UN Secretary-General António Guterres visiting a shelter hosting displaced people from areas affected by the ongoing conflict in the Dekwaneh area of Beirut during his visit to Lebanon in March 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Haider Fahs

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 9 2026 (IPS)

On April 8, Israeli military forces launched the deadliest series of airstrikes on Lebanon since hostilities escalated in early March, resulting in the deaths of at least 254 civilians. This latest incident threatens to further complicate humanitarian efforts in Lebanon that are already under immense pressure.

This latest escalation occurred just as a two-week ceasefire deal between the United States and Iran was announced the night prior on April 7, more than a month after the United States, Iran and Israel began engaging in military strikes against each other, which also led to Arab States in the Gulf getting caught in the crossfire. The parties targeted military bases and civilian infrastructure in Iran and Gulf states allied with the United States. Israeli and Lebanese armed forces exchanged fire across borders, which has resulted in a new wave of civilian casualties and mass displacement in a continuation of the conflict between the Israeli military and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israeli strikes on Lebanon have resulted in nearly 1,530 deaths since March 2, including more than 100 women and 130 children.

While the temporary ceasefire was welcomed, including by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, questions were raised about where it extended, even among major players in the negotiation process. Iran and Pakistan, a mediator in the peace negotiations, have stated that the deal includes Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israeli leadership initially claimed that the ceasefire did not include Lebanon and that the airstrikes specifically targeted Hezbollah-owned strongholds. Wednesday’s airstrikes targeted residential and commercial neighborhoods in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

Humanitarian actors expressed concern and alarm over the airstrikes and urged the parties involved to consider the safety and dignity of civilians in Lebanon.  The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was “outraged” by the “devastating death and destruction” in Lebanon.

Displaced families at a makeshift shelter in a parking lot in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Credit: WFP Arete/Ali Yunes

Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar welcomed the news of a ceasefire but said in a statement that until there was an end to the hostilities across the entire region, “no one will feel truly safe.”

“This pause must become a stepping stone for wider peace,” Behar said.

The war in Iran and the Middle East has put greater strain on humanitarian aid workers on the ground, including UN agencies.

Imran Riza, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, explained that even before the latest escalation, the UN and its partners were aiming to support 1.5 million vulnerable people and that they have been forced to scale up their response with fewer resources than in previous years.

Less than a third of the emergency flash appeal for USD 308 million has been funded as of now. Yet despite these challenges, the UN and its partners have been able to provide more than four million meals and distribute more than 130,000 blankets and 105,000 mattresses to shelters. Multi-purpose cash assistance has also been provided to households as well.

Briefing reporters virtually from Beirut mere hours after the airstrikes, Riza commented on how civilians reacted to the news of a ceasefire.

“This morning, many people across Lebanon were cautiously optimistic about returning home—some even began to move. The events of the past hours, however, are likely to have triggered further displacement,” said Riza.

Also briefing from Lebanon was UNFPA Arab Regional Director Laila Baker, who described how the city of Beirut slowed to a standstill in the wake of the airstrikes. Cars are lining the streets while tents spread across the city as families seek shelter, she noted. She warned that the initial sense of unity that the Lebanese government and its partners had been working towards was now under threat due to the month-long “devastating aggression” from military forces.

“The risk is not only humanitarian collapse but also renewed fragmentation at a time when unity is most needed,” said Baker.

Displacement is already at an “unprecedented scale”, Riza said, as more than 1.1 million people—or one in five people in Lebanon—are internally displaced. More than 138,000 civilians, of which a third are children, are sheltering in 678 collective sites. The majority are dispersed across informal settings and host communities, which Riza noted leaves them with limited access to basic services. Overcrowding in shelters and limited sanitation services will likely lead to increased health risks.

The health system has also been overwhelmed and “under severe pressure.” Many facilities have been forced to close or have been damaged. Riza reported at least 106 attacks on healthcare, which have resulted in more than 50 deaths and 158 injuries among health workers.

Women and children are particularly vulnerable in this situation. Baker estimates that at least 620,000 women and girls have experienced displacement. Among them are at least 13,500 pregnant women who have been cut from essential maternal health services. At least 200 pregnant women will be delivering babies without essential support from midwives or nurses or with access to maternal and neonatal healthcare.

More than 52 primary healthcare facilities are no longer facilities and are forced to close. Among the six hospitals forced to close, five of them had maternity wards.

“These are not just statistics. They are grave violations of international humanitarian law – direct assaults on life, health, and dignity,” said Baker. “This is not only a humanitarian crisis – it is a crisis of humanity. It is a crisis of trust in the international system and in the principles meant to protect civilians.”

The UN and other humanitarian agencies urge for a permanent end to the fighting and call for international law to be upheld by all parties. Under the ceasefire agreement, all parties are urged to pursue diplomatic dialogue and work toward a long-term solution to the war.

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Samira, a mother of five, was forced to leave her home following bombardment and is now living with her children in the streets of Martyrs Square in Beirut. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 2024 (IPS)

A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah comes into effect early on Wednesday morning (November 27). It is hoped that this will mark an end to a 13-month-long period of hostilities between the two parties in Lebanon.

News of the ceasefire came from United States President Joe Biden, who made a televised announcement on Tuesday afternoon that an agreement had been reached between the Israeli and Lebanese governments. Biden remarked that the ceasefire was expected to be a “permanent cessation of hostilities” from both sides of the conflict.

“Civilians on both sides will soon be able to safely return to their communities and begin to rebuild their homes, their schools, their farms, their businesses, and their very lives,” said Biden. “We are determined that this conflict will not just be another cycle of violence.”

Under the ceasefire agreements, which will initially last for sixty days, fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border will come to an end, and Israeli troops are expected to gradually withdraw from south Lebanon. Hezbollah is expected to pull back north of the Litani river, ending their presence in southern Lebanon.

The implementation of this ceasefire will be overseen by the United States, France, and the United Nations through the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The UN has made repeated calls for the full implementation of resolution 1701 (2006), which calls for an end to the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and the need for Lebanon to exert government control.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the ceasefire deal, noting that it would be an “essential step towards restoring calm and stability in Lebanon,” while also warning that Israel must commit to the agreement and abide by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared in a video statement shortly before the ceasefire deal was reached that Israel would retaliate if Hezbollah made any moves that violated the terms of the ceasefire.

Senior leaders in the UN, including Secretary-General António Guterres, welcomed the ceasefire announcement. In an official statement from his office, Guterres urges the parties to “fully respect and swiftly implement all of their commitments made under this agreement.”

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, also released a statement where she welcomed the ceasefire agreement. She went on to remark that this would signify the start of a critical process, “anchored in the full implementation” of the Security Council resolution 1701 (2006), to go forward in restoring the safety and security of civilians on both sides of the Blue Line.

“Considerable work lies ahead to ensure that the agreement endures. Nothing less than the full and unwavering commitment of both parties is required,” Hennis-Plasschaert said. “It is clear that the status quo of implementing only select provisions of Resolution 1701 (2006) while paying lip service to others will not suffice. Neither side can afford another period of disingenuous implementation under the guise of ostensible calm.”

The ceasefire agreement comes after a year-long period of escalating tensions and fighting, which began shortly after the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Hostilities ramped up in September of this year when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) made repeated attacks on southern Lebanon. The fallout of the humanitarian situation has seen the displacement of over 900,000 civilians since October 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Over 3823 civilian casualties have been confirmed within Lebanon and Israel. Of those casualties, at least 1356 civilians have been killed since October 8, 2023.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said that the work must begin to sustain this peace and that children and families, including those displaced and in host communities, need to be ensured a safe return. Humanitarian organizations need to be “granted safe, timely, and unimpeded access to deliver lifesaving aid and services to all affected areas.”

“We call on all parties to uphold their commitments, respect international law, and work with the international community to sustain peace and ensure a brighter future for children,” said Russell. “Children deserve stability, hope, and a chance to rebuild their futures. UNICEF will continue to stand with them every step of the way.”

Even as a ceasefire seemed imminent, on Tuesday Israeli warplanes bombarded Beirut’s southern neighborhoods. These attacks have resulted in the deaths of 24 civilians. Al Jazeera reported that even amidst Biden’s announcement, the war in Lebanon was “still very much going.”

In recent months, UNIFIL forces have been caught in the crossfires and have faced challenges in fulfilling their mandate. Most recently, four Italian peacekeepers were injured when rockets hit the headquarters in Shama, though they did not sustain life-threatening injuries.

On this incident, UNIFIL stated: “The deliberate or accidental targeting of peacekeepers serving in south Lebanon must cease immediately to ensure their safety and uphold international law.” Earlier this month, UNIFIL released a statement detailing the actions the IDF took against the peacekeepers, including the “deliberate and direct destruction” of UNIFIL property.

During his address on Tuesday, Biden acknowledged Gaza and the lack of a ceasefire for the ongoing war. “Just as the people of Lebanon deserve a future of security and prosperity, so do the people of Gaza,” Biden said. “They too deserve an end to the fighting and the displacement. The people of Gaza have been through hell. Their world is absolutely shattered. Far too many civilians in Gaza have suffered far too much.”

Biden pledged that the United States would make another push to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, along with Türkiye, Egypt, Qatar, and Israel; one that would see an end to the violence and the release of all hostages. The United States has vetoed Security Council resolutions that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza on four separate occasions, most recently this November.

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Gazans celebrate "victory" over Israel following last year’s war. Now, desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas, which it describes as a “terror organisation”. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

Israel’s deadly game of divide and conquer against its enemies could be coming home to roost with a vengeance, especially as the Islamic State (ISIS) grows in strength in neighbouring countries and moves closer to Israel’s borders.

Desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas through U.N., European and Qatar intermediaries despite vowing to never negotiate with Hamas which it describes as a “terror organisation”.

Israel helped promote the establishment of Hamas in the late 1980s in a bid to thwart the popularity of the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which was then also regarded as a “terrorist organisation” and the most powerful and popular Palestinian political movement.

But Israel’s indirect support of ISIS-affiliated Syrian opposition groups could be an even bigger gamble.“Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel”

As the Omar Brigades calculated, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) responded by attacking Hamas military targets in the coastal territory because they hold the Gaza leadership responsible for any attacks on Israel.

“Israelis, we learn, are essentially being used as pawns in a deadly game of chicken between Hamas and these Salafist rivals,” said Alison Kaplan Sommer, a columnist with the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“The Salafists refuse to abide by the informal truce that has kept the tense quiet between Hamas and Israel since the Gaza war – and Hamas is not religious and fundamentalist enough for their taste.

“Firing rockets into Israel serves a dual purpose for them. It makes a statement that they are true jihadists, unlike the Hamas sell-outs who abide by truces – and it also happens to be an excellent way for them to indirectly strike back at their Hamas oppressors. Why, after all, go to the trouble of attacking Hamas when you can so easily get Israel to do it for you?”

Israel’s dual policy of covertly supporting ISIS-affiliated Jihadists in Syria in a bid to weaken Israel’s arch-enemy Syria has taken several forms.

U.N. observers in the Golan Heights have released reports detailing cooperation between Israel and Syrian opposition figures including regular contacts between IDF soldiers and Syrian rebels.

Israel is also regularly admitting wounded Syrian opposition fighters to Israeli hospitals and it is not based on humanitarian considerations.

Israel finally responded by saying the wounded were civilians reaching the border by their own accords but later conceded it was coordinating with armed opposition groups.

“Israel initially had maintained that it was treating only civilians. However, reports claimed that members of Israel’s Druze minority protested the hospitalisation of wounded Syrian fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front in Israel,” reported the Global Research Centre for Research on Globalisation.

