MIDEAST: Hezbollah Steps Onto Palestinian Stage

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

By Ferry Biedermann

RAMALLAH, Jan 30 2004 (IPS) - Israel completed the latest stage of its complex exchange of prisoners – or their remains – with the Lebanese Hezbollah movement Friday morning.

Both sides are now trying to assess where this exchange has left them, and whether there can by any more.

Several Red Cross trucks crossed the border at Rosh Hanikra/Ras Naqura on the Israel-Lebanese border and delivered the remains of some 60 Hezbollah fighters to the Lebanese side. They were among many who have died in more than two decades that the Jewish state and the militant Shia organisation have been mortal enemies.

This concludes the first phase of the swap. Both sides say they are committed to a second phase that would finally end the conflict over prisoners and soldiers missing in action in the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

Many Israeli commentators think Hezbollah has scored a huge public relations coup. In exchange for the bodies of three soldiers and a kidnapped Israeli businessman, it got back about 30 prisoners. These were mostly Lebanese but included Syrians, Sudanese, Moroccans and Libyans.

Among the Lebanese prisoners were the prominent Hezbollah leaders Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani.

The two received a red carpet welcome at Beirut airport Thursday night, with the whole Lebanese leadership in attendance. Highly visible among them was the black-turbaned Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

The other and even more controversial aspect of the swap was the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Letting these prisoners go, some of them members of militant organisations, was especially hard coming as it did just hours after a suicide bombing killed ten Israelis on a bus in the centre of Jerusalem.

Opinion articles in Israel’s Haaretz daily newspaper reflected the range of opposition to this aspect of the deal. The government, one commentary read, had been worried about the involvement of Hezbollah in the Palestinian violence. By agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners, it had now “invited” Hezbollah in.

Sheik Nasrallah has become now more of a hero in the Palestinian territories than he already was. Hezbollah has gained great popularity here for fighting Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah is widely credited with handing Israel what many in the Arab world see as its first military defeat when Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after a 20-year-occupation. Some analysts in Israel believe that the outbreak of the Intifadah soon after was at least partly a result of this.

At the Beitunya checkpoint on the outskirts of Ramallah a small group of people gathered Thursday morning to wait for family members to return after their release. One woman angrily confronted an Israeli army jeep that tried to clear the way.

“God bless Nasrallah,” she shouted. “He has humiliated you, and he will continue to defeat you.”

The woman clearly believed that what Hezbollah had done to Israel from its bases in the south of Lebanon, it can do or at least inspire within the occupied Palestinian territories of the Gaza strip to the west of Israel and the West Bank (of the Jordan river) to its east.

Family members in these Palestinian areas were unanimous in their praise for Hezbollah. They said it had shown more mettle than their own Palestinian Authority. “Hezbollah did what our leaders have not been able to do,” said Amal Ghanem waiting for her brother Nasser.

Both in the Palestinian territories and in Israel the swap has been seen as undermining the Palestinian Authority. Some Israeli commentators blame the government for failing to support a moderate Palestinian leadership earlier by releasing more prisoners, and now encouraging militants by giving in to Hezbollah.

Palestinian deputy minister for prisoners affairs Ziad Abu Ein was among those waiting at Beitunya for the 60 or so prisoners brought to the Ramallah area.

He did not agree that Hezbollah was undermining the Palestinian Authority with the exchange. “We, as Fatah and the PLO (Palestinian Liberalisation Organisation) have conducted prisoner exchanges with Israel in the past ourselves,” he said. “That is perfectly legitimate. As a matter of fact, I was released from Israeli jails twice in the 1980’s through such exchanges.”

But as if to underline the PA’s unease with the Hezbollah deal, the prisoners received a strangely muted official welcome.

The prisoners themselves were more ambivalent about their release, reflecting rumoured unease among the militant leadership within Israeli jails. This is a powerful lobby in Palestinian society but in this exchange engineered by Hezbollah, its voice has not been heard at all.

“Of course I’m happy that they let me go,” said Nasser Ghanem, when he could finally talk after a tearful meeting with his family. “But we are not happy that many who have been in jail much longer and who are older have not been released.”

The 24-year old Ghanem was arrested 18 months ago and had expected to stay in jail at least another six months under the administrative detention system that Israel uses to hold prisoners without sentencing them.

“I still don’t know why I was arrested,” says Ghanem, unlike some other prisoners who readily admit to having smuggled weapons or to being members of a militant organisation.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that in the next phase he will secure the freedom of more significant Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

A crucial element in the next phase will be the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. The Israeli government has been criticised strongly for failing to get any information on him in this deal.

Nasrallah had to agree to let one Hezbollah prisoner remain in Israel; the Israeli government will not release Samir Kantar unless it receives information on Arad. Kantar was involved in an attack in Israel in 1979 in which four people were killed.

Many PA leaders and some Israeli commentators are now casting doubt on the likelihood of a second phase.

Hezbollah has been facing increasing questions about its viability as a militant organisation after Israel’s withdrawal and after the events of 9/11. Many Lebanese are wary of the organisation dragging the country into another war.. Its two main foreign sponsors, Syria and Iran, do not want to antagonise the United States at this sensitive moment.

If ever the prisoners issue between Hezbollah and Israel is settled it will leave one outstanding point of contention; the Shaba Farms area at the foot of the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Israel and the United Nations say it is Syrian territory, but Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria say it is Lebanese.

Hezbollah has vowed to “liberate” this last bit of Lebanese soil. Should Israel and Hezbollah solve this problem, the pressure on the guerrilla organisation to disarm and turn itself into a strictly political group will mount even more.. But that prospect seems distant at the moment.