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been the most popular figure anywhere in the Arab world.....
....Deborah Campbell, author of "This Heated Place", a narrative exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, told IPS in an interview.
Over the past seven years, she has extensively chronicled the fault lines in the Middle East from Iran to Palestine, immersing herself for extended periods in the societies she writes about.
Campbell has written for The Economist, New Scientist, Ms. magazine, the Guardian and Asia Times, and recently reported for Harper's on the two months she spent "embedded" with Iraqi refugees. After returning from two months in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, she spoke to IPS correspondent Omid Memarian about the meteoric rise of Hezbollah in the aftermath of the 2006 war, the Doha agreement and the prisoner exchange with Israel.
Excerpts from the interview follow......
IPS: Is Hassan Nasrallah popular among Muslims or Christians?
DC: I talked to a Sunni economist, educated at the London School of Economics, who calls Nasrallah a demigod. "The right man for the right moment" is how he characterised him. His sentiment, shared by many, is that Nasrallah never makes a promise he doesn't keep, and that he's incorruptible. This distinguishes him from the rest of the power elites in Lebanon, many of whom are ex-warlords who keep recycling back into power. These guys live like rock stars. On the Christian side you have a huge number, the supporters of Michel Aoun, who are the main allies of Hezbollah. They don't seem at all threatened by the rise in Shia influence and don't think it will mean an end to girls wearing bikinis on the beach. This is about power, not religion......"
"NEW YORK, Aug 18 (IPS) - Since the Israel-Lebanon 34-day war two years ago, and particularly after the Doha accord in May which restored Hezbollah to the Lebanese government and essentially gave it the veto power it demanded, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been the most popular figure anywhere in the Arab world.....
....Deborah Campbell, author of "This Heated Place", a narrative exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, told IPS in an interview.
Over the past seven years, she has extensively chronicled the fault lines in the Middle East from Iran to Palestine, immersing herself for extended periods in the societies she writes about.
Campbell has written for The Economist, New Scientist, Ms. magazine, the Guardian and Asia Times, and recently reported for Harper's on the two months she spent "embedded" with Iraqi refugees. After returning from two months in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, she spoke to IPS correspondent Omid Memarian about the meteoric rise of Hezbollah in the aftermath of the 2006 war, the Doha agreement and the prisoner exchange with Israel.
Excerpts from the interview follow......
IPS: Is Hassan Nasrallah popular among Muslims or Christians?
DC: I talked to a Sunni economist, educated at the London School of Economics, who calls Nasrallah a demigod. "The right man for the right moment" is how he characterised him. His sentiment, shared by many, is that Nasrallah never makes a promise he doesn't keep, and that he's incorruptible. This distinguishes him from the rest of the power elites in Lebanon, many of whom are ex-warlords who keep recycling back into power. These guys live like rock stars. On the Christian side you have a huge number, the supporters of Michel Aoun, who are the main allies of Hezbollah. They don't seem at all threatened by the rise in Shia influence and don't think it will mean an end to girls wearing bikinis on the beach. This is about power, not religion......"
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