The last report distributed to U.N. Security Council members in December described two U.N. representatives witnessing Israeli soldiers opening a border gate and letting two unwounded people exit Israel into the Golan Heights.

The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations also complained of widespread cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels, not only for treatment of the wounded but also other aid.

U.N. observers remarked in a report distributed last year that they identified IDF soldiers on the Israeli side handing over two boxes to armed Syrian opposition members on the Syrian side.

Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel.

When the United States began operations against ISIS, a senior Israeli high command seemed reluctant to give any support and called the move a mistake.

It was easier to deal with terrorism in its early stages [ISIS] than to face an Iranian threat and the Hezbollah, he said. “I believe the West intervened too early and not necessarily in the right direction,” he told Haaretz anonymously.

“Israel is pursuing a policy that in the long term will ultimately be self-defeating. In a bid to divide Syria, Israel is supporting ISIS but this will backfire in that ISIS is growing in strength and destroying societies in its path and it will eventually turn its sights on Israel,” Professor Samir Awad from Birzeit University, near Ramallah, told IPS.

It is possible that ISIS could topple future regimes that Israel is hoping for support from, including Syrian rebels who hinted at a peace with Israel once Syrian President Bashar Assad is toppled.

Jacky Hugi, the Arab affairs analyst for Israeli army radio Galie-Zahal who confirmed on the Al Monitor website that Israel was taking the Syrian rebels side in the fighting, had a warning.

“We should stop with the illusions – the day ‘after Assad’ won’t bring about a secular liberal ruling alternative. The extremist organisations are the most dominant factions in Syria nowadays,” said Hugi. “Any void left in Syria will be seized by them, not the moderate rebels.”

According to political analyst Benedetta Berti of Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies, Israel is closely monitoring its northern front, specifically the Golan Heights.

“Israel believes that there is no current threat from the rebels as they are too busy with the Syrian war,” Berti told IPS. “However, if we extend the time frame, then the situation could change when Syrian rebels may want to attack Israel from the northern borders.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

The Qassem family from Beit Hanoun in Gaza, civilians whose home was targeted by Israeli air strikes during the 2007/2008 Israel-Gaza war, leaving them homeless. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA, Mar 30 2015 (IPS)

The U.N. investigation into Israel’s devastating military campaign against Gaza, from July to August 2014, has been delayed until June and in the interim Israel and the Palestinians are waging a media war to win the moral narrative as to why so many Palestinian civilians were killed during the bloody conflict.

The postponement of the investigation was announced at the Mar. 23 U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva.

Israel says it went out of its way to avoid civilian casualties but its critics, including Israeli human rights organisations, have questioned this claim.

“The ferocity of destruction and high proportion of civilian lives lost in Gaza cast serious doubts over Israel’s adherence to international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precautions in attack,” Makarim Wibisono, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, told the UNHCR meeting.“The ferocity of destruction and high proportion of civilian lives lost in Gaza cast serious doubts over Israel's adherence to international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precautions in attack" – Makarim Wibisono, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967

During the war over 2,300 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them civilians including more than 500 children, and over 10,000 injured. On the Israeli side, six civilians and 67 soldiers were killed.

Many of the Palestinian civilians killed died after Israel targeted residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians inside as the buildings collapsed on them.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem released a report in January titled Black Flag: The Legal and Moral Implications of the Policy of Attacking Residential Buildings in the Gaza Strip, Summer 2014.

The report focuses on the policy that the Israeli military implemented of strikes on homes, attempting to explain if and how “policymakers’ claims about Israel’s commitment to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) provisions comport with the policy of attacking residential buildings.”

Damage to residential buildings was enormous, with 18,000 homes either destroyed or badly damaged. More than 100,000 Palestinians were left homeless and with little to no reconstruction taking place, most of these Gazans remain displaced.

B’Tselem investigated 70 incidents involving attacks on civilian homes which killed 606 Palestinians, half of whom were women, 93 babies and children under the age of 5, 129 children aged 5 to 14, 42 teenagers and 37 elderly Palestinians.

B’Tselem said that a number of the cases it examined indicated that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) actions contravened IHL.

“A military objective, the only legitimate target for attack by parties to hostilities, is defined as one that makes an effective contribution to military action whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage to the attacking side,” said the rights group.

“Over the course of the fighting that took place in the summer, both government officials and top military commanders refrained from spelling out the specific objective of most of the attacks.

“Instead, the IDF spokesperson provided only general figures on the number of strikes carried out each day against what the spokesperson defined as ‘terror sites’.”

The rights group added that the IDF also appeared to change its definition as the war progressed, with many of the residential homes targeted allegedly belonging to Hamas operatives.

Kamal Qassem, 43, his wife Iman, and their five children aged 6 to 12, from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza were forced to flee to an emergency U.N. shelter after their house was destroyed by Israeli bombs, which targeted their homes over two nights during the war.

“My wife Iman was injured during the bombing and spent two nights in hospital. She also requires regular hospital treatment for kidney problems,” Qassem told IPS

“My daughter Shadha, 9, was severely traumatised during the aerial assault and now suffers from epilepsy and soils her sheets at night. None of us were fighters.”

However, Israel’s newly appointed military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s contribution to the Dahiya Doctrine, established during the second Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, could provide some answers to the immense destruction wrought on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

The Dahiya Doctrine is a military strategy that envisages the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of hostile regimes, and endorses the employment of disproportionate force to secure that end.

The doctrine is named after a southern suburb in Beirut with large apartment buildings which were flattened by the IDF during the 2006 war.

“What happened in the Dahiva quarter of Beurut in 2006 would happen in every village from which shots were fired in the direction of Israel,” stated Eizenkot.

“We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction.”

Former Rapporteur to the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, wrote that under the doctrine, “the civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism.”

Members of the U.N. fact-finding mission into the 2007/2008 Israel-Gaza war suggested that the Dahiya Doctrine had been employed while other analysts added it was also behind Israel’s 2014 military campaign.

Meanwhile, Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire on Israeli civilian towns, preceding last year’s war and one of the main reasons for Israel launching its assault on Gaza, could resume again should the siege on Gaza continue with no political breakthrough on the horizon – an ominous sign for Gaza’s civilians.

Edited by Phil Harris    

President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Jun. 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a 'new beginning between the United States and Muslims', declaring that 'this cycle of suspicion and discord must end'. Credit: White House photo

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 2015 (IPS)

This year, Arab political Islam will be greatly influenced by U.S. regional policy, as it has been since the Obama administration came into office six years ago. Indeed, as the U.S. standing in the region rose with Obama’s presidency beginning in January 2009, so did the fortunes of Arab political Islam.

But when Arab autocrats perceived U.S. regional policy to have floundered and Washington’s leverage to have diminished, they proceeded to repress domestic Islamic political parties with impunity, American protestations notwithstanding.Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

This policy linkage, expected to prevail in the coming year, will not bode well for political Islam. Like last year, the U.S. will in 2015 pay more attention to securing Arab autocrats’ support in the fight against Islamic State forces than to the mistreatment of mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which will have severe consequences in the long run.

Since the middle of 2013, the Obama administration’s focus on the tactical need to woo dictators in the fight against terrorist groups has trumped its commitment to the engagement objective. America’s growing support for Arab dictators meant that Arab political Islam would be sacrificed.

For example, Washington seems oblivious to the thousands of mainstream Islamists and other opposition activists languishing in Egyptian jails.

What is political Islam?

Several assumptions underpin this judgment. First, “political Islam” applies to mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which have rejected violence and made a strategic shift toward participatory and coalition politics through free elections.

Arab political Islam generally includes the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Nahda in Tunisia, and al-Wefaq in Bahrain.

The term “political Islam” does not include radical and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq, and Syria, or armed opposition groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Nor does it apply to terrorist groups in Africa such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and others.

Unfortunately, in the past three years, many policy makers in the West, and curiously in several Arab countries, have equated mainstream political Islam with radical and terrorist groups. This erroneous and self-serving linkage has provided Washington with a fig leaf to justify its cozy relations with Arab autocrats and tolerance of their bloody repression of their citizens.

Repression breeds radicalism

It has also given these autocrats an excuse to suppress their Islamic parties and exclude them from the political process. In a press interview late last month, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcefully denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and pledged the movement would not enter the Egyptian parliament.

Egypt’s recent terrorism laws, which Sisi and other Arab autocrats have approved, provide them with a pseudo-legal cover to silence the opposition, including mainstream political Islam.

They have used the expansive and vague definitions of terrorism included in these decrees to incarcerate any person or group that is “harmful to national unity.” Any criticism of the regime or the ruler is now viewed as a “terrorist” act, punishable by lengthy imprisonment.

The Dec. 28 arrest of the Bahraini Sheikh Ali Salman, Secretary General of al-Wefaq, is yet another example of draconian measures against peaceful mainstream opposition leaders and parties in the region. Regime repression of these groups is expected to prevail in 2015.

Second, whereas terrorist organisations are a threat to the region and to Western countries, including mainstream political Islam in the governance of their countries in the long run is good for domestic stability and regional security. It also serves the interests of Western powers in the region.

Recent history tells U.S. that exclusion and repression often lead to radicalisation.  Some youth in these parties have given up on participatory politics in favour of confrontational politics and violence. This phenomenon is expected to increase in 2015, as suppression of political Islam becomes more pervasive and institutionalised.

Third, the serious mistakes the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda made in their first time ever as governing parties should not be surprising since they lacked the experience of governance. Such poor performance, however, is not unique to them.  Nor should it be used as an excuse to depose them illegally and to void the democratic process, as the Sisi-led military coup did in Egypt in 2013.

Although Islamic political parties tend to win the first election after the toppling of dictators, the litmus test of their popular support lies in succeeding elections. The recent post-Arab Spring election in Tunisia is a case in point.

When Arab citizens are provided with the opportunity to participate in fair and free elections, they are capable of electing the party that best serves their interests, regardless of whether the party is Islamic or secular.

Had Field Marshall Sisi in 2013 allowed the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohammed Morsi to stay in power until the following election, they would have been voted out, according to public opinion polls at the time.

But Sisi and his military junta were not truly committed to a genuine democratic transition in Egypt. Now, according to Human Rights Watch reports, the current state of human rights in Egypt is much worse than it was under former President Hosni Mubarak.

The U.S. and Political Islam

Upon taking office, President Obama understood that disagreements between the United States and the Muslim world, especially political Islam, were driven by specific policies, not values of good governance. A key factor driving these disagreements was the widely held Muslim perception that America’s war on terror was a war on Islam.

The Obama administration also realised that while a very small percentage of Muslims engaged in violence and terrorism, the United States must find ways to engage the other 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. That drove President Obama early on in his administration to grant media interviews to Arab broadcasters and give his historic Cairo speech in June 2009.

However, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, and as drone strikes caused more civilian casualties in Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, many Muslims became more sceptical of Washington’s commitment to sincere engagement with the Muslim world.

The Arab uprisings beginning in 2011 known as the Arab Spring and the toppling of dictators prompted the United States to support calls for freedom, political reform, dignity, and democracy.

Washington announced it would work with Islamic political parties, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda, as long as these parties were committed to peaceful change and to the principles of pluralism, elections, and democracy.

That unprecedented opening boosted the fortunes of Arab political Islam and inclusive politics in the Arab world. American rapprochement with political Islam, however, did not last beyond two years.

The way forward

Much as one might disagree with Islamic political ideology, it’s the height of folly to think that long-term domestic stability and economic security in Egypt, Bahrain, Palestine, or Lebanon could be achieved without including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Wefaq, Hamas, and Hezbollah in governance.

Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

The Arab countries that witnessed the fall of dictators, especially Egypt, will with Washington’s acquiescence revert back to repression and autocracy, as if the Arab Spring never happened.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Poster in Lebanon's Beqaa of Hezbollah 'shaheed' killed in Syrian conflict. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Aug 5 2014 (IPS)

Concerns about supporting a national army collaborating with a ‘terrorist organisation’ in Lebanon have in recent times been superseded by threats inherent in growing regional conflict.

The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

When traveling through the eastern Beqaa Valley, posters of Hezbollah ‘shaheed’ (‘martyrs’) of the Syrian conflict vie for space with those of popular Shia imams and the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

In one seen by this IPS correspondent on a recent trip to the area, Nasrallah’s face and that of another Shia political leader flank that of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, with the writing ‘’this is what heroes are’’.

On July 26, the ‘Party of God’ announced in a statement that Nasrallah’s nephew, Hamzah Yassin, had been killed performing his ‘’jihadist duty defending holy sites’’, implying he had lost his life fighting in Syria.

The United States and other nations’ support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has long served as a bulwark against excessive volatility in the small but confessionally-diverse Middle Eastern country. At the same time, care has been taken to prevent it from becoming so strong as to pose a threat to its southern neighbour and strong U.S. ally – Israel.

Hezbollah, sworn enemy of the ‘Zionist entity’ (as it refers to Israel), continues to claim that its more powerful arsenal is for its struggle against Israel, even as ever more of its means and men are directed at fighting rebel groups in Syria.

At the same time, it seems to be gaining ever more influence in Lebanon’s policies and military.

Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told IPS that Hezbollah ‘‘is believed to have a lot of influence on the military intelligence [directorate] in particular –which would make sense as it is the most sensitive agency and the agency that would, potentially, monitor Hezbollah.’’

On the fact that Hezbollah moves fighters and weapons across the border, Sayigh said that ‘’Hezbollah has a lot of de facto power; it acts autonomously on these issues. They must have some sort of agreement that allows them to bring back their dead and wounded, for example,’’ or ‘’it may be that they move them through corridors no one, including the army, is allowed to enter.’’

Sayigh noted that compared with the LAF, Hezbollah ‘’has heavier, longer-range missiles.’’

However, the LAF will benefit, he said, ‘’if the current development programme goes through’’, because ‘’significant quantities of more up-to-date weaponry, transport systems and so on’’ will be available to them.

In January, Saudi Arabia pledged 3 billion dollars in aid and the International Support Group for Lebanon promised at a Rome conference in June to provide more training, among other support.

However, Hezbollah’s key strategic advantage remains ‘’its superior organisation, intelligence, battlefield management and the close relationship between its political and military leaders,’’ which is what the LAF lacks, according to Sayigh. ‘’It is also thought to have a lot of say in the choice, recruitment and promotion of Shia officers in the army.’’

In relation to border control and weapons smuggling in certain areas by Syrian rebel groups, he noted that ‘’once Hezbollah accepted the deployment of the police in its own strongholds in southern Beirut, it became possible for the army to deploy more extensively along the northern and eastern border, and be somewhat more effective.’’

The effectiveness of the LAF is further weakened by such problems as the soldier-to-general ratio, which according to a paper published earlier this year, stands at just under one general for every 100 soldiers, compared with the U.S. army, which in October 2013 had one general for 1,357 soldiers.

The more efficiently organised non-state actor has instead been called a ‘’jihadist’’ organisation, and describes what its fighters dying in the conflict in Syria are doing as their ‘’jihadist duty’’.

Asked to comment on whether Hezbollah is comparable to Sunni jihadist organisations, Sayigh said that ‘’it is an Islamist organisation’’ but ‘’it has accepted that it cannot construct an Islamic state in Lebanon.’’

Sayigh noted that ‘’to the extent that they are mobilising Shia fighters from Iran or from Iraq to go fight in Syria, we do witness a growing form of Shia jihadism, the idea that people are going to fight in defence of the Shia doctrine, to protect Shia shrines. There is a growing sense of, if you like, Shia jihadism,’’ but ‘’Hezbollah stands out for working within a much more careful political and military framework.’’

He said, however, that ‘’they are increasingly recruiting from outside of their own ranks,’’ showing a ‘’higher level of mobilisation among the Shia community. Whether or not these people get paid is unclear.’’

Mustafa Allouch, head of the Tripoli branch of the Future Party and former MP for the city, said instead that ‘’a lot of money is being paid.’’

‘’It is said that Hezbollah provides 20,000 dollars for a ‘martyr’ buried openly, and 100,000 if the parents agree to bury him without a funeral,’’ he said.

In relation to the United States and its financial support for Lebanon overall, Sayigh said ‘’there seems to have been a strategic decision to continue to cooperate with the Lebanese government, the Lebanese army, and other agencies even when Hezbollah is in a coalition government.’’

‘’The country is fragile and in deep economic trouble,’’ Sayigh pointed out, ‘’and the U.S. decision has been to ‘’avoid overburdening the Lebanese system to breaking point.’’

However, a local employee of a U.N. agency expressed concerns to IPS – on condition of anonymity – that de facto authorisation in many areas comes from Hezbollah and not the government itself.

Nevertheless, the army can point to some achievements in the past few months. In December 2013, LAF was given a mandate to keep order in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli amid rapidly escalating violence. In a visit to the city in July by IPS, overall calm prevailed and many of the sandbags, tanks and troops deployed earlier in the year were nowhere to be seen.

When asked what the major factor was that led to the calm, Allouch said that ‘’when you have a political agreement to withdraw all gang leaders,’’ citing arrest warrants issued for Alawite community leaders accused of crimes, which led to their escaping across the border to Syria, ‘’you can achieve things. The military is simply imposing what the political agreement was.’’

He noted that, although Hezbollah could be compared in many ways to a ‘’gang’’, there could be no talk of the Lebanese army ‘’confronting Hezbollah militarily’’.

‘’It would end in civil war. And the Lebanese army itself would not hold, given the situation in the region. Hezbollah is not a local issue, it is a regional one.’’

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Syrian refugee schoolchildren being taught in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Aug 1 2014 (IPS)

The Shatila Palestinian camp has no library, nor does adjacent Sabra or Ain El-Hilweh in the south. And, after recent statements by Lebanon’s foreign minister, some fear that the thousands of Syrian refugee children within them will soon have even slimmer chances of learning to read and write.

The United Nations stated earlier last month that Syrian refugees would total over one-third of Lebanon’s population by the end of 2014, and that at least 300,000 refugee children were not enrolled in school.

In early July, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said that no assistance should be given to Syrian refugees as “all this aid – be it food, shelter or health care – encourages Syrian refugees to stay in Lebanon, while what we want is to encourage their speedy exit.”“The overcrowded breezeblock camps are filled with school-age children from across the [Lebanese-Syrian] border, suffering from psychosocial disorders, nutritional problems and limited possibilities for enrolling in Lebanese educational institutes

During his time as energy minister in the previous government, Bassil had said that Syrians should be seen as a “threat to the safety, economy and identity of the country.”

Tangled electrical wires droop dangerously low and posters of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad are prominent alongside those of Palestinian ‘resistance’ leaders and ‘martyrs’ in the Lebanese capital’s camps, where refugees are said to have initially been welcomed.

Lebanon’s security forces do not enter the 12 officially registered Palestinian camps in the country despite withdrawal from a 1969 agreement granting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) control over them.

Several Syrians told IPS they feel more comfortable there than they would in areas controlled by Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian regime and whose political wing is part of the government.

With 10,000-20,000 having arrived since the conflict began, refugees from Syria now outnumber the original inhabitants of Beirut’s Shatila camp, set up in 1949 to shelter stateless Palestinians.

The overcrowded breezeblock camps are filled with school-age children from across the border, suffering from psychosocial disorders, nutritional problems and limited possibilities for enrolling in Lebanese educational institutes.

There than the capacity of the public school system capacity, the most obvious hurdle for refugee children, says Fadi Hallisso, co-founder and general manager of the Syrian-run NGO Basmeh & Zeitooneh which works in the camp, is that Syrian public schools teach in Arabic while their Lebanese counterparts use either French or English.

Destitute or missing parents leading to the need to work or beg to survive, transport costs and war-induced trauma are other factors at play, and the problem is compounded by nutritional deficiencies.

A UNICEF study found earlier this year that severe acute malnutrition had doubled in certain parts of the country between 2012 and 2013. It noted that almost 2,000 children under the age of five were at risk of dying if they did not receive immediate treatment, while even milder states of malnutrition stunt children’s physical and mental growth.

Basmeh & Zeitooneh has set up a school in Shatila for about 300 students using the Lebanese curriculum taught by Syrians and Palestinians, who are paid between 400 and 700 dollars a month, according to Hallisso, “which no Lebanese teacher would be willing to work for.”

The facilities have been newly renovated and are in a building with a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic and dispensary on the second floor.

The organisation is trying to get funding for a small library where the children can come, read, consult reference works, use computers and find a space open to them with generator-powered electricity.

Maria Minkara, who works with Hallisso, told IPS that it would be open to both Palestinian and Syrian schoolchildren and that not a single library exists in the entire area housing tens of thousands of inhabitants.

Many of the children, she noted, live in dark, unhealthy environments, cut off from the power grid with no physical space in which to study. A walk through the crowded camps makes this obvious.

The Joint Christian Committee for Social Service in Lebanon, another organisation working with refugees, recently succeeded in obtaining permission for about 120 Syrian refugee children from its school in the Ain El-Hilweh camp near Sidon to return to Damascus for their 9^th grade and Baccalaureate exams, Executive Director Sylvia Haddad told IPS. Over 83 percent of them passed, she said.

Haddad admitted that several students’ families had refused to allow their children to go back to Syria out of fear of the regime, but said that “’they are regretting that decision very much now.”

Stressing that all politics and religion were kept out of the instruction of refugee children, Haddad said that questions on the curriculum being used by the group were referred to Abu Hassan, a Palestinian inhabitant of the camp who in the manner of militia fighters in the region uses an alias preceded by ‘Abu’ (‘father of’).

Abu Hassan said he had fought in the Palestinian ‘resistance’ in the past but declined to say with which faction, and denied that any pro-regime rhetoric was contained in the textbooks.

Abu Hassan was allowed to accompany the students to Damascus and back, but recent changes in Lebanese law make it harder for Palestinians fleeing Syria to enter Lebanon. Amnesty International published a report last month denouncing the restrictions, which require ‘pre-authorisation’ from the government or a residency permit.

Regulations regarding Syrian refugees also changed at the beginning of June, limiting entry to those coming from areas near the Lebanese border where fighting is under way and stipulating that refugees who cross back into Syria forfeit the right to return.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Syrian mother and child near Ma'arat Al-Numan, rebel-held Syria, in autumn 2013. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Jul 19 2014 (IPS)

Gaunt, haggard Syrian children begging and selling gum have become a fixture in streets of the Lebanese capital; having fled the ongoing conflict, they continue to be stalked by its effects.

Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

By the end of January, almost 40,000 Syrian children had been born as refugees, while the total number of minors who had fled abroad quadrupled to over 1.2 million between March 2013 and March 2014.Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

Lack of proper healthcare, food and clean water has resulted in countless loss of life during the Syrian conflict, now well into its fourth year. These deaths are left out of the daily tallies of ‘war casualties’, even as stunted bodies and emaciated faces peer out of photos from areas under siege.

The case of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp on the outskirts of Damascus momentarily grabbed the international community’s attention earlier this year, when Amnesty International released a report detailing the deaths of nearly 200 people under a government siege. Many other areas have experienced and continue to suffer the same fate, out of the public spotlight.

A Palestinian-Syrian originally from Yarmouk who has escaped abroad told IPS that some of her family are still in Hajar Al-Aswad, an area near Damascus with a population of roughly 600,000 prior to the conflict. She said that those trapped in the area were suffering ‘’as badly if not worse than in Yarmouk’’ and had been subjected to equally brutal starvation tactics. The area has, however, failed to garner similar attention.

The city of Homs, one of the first to rise up against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, was also kept under regime siege for three years until May of this year, when Syrian troops and foreign Hezbollah fighters took control.

With the Syria conflict well into its fourth year, the U.N. Security Council decided for the first time on July 14 to authorize cross-border aid without the Assad government’s approval via four border crossings in neighbouring states. The resolution established a monitoring mechanism for a 180-day period for loading aid convoys in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

The first supplies will include water sanitation tablets and hygiene kits, essential to preventing the water-borne diseases responsible for diarrhoea – which, in turn, produces severe states of malnutrition.

Miram Azar, from UNICEF’s Beirut office, told IPS that  ‘’prior to the Syria crisis, malnutrition was not common in Lebanon or Syria, so UNICEF and other actors have had to educate public health providers on the detection, monitoring and treatment’’ even before beginning to deal with the issue itself.

However, it was already on the rise: ‘’malnutrition was a challenge to Syria even before the conflict’’, said a UNICEF report released this year. ‘’The number of stunted children – those too short for their age and whose brain may not properly develop – rose from 23 to 29 per cent between 2009 and 2011.’’

Malnutrition experienced in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life (from pregnancy to two years old) results in lifelong consequences, including greater susceptibility to illness, obesity, reduced cognitive abilities and lower development potential of the nation they live in.

Azar noted that ‘’malnutrition is a concern due to the deteriorating food security faced by refugees before they left Syria’’ as well as ‘’the increase in food prices during winter.’’

The Syrian economy has been crippled by the conflict and crop production has fallen drastically. Violence has destroyed farms, razed fields and displaced farmers.

The price of basic foodstuffs has become prohibitive in many areas. On a visit to rebel-held areas in the northern Idlib province autumn of 2013, residents told IPS that the cost of staples such as rice and bread had risen by more than ten times their cost prior to the conflict, and in other areas inflation was worse.

Jihad Yazigi , an expert on the Syrian economy, argued in a European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR) policy brief published earlier this year that the war economy, which ‘’both feeds directly off the violence and incentivises continued fighting’’, was becoming ever more entrenched.

Meanwhile, political prisoners who have been released as a result of amnesties tell stories of severe water and food deprivation within jails. Many were detained on the basis of peaceful activities, including exercising their right to freedom of expression and providing humanitarian aid, on the basis of a counterterrorism law adopted by the government in July 2012.

There are no accurate figures available for Syria’s prison population. However, the monitoring group, Violations Documentation Centre, reports that 40,853 people detained since the start of the uprising in March 2011 remain in jail.

Maher Esber, a former political prisoner who was in one of Syria’s most notorious jails between 2006 and 2011 and is now an activist living in the Lebanese capital, told IPS that it was normal for taps to be turned on for only 10 minutes per day for drinking and hygiene purposes in the detention facilities.

Much of the country’s water supply has also been damaged or destroyed over the past years, with knock-on effects on infectious diseases and malnutrition. A major pumping station in Aleppo was damaged on May 10, leaving roughly half what was previously Syria’s most populated city without running water. Relentless regime barrel bombing has made it impossible to fix the mains, and experts have warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe for those still inside the city.

The U.N. decision earlier this month was made subsequent to refusal by the Syrian regime to comply with a February resolution demanding rapid, safe, and unhindered access, and the Syrian regime had warned that it considered non-authorised aid deliveries into rebel-held areas as an attack.

Hezbollah clashes with Syrian rebels on the outskirts of Ersal seem to be widening the divide between residents of the Eastern Bekaa town – increasingly dominated by Syrian rebels, including the radical Nusra Front – and other regions as well as the Lebanese state. 

At the bottom of the rugged Syrian Qalamoun mountain chain lies the predominantly Sunni town of Ersal. The region is known historically as a smuggling route between Syria and Lebanon.

Since the beginning of the Syria revolution, politics have pushed its people away from their Bekaa neighbours, who mostly belong to the Shiite community. Ersal largely sympathises with the Sunni-led uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Bekaa Shiites support the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is currently fighting alongside Syrian regime forces.“Clashes between Hezbollah and Syrian rebels have aggravated tensions between local residents and their neighbours, and every incident is causing a backlash on the village [Ersal]” – deputy mayor of Ersal, Ahmad Fleety

Despite the fall of Qalamoun to Hezbollah and Assad regime troops in March, fighting has resumed in the Syrian region as well as the barren valley and rocky tops of Ersal in Lebanon, where rebels are also present.

“The clout of Syrian insurgents over the town has become an unavoidable reality,” says a Lebanese army officer speaking on condition of anonymity.

This week, seven members of Hezbollah died and 31 others were wounded, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The fighters were killed in an ambush in the hills above Ersal. The rugged area is also used a rocket launch pad by rebels who frequently target Hezbollah villages in Bekaa.

“The Syrian-Lebanese border there is the soft belly of Hezbollah’s stronghold as it overlooks the Bekaa and more importantly the city of Baalbeck, which is the birthplace of the militant organisation,” says Professor Hilal Khashan from the American University of Beirut.

“Rebels, including the Nusra Front, are using Ersal to launch attacks on Hezbollah, which is self-compelled to retake the region, at a very high cost,” he adds.

The military source underlines that an estimated 6,000 Syrian fighters have found refuge in Ersal. Hundreds of opposition militants are believed to be hiding in the hills and caves above the town. Dirt tracks connecting Ersal to the Bekaa mountain tops are also used by residents to ferry aid, gasoline and supplies to insurgents.

Deputy mayor Ahmad Fleety admits that Ersal is paying a high price for backing the Syrian revolution.  “Clashes between Hezbollah and Syrian rebels have aggravated tensions between local residents and their neighbours, and every incident is causing a backlash on the village,” he says.

The official points out that an Ersal resident, Khaled Hujairi, was wounded in nearby Laboueh after the funeral of one of the Hezbollah fighters who died in the recent battles.

However, the divide separating Ersal residents from those residing in surrounding villages dates back to the beginning of the uprising and a spate of tit-for-tat kidnappings between Sunnis and Shiites.

Relations between the two communities took a turn for the worse after four Shiites were killed in June last year near Ersal.  The trend was only exacerbated when the town remained under siege for several weeks early this year, after the village became a transit point from Syria into Lebanon for booby-trapped cars targeting Shiite areas.

Ersal’s grim reality is only compounded by the town’s isolation. A small asphalt road connects it to the rest of Bekaa, and from there onward to the capital Beirut. Syrian planes frequently fly over, firing missiles into the village and the mountain tops above it. An attack this week led to the injury of seven Ersal residents.

These repetitive incidents rarely draw any complaints from Lebanon.

“Ersal is an outlying territory neglected by the government, which can explain the rise of extremism there. If Ersal residents felt they belonged to the Lebanese state, they would not be so supportive of Syrian rebels,” points out Khashan.

In addition, relations with the state have been strained by a series of incidents, the most recent leading last year to clashes between an army patrol and local residents, claiming the lives of two Lebanese armed forces members as well as one suspect who was being pursued.

The presence of over 120,000 Syrian refugees – which exceeds the local population threefold – is further straining relations with the state and other villages. “Ersal people have chosen to support the Syrian revolution, they won’t back down,” says local activist Abu Mohamad Oueid.

The deepening feeling of distrust between old neighbours now turned foes seems to be here to stay, and the fates of Ersal residents to be intertwined with that of Syrian rebels.

With jihadists leading a Sunni uprising against Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are beginning to reverberate across the region, raising fears of contagion in divided Lebanon where a suicide bombing took place on Friday after a period of calm.

The advance on Baghdad of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is threatening a fragile quiet in Lebanon. On Friday, an explosion rocked the mountainous Dahr al-Baydar crossing in the Bekaa region as a suicide bomber blew himself up near an Internal Security Forces checkpoint. The bombing took place shortly after the convoy of General Security Chief Abbas Ibrahim had passed.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that two people were killed and a number of others were wounded in the attack. “The danger resides in the dormant terrorist cells that exist across the country, we have uncovered several plots and security breaches in the last week alone,” said a Lebanese army officer speaking on condition of anonymity.“Weapons held both by Shiite Hezbollah and Palestinian factions are a source of constant threat for Lebanon, which is the scene of a permanent struggle” – Wehbe Katisha, retired Lebanese general and military expert

A document from Israel’s Mossad secret service, published by local newspaper An-Nahar on the day of explosion reported that Islamists with the Al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades planned to assassinate a senior Lebanese security official, possibly General Ibrahim.

The kick-off early this year of a security plan has allowed the arrest of several terrorists who were responsible for a string of bombings targeting Shiite regions, where populations support the Hezbollah militant group.  The organisation is currently heavily involved in Syria where some 5,000 Hezbollah fighters are believed to be spearheading operations alongside troops of President Bachar Assad, according to a source close to the party.

The Syrian uprising has been led largely by Syrian Sunnis waging war against a government headed by the Assad clan, which belongs to the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

While Hezbollah’s control of borders areas in Syria has disrupted supply lines which allowed for the transfer of booby-trapped cars from Syria into Lebanon has damaged the capabilities of terror groups, it has not put a complete end to it, according to experts.

There are still illegal passageways for the transfer of ammunition or explosives, both in the Bekaa and North Lebanon areas,” said Wehbe Katisha, a retired Lebanese general and military expert.

Against this background, new reports are also pointing to possible attacks on Dahieh (Beirut’s southern suburbs and a bastion for Hezbollah), added Katisha. Early this week, members of Hezbollah and the Lebanese army boosted security measures around the area after news that a terrorist group might attack two hospitals in the region.

General Wehbe Katisha stressed that the state’s institution’s weakness combined with the proliferation of Sunni jihadist networks as well as Shiite militias are factors conducive to renewed sectarian violence. “Weapons held both by Shiite Hezbollah and Palestinian factions are a source of constant threat for Lebanon, which is the scene of a permanent struggle,” he pointed out.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have played a major role in the string of bombings that took place last year and early this year.  One of the main networks dismantled by the Lebanese armed forces was headed by Palestinian commander Naim Abbas, a member of the Abdallah Azzam Brigades, an affiliate of the Syrian radical organisation, the Nusra Front.

The organisation has claimed the twin suicide bombing targeting last November of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, staged by a Lebanese and a Palestinian national. “Reports are showing that Palestinian radical groups in refugee camps are getting restless and more active,” said the security source.  The situation in Lebanon’s main Palestinian camp Ain al-Hilweh is precarious amid reports of a growing influx of foreign extremist Sunni militants from Syria and other Lebanese areas.

This opinion is also shared by Katisha who added that Palestinian groups can be easily manipulated by foreign groups while some Syrian refugees in the Bekaa are willing to fight Hezbollah.

In an attempt to shield the country from the Iraqi violence, the Lebanese Army has carried out raids on Syrian refugee camps in Ersal, on Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria. The outskirts of Ersal are now home to a few thousands Syrian rebels who withdrew from Syrian border regions after they were reclaimed by Assad’s forces and Hezbollah. Early this month, three teens were briefly kidnapped and tortured, with local media reports linking the abduction to the Nusra Front.

“Al-Qaeda does not have an official presence in Lebanon but many individuals have adopted its discourse and are taking advantage of the rising Sunni-Shiite rivalry in Lebanon. The events in Iraq, with the surge of Sunnis against the divisive policies of (Shiite prime minister) Nouri Maliki, are finding a strong echo among the country’s marginalized Sunni. There is a feeling that in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, the struggle is the same for Sunnis who are repressed by Iranian proxy groups,” said Lebanese Salafi Sheikh Nabil Rahim.

The messages of al-Qaeda’s affiliates such as ISIS and the Nusra Front are becoming more appealing to Lebanese Sunnis who are angry at Hezbollah’s increasing military clout over Lebanon as well as its involvement in the war against the Sunni majority’s revolution in Syria.

Since 2005, and the killing of the country’s Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, a member of the Sunni community, followed by the toppling in 2011 of the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Lebanese Sunnis are increasingly at odds with Hezbollah. Five members of the militant group are currently being tried in absentia for the killing of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

“The latest development in Iraq will certainly fuel sectarian tensions in the region as well as Lebanon. It is also increasing the popularity of ISIS among Sunnis in certain areas in Lebanon, something we are trying to fight,” explained Sheikh Rahim.

Only days after the surge of ISIS in Iraq, Lebanon has once again been drawn into the circle of regional violence, the gains of ISIS hundreds of kilometres away seemingly emboldening radical groups in the ‘Land of the Cedars’.

The war in Syria has brought back to the forefront the concept of ‘jihad’, with tens of thousands of fighters currently waging what they believe to be a religious war there.

On both sides of the religious divide, Lebanese militants have relied on similar arguments to justify what they perceive as a never-ending war of convictions, which poses great dangers in a region where self-identities are shaped by belief instead of citizenship.

On this cold morning, a cortege of vehicles headed by a car covered in coloured flower arrangements drives through the busy streets of Dahieh – a  bastion of Shiite Hezbollah – surrounded by militants carrying Kalashnikovs.

Every few minutes, a staccato of gunfire is followed by ululations, as men dressed in fatigues wave the yellow banners of the Party of God. “Labayka Ya Hussein”, says one militant, invoking Hussein whose martyrdom is a widely spread symbol among Shiites.Sunni and Shiite religious narratives used in the Syrian war are reminiscent of an enmity over 14 centuries old.

What appears like a wedding procession is in fact the funeral of a Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria.  Surprisingly, the funerals of Shiite Hezbollah fighters bear a striking resemblance to the “martyrs’ weddings” of Sunni jihadists organised in Palestinian camps in Lebanon or Jordan, during which confectionery and juices are generously distributed.

The strong similarities between funeral processions of Sunni and Shiite fighters killed in Syria and staged as celebrations underline the converging views on jihad of the two groups, at odds since the beginning of the Syria war in which Sunnis support the rebellion and Shiites fight alongside the regime of President Bachar Assad, a member of the Alawite community, a Shiite sect.

For both Shiite and Sunni jihadists, the fight in Syria was initially motivated by the desire to protect their fellow coreligionists. “We fight to defend the children and women being slaughtered by the Assad regime,” said Abu Horeira, a Lebanese jihadist from Tripoli who fought in Qussayr. In April 2013, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, relied on a similar analogy, promising to defend the Lebanese Shiite inhabitants of Al-Qusayr: “We will not abandon the Lebanese residents of Al-Qusayr.”

As the battles in Syria increased in intensity, the political discourse of jihadists in Lebanon further polarised, with religious motivations coming to the fore. “Religious arguments are often used to appeal to the masses,” says Shiite cleric Sayed Hani Fahs.

Lebanese sheikhs on both sides of the divide have relied on religious text to provide a rationale for their call for Jihad, which is mentioned over 150 times in the Quran, the sacred book of both Sunnis and Shiites.

“Jihad in Syria is an obligation for all Sunnis,” said Salafi Sheikh Omar Bakri, in a previous interview.  While Hezbollah has not officially called for jihad, fighters such as unit commander Abou Ali have reported that “everyone who goes to fight in Syria has received a taklif sharii (a religious command).”

Militants from the capital Beirut, the Bekaa and Tripoli, both Shiites and Sunnis, have answered the call to fight in Syria. “Early this year, at least 100 ( Sunni) men from North Lebanon were killed in Qalaat al Hosn, in Homs,” said a military source speaking on condition of anonymity. They belonged to Jund al Cham, an al-Qaeda style organisation.

On the other hand, security estimates point to the involvement of over 5,000 Hezbollah fighters in Syria. A source close to the militant organisation believes that at least 500 of its members have been killed in Syria.

“My place is secured in heaven if I die ( in Syria) and my family taken care of,” says Abou Ali, who has been deployed several times in Qussayr, Qalamoun and Damascus.  Abou Ali , like many other fighters from Hezbollah, argues that he is defending his community, his religious beliefs and his sect’s dignity.

Sunni and Shiite religious narratives used in the Syrian war are reminiscent of an enmity over 14 centuries old.  In several speeches, Hezbollah figures have revived fears rooted in the events that led to the Sunni/Muslim schism, invoking the protection of Shiite religious shrines, namely  that of Sayyeda Zeinab, to justify their involvement in Syria. Zeinab was the daughter of Imam Ali, who is revered by Shiites, and Fatima, who was the daughter of prophet Muhammad.

“There is no better satisfaction than dying fighting to protect the religious shrine of Sit Zeynab,” says another Hezbollah fighter on condition of anonymity. This discourse has been reinforced in many Shiite minds by scenes of beheading perpetrated by rebel groups.

In a recent interview with a Free Syria Army fighter on the Lebanese border of the Syrian Qalamoun region, the fighter , a secular man, admitted  that rebels often resorted to this tactic to make “an example of traitors”, regardless of whether they belonged to regime forces or to Hezbollah. For Shiites nonetheless, these beheadings are a stark reminder of the beheading of Hussein, Zeinab’s brother, during the Battle of Karbala.

Religious ideology has served as a magnet for both Shiite and Sunni fighters willing to give up their life for the Syrian “religious” cause.

A recent report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College in London put the number of foreign Sunni jihadists at about 10,000. The same can be said of Shiite fighters fuelling the war in Syria, which has attracted Shiites from Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

According to Michael Knights, an expert from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that was spun off from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), there are between 800 and 2,000 Iraqi Shiites in Syria which, including Hezbollah, would put the number of Shiite fighters at no less than 6,000 militants.

Armageddon ideology used in the Syria conflict has fanned Shiite-Sunni fires in Lebanon as well as across the region. Reducing the conflict there to a battle within Islam, as portrayed by jihadists on one side and by Hezbollah on the other, could portend a greater conflict that would wreak havoc in region where the Muslim divide runs deep, and religious identities prevail over nationalism.

“There is no difference between foreign jihadists and Hezbollah militants fighting in Syria, both  are practising political terrorism,” says Sayed Fahs, who believes the only hope for both communities resides in replacing sectarianism by citizenship.

Bashar Ja'afari (centre), Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the U.N., listening during a Feb. 25 briefing on the humanitarian situation in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2014 (IPS)

An inflow of Russian-made weapons. Political and military support from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Sharp dissension among fractious rebel groups. And the unyielding loyalty of the armed forces.

These are four primary reasons why Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has succeeded in tenaciously holding onto power while battling a mostly Western-inspired insurgency since March 2011, according to Middle Eastern diplomats and military analysts."Send money to refugees, decry the violence, and do nothing but kowtow to the Russians on Syria. This is not a policy." -- Paul Sullivan

“The United States and the Western powers have been virtually out-manoeuvred by Assad,” reckons one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Geneva peace talks ended in abject failure last week and unless there is a dramatic change on the ground, Assad will continue to survive, he predicted.

Dr. Paul Sullivan, professor of economics at the National Defence University (NDU) and adjunct professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, told IPS Assad will go only when his military and intelligence turn on him.

Considering most of the leadership are part of his Alawite sect, this is unlikely at the leadership level, said Sullivan, pointing out that most of the lower-level officers and foot soldiers, however, are Sunnis.

This is where the time-bomb for Assad is ticking, said Sullivan, who is also adjunct senior fellow, Future Global Resource Threats, at the Federation of American Scientists.

He said that weapons, money and help are coming from Iran, Hezbollah and even across the border from Iraq, to the Assad regime.

A resident of Aleppo in the midst of buildings damaged by an airstrike from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

Russian arms exports to Syria are a lot less now than prior to the conflict.

“The opposition movements are split, argumentative and mostly dysfunctional in their attempts to oust Assad,” said Sullivan. “This is more to Assad’s advantage than the arms imports. The opposition are their own worst enemies.”

He said Assad does not need a divide-and-conquer strategy. “The opposition is doing that for him,” he said.

The wide-ranging opposition groups – including the Supreme Military Council, the Free Syrian Army and its splinter group the Syrian Revolutionary Front, the Nusra Front, the Syrian National Coalition, the Islamic Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – are mostly in disarray.

After Assad’s father, Hafez al Assad, took power in 1971, Syria was linked to the then Soviet Union by a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.

Under this treaty, the country’s armed forces were equipped with Russian heavy weapons, including MiG and Sukhoi fighter planes, Mil helicopters, frigates, fast patrol boats, a wide variety of surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers, rocket launchers, howitzers and mortars.

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Centre for International Policy (CIP), told IPS cutting off the flow of arms from Russia could reduce the savagery of Assad’s war effort, saving lives in the process. For that reason alone, it is worth pushing for, he said.

“But given Assad’s accumulated arsenal and dogged determination to cling to power, it may or may not significantly shorten the war,” Hartung added.

Both the United States and the United Nations have sharply criticised the Assad regime for its air attacks on civilians, and specifically, the use of “barrel bombs” in civilian neighbourhoods.

Women walk past destroyed shops in Al Qusayr, Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said early this month he was “deeply concerned” about the continued armed escalation, “most deplorably the ongoing aerial attacks and the use of barrel bombs to brutal, devastating effect in populated areas.”

But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has a different perspective on the attacks: “Everybody’s speaking about barrel bombs, dropped in cities. Sounds pretty horrific.”

He was quoted as saying last week that if civilians are suffering to the scale which is being described, “that of course is a very dramatic thing.”

“But we have to be clear on something: this is not something that’s per se prohibited by international law,” he added, virtually justifying the use of barrel bombs by the Syrians.

Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher in the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS, “As far as I know, the barrel bombs are improvised local production. Not something I would expect Russia to deliver.”

Wezeman said all information indicates Russia has been in the past five years, and still is, the main supplier of arms to the Syrian regime.

He pointed out Russia has opposed a U.N. arms embargo on Syria, and Russian officials have regularly stated about the continued supplies of arms to Syria.

“It is however unclear what Russia has been delivering the past year and why Syria has chosen to use improvised bombs and not standard ones purchased from Russia or may be Iran,” he added.

Sullivan described Syria as “a ruined country”. If Assad falls, he told IPS, there is likely to be no united and organised opposition ready to take his place.

“This could lead to great chaos and more conflict in the country,” he noted.

Syria is, sadly, trapped in the worst of all conflict cycles – when there is no way out, given the way the leaders of the relevant parties act and act with each other, Sullivan said.

He said the United States, the European Union and others have approached this situation in “an invertebrate nature”.

Russia has out-manoeuvred the West in so many ways, but those leaders are so clueless they do not even see it, he said.

“Send money to refugees, decry the violence, and do nothing but kowtow to the Russians on Syria. This is not a policy. It is an embarrassment,” Sullivan declared.

Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands behind the conversation and how deep the ties are between America and Iran.”

Never mind that there are no “ties” between Washington and Tehran, let alone “deep” ones. His article reflected concern among Saudis that the United States might negotiate some wide-ranging settlement of its issues with Iran and that any such deal would automatically be detrimental to Saudi interests.

Such anxiety has surfaced in Riyadh many times over the past two decades, dating to Madeleine Albright’s unsuccessful efforts to reach out to Iran when she was secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s second term. No doubt many prominent Saudis share the journalist’s sentiment, not just in the ruling family but in the Sunni religious establishment.

In their short-sighted view, regional security is a zero-sum game: if it benefits Iran, it must be bad for Saudi Arabia. To this group, as the authors of a major RAND Corp. study noted in 2009, “the prospect of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement (or even near-term coordination on Iraq) would appear to jeopardize the privileged position Riyadh has long enjoyed in Gulf affairs.”

Since that study appeared, Saudi antipathy to Iran has only increased. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, its all-out support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its perceived instigation of civil unrest in Bahrain have exacerbated Saudi anxieties and reinforced the kingdom’s determination to keep Iran isolated and economically constrained.

At the same time, the Saudi perception that the United States abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally, and might do the same to them if regional circumstances changed, has led some Saudis to doubt the long-term reliability of the United States as anchor of the kingdom’s security. Their doubts were not alleviated when panelists at a Gulf security conference in Washington earlier this year projected a reversal of the regional alignment over the coming decade, with Iran emerging as more friendly to the United States and Saudi Arabia less so.

The Saudis have also been peeved about the inability of the United States to deliver on its commitment to a two-state solution that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That diplomatic stalemate has allowed Iran, which refuses to acknowledge Israel’s existence and openly supports Hezbollah, to present itself to the Arab world as the true champion of justice for the Palestinians, as opposed to the Saudis, who have offered a comprehensive plan for peace with Israel.

Furthermore, the Saudis went all-in to try to engineer the ouster of Assad, believing that they were in tune with U.S. policy. Now they may be feeling exposed as the United States and Russia appear to be pursuing a different course.

And it is certainly true that many of Saudi Arabia’s leading officials, including some diplomats in the foreign ministry, harbor a deep loathing for, and suspicion of, all things Shia. A softer U.S. line on Iran would not make those Saudis more comfortable in the bilateral relationship.

Moreover, the Rouhani initiative, assuming it is genuine rather than cosmetic, coincides with a growing realization in Saudi Arabia that the United States is becoming steadily less dependent on Gulf oil. Could the Obama administration’s announced shift of strategic resources to Asia presage a reduction of U.S. commitments in the Gulf? Senior U.S. officials say no: Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few months ago that “You can take it to the bank” that the U.S. will maintain its posture in the Gulf for the foreseeable future.

Thus, recent reports of anxiety in Riyadh about a possible shift in relations between Washington and Tehran were predictable, and may well have some basis in fact.

But there are also Saudis who understand that a better relationship between Washington and Tehran might actually benefit the kingdom. After all, the two countries shared a strategic alignment with the United States before the Iranian revolution.

In that era, Iran was far more powerful than Saudi Arabia militarily and economically, but the Saudis did not perceive it as a strategic threat, partly because it was influenced by the United States and partly because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq provided a protective buffer — a buffer that the United States dismantled with its invasion of Iraq a decade ago.

Even during the past decade, when tensions were high over Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and other issues, the Saudis and Iranians found ways to work cooperatively when it was in the interests of both countries. “Such calculations often take place independently of U.S. pressure or encouragement,” the RAND report noted, adding that in past times of tension with Washington the Saudis have been more flexible, rather than less so, in their regional rivalries.

“With the ‘moderation’ discourse strengthened during the presidency of recently elected Hassan Rouhani, pragmatism will be enhanced in Iran’s regional policy,” the columnist Kayhan Barzegar, an experienced analyst of Gulf affairs, predicted in the online magazine al-Monitor after Rouhani was inaugurated.

“This development will weaken the existing ‘mutual threat’ perception between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is rooted primarily in the policies of both countries in response to regional issues. Such a development will also consequently strengthen relations between the two.

“Iran and Saudi Arabia are not interested in an intensification of sectarian or geostrategic regional rivalries. They are well aware that such rivalries will eventually be instrumentalized and used politically, draining energy from both sides. The result will be increased instability and growth of extremist trends in their backyard. Conflict between the two also provides an opportunity for other rival actors, such as Turkey and Qatar, to play an active role in regional issues at their expense, such as happened with the Syrian crisis, which is not currently welcomed by the Iranians or the Saudis.”

In fact, there are several ways in which a lessening of tensions between Iran and the United States could actually benefit Saudi Arabia. To achieve some form of rapprochement with the United States now, Iran would be required to forgo definitively any attempt to build or acquire nuclear weapons — a development that could hardly be depicted as detrimental to Saudi interests.

The United States would also press Iran to curtail the aggressive policies that have destabilised the region for years. If Iran’s leaders truly want relief from international economic sanctions, they will have to persuade the countries that imposed them that they will be good neighbours to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Would that not assuage some of the security concerns that have prompted Saudi Arabia to spend tens of billions of dollars on new U.S. weapons?

If Iran were to curtail its support for Hezbollah in order to improve relations with Washington and the West, it might forfeit its position as “more Arab than the Arabs” on the issue of Israel, another development that could be to Saudi Arabia’s advantage.

And Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbours such as Qatar might no longer feel the need to hedge their bets by keeping some distance between themselves and Saudi Arabia and maintaining correct relations with Iran, thus facilitating Saudi Arabia’s desire to exert the regional leadership to which it feels entitled.

On a visit to South Asia when she was secretary of state, Albright chided the Pakistanis for opposing a U.S. initiative to expand economic ties with India. The initiative was not aimed at undermining Pakistan, she said, and might actually be helpful if an expanding Indian economy brought greater cross-border trade.

The Pakistanis didn’t buy it, but that did not diminish the validity of her message. It might be useful now for Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry to explain to the Saudis that any deal with Iran will be a long time in the making and will not damage U.S. ties with Riyadh unless the Saudis want it that way.

Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.

The recently restarted talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are the only peaceful political activity amidst ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Arab world.

Neither U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry nor Ambassador Martin Indyk are Pollyannaish about the prospects of a major breakthrough regarding the “final status” issues, which the parties have put on the table.  Because Arabs and Israelis have had a history of failure in negotiating a settlement, these talks will require more than optimism and good will.

To enhance the prospects of success and bolster the U.S. “even-handed” approach, Secretary Kerry should have appointed a distinguished Arab American to partner with Mr. Indyk as a co-emissary to the talks.

Before analysing the “Why Now” question, it is imperative to reiterate a basic truism:  Nothing is mysterious about resolving the “final status” issues or achieving the two-state solution.  Palestinians, Israelis and the U.S. sponsor have a clear idea of the contours of these issues, whether about Jerusalem, borders and land swap, refugees, security, the end of occupation, and national sovereignty.

The question remains:  If they could not agree on these issues in the past, despite U.S. prodding, why are the present talks any different?  Several factors, which now seem to be arrayed in an unprecedented way in the region, could contribute to the success of the present talks.

First: The Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, are pushing for a resolution of the conflict because of a growing fear of radicalism of Arabs and Muslims.  These states believe the festering Palestinian issue and Israeli occupation are a contributing factor to radicalisation and the rise of a new generation of jihadists. In their calculation, resolving the conflict would neutralise it as a magnet for recruiting potential extremists.

Second:  As a regional actor, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is weaker than ever.  Its authority barely covers Ramallah and other towns and cities in Area A and certainly does not extend to Gaza where Hamas is in control. It’s rife with internal divisions.

Despite the PA’s diplomatic efforts at the United Nations, Abbas has been unable to reduce the grip of the occupation on the West Bank or to significantly improve the economy in Palestinian territories. With eroding legitimacy and an anemic economy, Abbas is barely holding on, thanks to the support he receives from Europe and the U.S.

In reality, Abbas knows he cannot cut a deal without Israeli acquiescence. Cognizant of its weak hand, the PA leadership, with Washington’s backing, might be willing to make unprecedented concessions required for a deal with Israel.  He could get some Palestinian support for such an agreement if it promises significant economic improvements to Palestinians’ daily life, and if he could sell the deal as the best arrangement he could get under present circumstances.

Third:  The inclusion of Hamas and its support for any agreement are critical, but Hamas presently is too weak to demand such inclusion.  Its rift with Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah has reduced the organisation’s regional reach and influence.  The military overthrow of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt has deprived Hamas of a major source of regional support.

If the Egyptian military decides to restrict the tunnel economy on the Gaza-Egyptian border, Hamas would be dealt a major blow. Unemployment and poverty would become more dire, and Hamas would be held responsible for the resulting misery.

The conventional wisdom has been that although Hamas might not be strong enough to impose a settlement, it is strong enough to defeat one.  Because of its current weakened position, Hamas might not be able to derail a settlement.

Fourth: Although many in the region and globally are beginning to question the practicality of the two-state solution because of the expanding number of Jewish settlements and settlers in the occupied territories, the argument for a one-state solution and other alternatives have not taken root and have been rejected outright by key players who could effect a settlement.

Fifth: Ongoing debates in Israel about the Jewish nature of the state and the perceived Palestinian demographic threat could be pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a deal with the Palestinian authority.

In this calculus, Israel’s security interests could be served if the PA continues to fight radicalism and keep Hamas at bay while implicitly recognising Israel’s right to pursue potential terrorists beyond its boundaries. Under such a settlement, which Netanyahu would consider a win-win, the PA also would signal its acceptance of the Jewish nature of Israel.

What could go wrong?

Despite the optimism surrounding the talks, the process could be derailed by several “wild cards” and unexpected developments.  These could include a bloody internecine violence among Palestinians; a sustained Israeli military strike against Iran; an Israeli government decision to stop the promised release of Palestinian prisoners and or to build new settlements, which would severely embarrass Abbas; and a serious terrorist strike inside Israel that could be attributed to Hamas or other Palestinian factions.

Furthermore, if Egypt implodes and the Muslim Brotherhood regains power, Hamas would be in a much stronger position to defeat a prospective settlement regardless of the position of Gulf Arab states. If this occurs, Abbas and the PA would be unable to offer the Israelis tangible concessions to make a settlement possible.

U.S., Israeli and Palestinian leaders are acutely aware that if the talks fail, the stalemate could eventually drag their countries into the surrounding conflicts in the region. Their respective national interests are pushing them toward a settlement.  If they cannot achieve the envisioned end result, it would be years before the post-autocracy convulsions could offer another opportunity.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement:  Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain:  Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

Smoke rises from districts in Aleppo, Syria, in December 2012. Credit: Freedom House/CC by 2.0

By Emad Mekay
LOS ALTOS, California, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

Saudi Arabian religious scholars are leading an increasingly vocal chorus of Islamic preachers who are urging Muslims and Arabs to support Syrian rebels against what they say are atrocities at the hands of Iran-backed Shiite forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saudi Al-Shoreym, issued a rare appeal to Muslims to provide help “by all means” to Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in the Syria conflict.

Popular Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Al-Erify used his guest sermon in a central mosque in Cairo, Egypt to appeal to thousands of worshippers to back groups fighting the Assad regime and urged his audience to enlist in jihad.

On Thursday, dozens of Islamic religious scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to study plans to call for an international appeal for jihad in Syria.

On Jun. 4, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed television channel that is usually liberal, hosted conservative leader Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, to urge support for jihad against Hezbollah forces who are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria.

The spike in religious appeals come weeks after the Iran-backed Shiite militias of Hezbollah buffed up its intervention in Syria and forced rebel forces out of the strategically important city of Al-Qusair.

Rebels had held Al-Qusair for months. The city’s fall marked a shift in the balance of power since rebels took up arms in December 2011 and expelled government troops from several cities.

Syrian government-controlled media are reporting that Assad’s forces are advancing towards the rebel stronghold of Homs, while the Iranian news agency Fars said last week that the Syrian army is gaining the upper hand in different parts of Syria.

An internationalised conflict

Calls for jihad by Sunni scholars against Assad, who as an Alawite is a member of a minority branch of Shiite Islam, come as the United States signalled its willingness on Thursday to send arms to rebels in Syria, saying crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against his own people.

During the 10-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that started in 1979, the United States and Saudi Arabia held similar roles, where Washington supplied weapons to Afghan mujahideen fighters and Saudi Arabia helped with funding and by offering similar religious justifications for fighting the Soviet invaders.

Over the past several weeks, Arab media have been dominated by eyewitness testimonies on the ground of an influx of Iran-inspired Shiite fighters form Iraq, Lebanon and Iran into Syria to buttress the Assad regime, reports that highlight the increasing sectarian tension underlying the conflict.

Sunni Muslim scholars blame Iran and Hezbollah for turning the conflict between the Assad dictatorship and his people into a sectarian war.

The rebellion initially started as peaceful pro-democracy protests in the city of Dera’a, in the early months of the Arab Spring that saw the fall of several other dictators. The protests quickly deteriorated into a war that has cost the lives of close to 93,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Shoreym’s Friday sermon was broadcast live on several pan-Arab television channels. The Saudi preacher is widely respected in many Sunni Muslim countries and his sermons and Quran recitals often heard in public places as well as in households.

In his emotional sermon, Shoreym broke into tears as he recalled the plight of civilians, women and children in Syria.

“Women lost their husbands, the children made [into] refugees and their homes turned into rubble by the forces of aggression and tyranny,” he said. “This makes all of us obligated to lend a hand to help.”

In the past Shoreym has rarely commented on politics, in keeping with the Saudi government’s line to keep Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Madina away from politics as much as possible.

His sermon marked a notable departure from that policy, indicating the seriousness of the situation in Syria.

In Cairo, Al-Erify’s one-hour sermon focused on the need to join jihad. “Modern history has never seen such massacres as those that have been committed by that regime over the past 40 years,” he said.

Al-Erify, a religious preacher with best-selling books and popular TV shows, warned that if the Iran-led Shiite alliance succeeds in Syria they will go after “Muslim children in other countries” and “slaughter them like they did in Syria”.

Erify, Shoreym and Qaradawi’s appeals are the latest in a string of religious edicts, or fatwas, urging people to resist Assad forces in Syria.

On Thursday, dozens of Sunni Islamic scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to declare an “urgent appeal for jihad” in Syria and to rally public support for fighters there.

“That conference will have an impact on the ground for sure,” said Gamal Sultan, editor of Al-Mesryoon newspaper in Cairo. “The world imagined that they can sell the Syrian people cheaply to the tyranny of Assad. Religious leaders are out to prove that notion wrong.”

Documenting atrocities

The conference attendees, including Ahmed Al Tayeb, grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, the bastion of Sunni Islam and the seat of its most prestigious religious studies mosque in Egypt, watched a documentary showing Hezbollah and Syrian forces committing atrocities against civilians in conflict areas.

A statement on the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, the pan-Islamic non-governmental organisation that ran the conference, said the meeting was designed to “show the real face of Iran, Assad regime and Hezbollah”.

Some of the attendees of the conference later on Friday met with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to try to garner his support for the jihad drive. The following day before thousands of supporters and religious leaders in a Cairo stadium, Morsi announced a number of steps against the Syrian regime, including cutting all relations with Damascus.

Social media that were instrumental in launching the Arab Spring are now being used as a vibrant platform both to showcase the Syrian regime’s abuses and to call for jihad against Assad.

Earlier this week, a crude video on Youtube showed young people trying to rescue a young Syrian woman lying in the middle of the road, half-naked and injured after reportedly being raped by pro-Assad forces. One by one, the youths are shot by Assad’s forces as they try to help, and the woman is not believed to have survived.

Facebook pages share gory scenes of children, their throats slit, and masses of bodies, including children, lying under rubble. “While you are sitting flipping through your Facebook, children are dying in Syria,” said one post.

The ceasefire line in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, May 20 2013 (IPS)

Israel is being drawn into Syria’s quagmire as it threatens to act further on transfers of “game-changing” weapons to hostile protagonists involved in Syria’s civil war, be they Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Jihadist Sunni rebels, or loyalist forces of President Bashar al Assad.

The country does so reluctantly while knowing full well the consequences of such actions. Within weeks, Israel has expanded its list of “tie-breaking”, “game-changing” and “deterrence-diminishing” weapons defined as a “red line” to its security.

Initially, a red line was drawn on any foe gaining control over Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. These weapons, while being used increasingly in the war, are for the time being still secured by Assad’s forces.

But on Jan. 30, when Israeli warplanes destroyed a convoy carrying surface-to-air S-17 missiles supplied by Iran and bound for Hezbollah, it became clear that another type of red line was being crossed, from Israel’s standpoint.

Though it didn’t formally take responsibility for the airstrike, Israel declared it would not tolerate the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, with whom it fought an indecisive war in 2006.

Meanwhile, Iran hopes that greater Hezbollah firepower will deter Israel from striking Iran’s nuclear sites, should it decide to do so.

On May 4 and May 5, Israel followed up by bombing shipments of Iran-made Fateh-110 missiles destined for Hezbollah.

Unlike rockets currently in Hezbollah’s arsenal, the more accurate surface-to-surface Fateh-110 missile is capable of reaching strategic targets south of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area in Israel.

In the last decade, Syria has chosen to ignore Israeli attacks on its territory, including one against its nuclear reactor (Deir ez-Zour, 2007) and another on Hezbollah’s chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh (Damascus, 2008).

Yet in the wake of the latest airstrike – perhaps because the U.S. Pentagon confirmed Israel’s responsibility and thus, Syria couldn’t possibly keep mute – this time, Syria threatened to retaliate.

To add credibility to Damascus’ threat, Hezbollah also threatens to open a new front on the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Following the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement signed by Israel and Syria, the Golan Heights have largely been quiet, aside from occasional and unintentional mortar fire in the past six months leaking from battles in Syria through the ceasefire line and resulting in Israel’s responding with artillery fire.

Israeli security analysts believe that Assad won’t dare risking engaging a far more formidable enemy than the rebels, even by proxy, while fighting for his own survival. But they won’t say it out loud.

Ten days after the last bombing, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, flew to Sochi for an urgent meeting with Vladimir Putin to try to persuade the Russian president to freeze his country’s commitment to supply anti-aircraft S-300 batteries to the Syrian army.

S-300 anti-aircraft missiles can threaten Israel’s airspace, as they’re capable of intercepting Israeli jets upon takeoff.

The provision of S-300 batteries is a long-standing issue between Israel and Russia, and it’s still unclear as to whether Russia will honour the arms deal with Syria.

Netanyahu’s office says the meetingwth Putin was at the Israeli prime minister’s request, perhaps because other sources indicate that Putin summoned the Israeli leader to warn him of the perils of further interference in Syria.

After all, no one wants Syria to implode – let alone explode and destabilise the entire region. And it’s no secret that Russia is determined to keep Assad in power.

Evidence of such determination are the recent leaks to U.S. newspapers of Russian warships patrolling the Mediterranean Sea near Tartus, Russia’s naval base in Syria, and of new shipments of Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria.

These shipments serve as another “game-changer” that could target Israel’s offshore natural gas drilling rigs, at a time when Russia has agreed with the United States to host an international conference on Syria next month.

To complicate matters further, it’s now becoming patently obvious that Israel’s ever-evolving red lines, if taken to their logical conclusion, could lead to targeting not only shipments of advanced weapons systems and their recipient – Assad’s army – but also, albeit indirectly, the supplier itself: Russia.

Israel’s decision-makers are engaged in a balancing act between their preference for “Israel’s man in Damascus” (as a former Mossad Intelligence chief, Efraim Halevy, recently called Assad in Foreign Affairs) and Israel’s red lines.

Responding to Syria’s threats by words of an “official” in the New York Times, Israel threatened Assad with impending demise.

Correlatively, another “official” in the Times of London declared, “Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos.”

When asked which side he favoured in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989), then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir quipped, “We want them both to win.” Similarly, Syria’s civil war seems to serve Israel’s interests, as long as it’s a tie.

How Israel can enforce its red lines – by neutralising missiles shipments as they’re being delivered to, or assembled in, Syria? How would Moscow react? How would Damascus react? – is no longer so simple.

After all, if Israel and Russia both want Assad to stay in power, then why try to dissuade Russia from boosting the embattled Syrian leader’s loyal forces? The answer comes almost inadvertently from the “official” in the Times of London: Israel “underestimated Assad’s staying power”.

Meanwhile, the United States still grapples with how to react to the use of chemical weapons in Syria – a “game-changer” as far as President Barack Obama is concerned, yet not one that changes their Israeli ally’s hands-off approach to the civil war.

Caught in a miniature cold war between Russia and the United States, Israel risks sinking into the civil war’s quagmire and allowing Iran to evade further scrutiny on its nuclear programme while the international community is preoccupied with the situation on the ground in Syria.

When European Union foreign ministers discuss a proposal to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov will present his government’s case for linking two suspects in the Jul. 18, 2012 bombing of an Israeli tourist bus to Hezbollah.

But European ministers who demand hard evidence of Hezbollah involvement are not likely to find it in the Bulgarian report on the investigation, which has produced no more than an “assumption” or “hypothesis” of Hezbollah complicity.

Major revelations about the investigation by the former head of the probe and by a top Bulgarian journalist have further damaged the credibility of the Bulgarian claim to have found links between the suspects and Hezbollah.

The chief prosecutor in charge of the Bulgarian investigation revealed in an interview published in early January that the evidence available was too scarce to name any party as responsible, and that investigators had found a key piece of evidence that appeared to contradict it.

An article in a Bulgarian weekly in mid-January confirmed that the investigation had turned up no information on a Hezbollah role, and further reported that one of the suspects had been linked by a friendly intelligence service to Al-Qaeda.

The statement made Feb. 5 by Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov referred to what he called a “reasonable assumption” or as a “well-founded assumption”, depending on the translation, that two suspects in the case belonged to Hezbollah’s “military formation”.

Underlining the extremely tentative nature of the finding, Tsvetanov used the passive voice and repeated the carefully chosen formulation for emphasis: “A reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.”

The host of a Bulgarian television talk show asked Tsvetanov Feb. 9 why the conclusion about Hezbollah had been presented as “only a guess”. But instead of refuting that description, Tsvetanov chose to call the tentative judgment a “grounded hypothesis for the complicity of the Hezbollah military wing”.

The reason why the senior official responsible for Bulgarian security used such cautious language became clear from an interview given by the chief prosecutor for the case, Stanella Karadzhova, who was in charge of the investigation, published by “24 Hours” newspaper Jan. 3.

Karadzhova revealed how little was known about the two men who investigators believe helped the foreigner killed by the bomb he was carrying, but whom Tsvetanov would later link to Hezbollah. The reason, she explained, is that they had apparently traveled without cell phones or laptops.

Only two kinds of information appear to have linked the two, according to the Karadzhova interview, neither of which provides insight into their political affiliation. One was that both of them had led a “very ordered and simple” lifestyle, which she suggested could mean that they both had similar training.

The other was that both had fake Michigan driver’s licenses that had come from the same country. It was reported subsequently that the printer used to make the fake Michigan driver’s licenses had been traced to Beirut.

Those fragments of information were evidently the sole basis for the “hypothesis” that that two of the suspects were members of Hezbollah’s military wing. That hypothesis depended on logical leaps from the information. Any jihadist organisation could have obtained fake licenses from the Beirut factory, and a simple lifestyle does not equal Hezbollah military training.

But Karadzhova’s biggest revelation was that investigators had found a SIM card at the scene of the bombing and had hoped it would provide data on the suspect’s contacts before they had arrived at the scene of the bombing. But the telecom company in question was Maroc Telecom, and the Moroccan firm had not responded to requests for that information.

That provenance of the SIM Card is damaging to the Hezbollah “hypothesis”, because Maroc Telecom sells its cards throughout North Africa – a region in which Hezbollah is not known to have any operational bases but where Al-Qaeda has a number of large organisations.

Morocco is also considered a “staunch ally” of the United States, so it is unlikely that the Moroccan government would have refused a request from the United States to get the necessary cooperation from Moroccan Telecom.

Senior Bulgarian officials have remained mum about the SIM Card, and
Karadzhova was sacked as chief prosecutor shortly after the interview was published, ostensibly because the interview had not been approved.

On Jan. 17, the sister publication of “24 hours”, the weekly “168 Hours”, published an article by its editor, Slavi Angelov, reporting that the Bulgarian investigators had failed to find any evidence of Hezbollah involvement.

Angelov, one of the country’s premier investigative journalists, also wrote that one of the two suspects whose fake IDs were traced to Beirut had been linked by a “closely allied intelligence service” to a wing of Al-Qaeda.

The story, which is not available on the internet but was summarised on the “24 Hours” website, earned a brief reference in a Jan. 17 story in the “Jerusalem Post”. That story referred to Angelov’s sources for the information about the Al-Qaeda link as unnamed officials in the Interior Ministry.

The Angelov story’s revelation that Bulgaria had no evidence linking Hezbollah to the bus bombing was also headlined by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the same day.

By the time the investigation’s four-month extension was due to expire on Jan. 18, there was no question among investigators that they needed much more time to reach any meaningful judgment on who was responsible for the bombing. Chief prosecutor Karadzhova told “24 Hours” there was “no obstacle to the deadline being extended repeatedly”.

But by mid-January, international politics posed such an obstacle: the United States and Israel were already pointing to the Feb. 18 meeting of EU foreign ministers as an opportunity to get action by the EU on listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Washington and Tel Aviv wanted a conclusion from the Bulgarians that could be used at that meeting to force the issue.

A meeting of Bulgaria’s Consultative Council for National Security to consider extending the investigation, originally scheduled for Jan. 17, was suddenly postponed.

Instead, on that date Foreign Minister Mladenov was sent on an unannounced visit to Israel. Israel’s Channel 2 reported after the meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror that Bulgaria had given Israel a report blaming Hezbollah for the bus bombing.

The office of the Bulgarian foreign minister and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov both issued denials Jan. 18. Borissov said there would be no comment on the investigation until “indisputable evidence has been discovered”, implying that it did not have the needed evidence yet.

Nevertheless, over the next three weeks, the Bulgarian government had to negotiate the wording of what it would say about the conclusion of its investigation.

The decision to call the conclusion an “assumption” or even the weaker “hypothesis” about Hezbollah was obviously a compromise between the preference of the investigators themselves and the demands of the United States and Israel.

The timing of that decision is a sensitive issue in Bulgaria. Prime Minister Borissov told reporters in Brussels Feb. 7 that he had decided to “name Hezbollah” after investigators had found the SIM card at the site of the bombing. That would put the decision well before Karadzhova gave her interview Jan. 1.

And in any case, the discovery of the SIM card could not have caused the investigators to veer toward Hezbollah but would have called that hypothesis into question.

Tsvetanov admitted that the Hezbollah “assumption” had been adopted only “after the middle of January”. That admission indicates that the decision was reached under pressure from Washington, not because of any new evidence.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov’s dramatic announcement Tuesday on the Bulgarian investigation of the July 2012 terror bombing of an Israeli tourist bus was initially reported by Western news media as suggesting clear evidence of Hezbollah’s responsibility for the killings.

But more accurate reports on the minister’s statement and the only details he provided reveal that the alleged link between the bomb suspects and Hezbollah was merely an “assumption” rather than a conclusion based on specific evidence.

Tsvetanov was quoted by various Western news outlets as saying, “We have established that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.” The minister also said, “There is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects,” according to the BBC and Jerusalem Post.

Those statements implied that the Bulgarian investigators had uncovered direct evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Burgas bombing.

But the New York Times on Wednesday quoted Tsvetanov as saying, in remarks to a session of Bulgaria’s Consultative Council on National Security Tuesday, “A reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.”

That statement appeared to acknowledge that he was merely speculating on the basis of data that doesn’t necessarily support that conclusion.

In a report on Wednesday by Sofia News Agency, Bulgaria’s largest English-language news provider, Tsvetanov was quoted as saying that the investigation had led to a “well-founded assumption” that two of the perpetrators of the deadly attack belonged to what the Bulgarian government is calling the “militant wing of Hezbollah”.

In an interview with Bulgarian National Radio Wednesday, the Bulgarian chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, emphasised that the investigation of the Burgas bus bombing had not been concluded and expressed concern about the term “well-founded assumption”.

The chief prosecutor implied that Tsvetanov’s conclusion about Hezbollah might have been swayed by political pressures. Tsatsarov said that the prosecutor’s office “could not be used to make political decisions or to justify them”, according to Sofia News Agency.

In a television interview for the morning broadcast of Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov defended Tsvetanov’s use of the phrase “well-founded assumption”. Mladenov explained that it meant that Bulgaria had “good reason” to believe that the attack had been organised and inspired by members of the militant branch of Hezbollah at this stage of the investigation, Sofia News Agency reported.

But Mladenov did not claim that any of those “good reasons” consisted of hard evidence.

In an interview with Associated Press Tuesday, Europol Director Rob Wainright said, “The Bulgarian authorities are making quite a strong assumption that this is the work of Hezbollah.”

But Wainright also cited only the most general arguments in support of Tsvetanov’s “assumption”, declaring, “From what I’ve seen of the case – from the very strong, obvious links to Lebanon, from the modus operandi of the terrorist attack and from other intelligence that we see – I think that is a reasonable assumption.”

Europol had sent several investigators to help the Bulgarian authorities on the Burgas bombing investigation, Wainwright told Associated Press.

None of the details provided by Tsvetanov, according to press reports, involved evidence showing that two of the alleged conspirators belonged to Hezbollah or to Hezbollah financing of the terror plot.

The most important piece of evidence cited by Tsvetanov was the lengthy stays in Lebanon by two of the three alleged participants in the bombing and driver’s licenses that were forged in Lebanon.

Tsvetanov said the two alleged conspirators with Canadian and Australian passports who are believed to have helped the third member of the cell carry out the Burgas bombing lived in Lebanon between 2006 and 2010.

He also indicated that two of driver’s licenses used by the conspirators were “forged in Lebanon”, and that Bulgaria was able to piece together the movements of two of the suspects from Lebanon to Europe.

Those connections between the alleged conspirators and the bombing by themselves could hardly support an assumption of Hezbollah responsibility for the bombing. Al-Qaeda terrorist cells have been operating in Lebanon for years, and have the technical capability for such a bombing plot.

Members of one Al-Qaeda network of 13 men organised in different cells arrested in 2006 and 2007 confessed to having planned and carried out the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, although they retracted their confessions before trial.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings involving Israeli tourists in the past, whereas there is no known case of a Hezbollah bombing of Israeli tourists, as a Hezbollah spokesman pointed out Wednesday.

In November 2002, Al-Qaeda carried out a terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya in November 2002 that involved an attempted shoot-down of an Israeli passenger aircraft and a triple suicide car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel.

Two years later, an Al-Qaeda affiliate took responsibility for bombings at three Red Sea resorts, killing 34 Israeli tourists. And in July 2005, the same Al-Qaeda-related organisation took responsibility for suicide bomb attacks that killed at least 88 people at a shopping area and hotel packed with tourists, including Israelis, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el Sheik.

Nevertheless, Tsvetanov offered no other specific evidence to support his conclusion.

Another aspect of the Bulgarian investigation suggesting that information about the alleged participants is still very limited is the fact, reported by the Bulgarian daily newspaper Sega, that the investigators had found no direct communication and only “indirect indications” of ties between the Arab holding an Australian passport and the perpetrator of the attack.

The Bulgarian charge of Hezbollah responsibility for the bombing based on little more than assumption has raised the suspicion in Bulgaria that the government was under pressure from the United States and Israel to reach a conclusion that aligned with the Israeli-American position.

Foreign Minister Mladenov denied that Bulgaria was pressured into issuing a statement on the progress of the investigation. But both Israel and the United States have given evidence of wanting such a statement.

Bulgaria is a member of NATO and has expanded military and intelligence ties with Israel since Israeli relations with Turkey soured in 2009.

Israel also played a key role in the Bulgarian investigation, as Interior Minister Tsvetanov acknowledged in his presentation Tuesday. He specifically thanked the Israeli government for its support in regard to the investigation and said Israel had provided “relevant expertise” in regard to one of the indicators implicitly cited as pointing to Hezbollah – the identification of the false driver’s licenses used by the alleged bomb cell.

Ha’aretz reported Tuesday that Israel and the United States had both feared that, “while the investigation’s finding would be clear, Bulgaria’s public statement would be ambiguous and would not name Hezbollah responsible.”

John Brennan, U.S. President Barack Obama’s primary adviser on homeland security and counter-terrorism, issued a statement that portrayed the Bulgarian investigation as having reached a definitive conclusion. Brennan praised the Bulgarian authorities for “their determination and commitment to ensuring that Hizballah is held to account for this act of terror on European soil”.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Since its inception, Hezbollah’s clout within its community has been solid. However, in recent weeks, the Party of God has been facing increasing difficulties controlling its support base and stymieing discontent. These developments have led analysts to question whether or not Hezbollah is losing its grip on its followers.

Last month, gunmen attacked the headquarters of the local TV station al-Jadeed in Beirut. Setting tires ablaze, they surrounded the area, opening fire and hurling Molotov cocktails at the building. Local residents apprehended one of the gunmen after his clothes caught on fire.

Local media reported that the suspect is a Shiite member of Saraya al-Moqawama, a special unit comprised of members of various Lebanese factions militarily affiliated to Hezbollah, but the party immediately denied the allegation.

Soon after, Lebanese daily An Nahar reported that Hezbollah supporters in the Rweiss neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs assaulted an Internal Security Forces (ISF) patrol after they arrested a gunman on a motorcycle, identified as Ali Shoaib.

Immediately following the arrest, members of the Party of God intervened and engaged in a dispute with the patrol. The party again denied the incident.

“There is a definite feeling that Hezbollah is not able to control its supporters and smaller contingents. Dahieh (Hezbollah’s bastion in the capital’s southern suburbs) is plagued by many security problems, from daily armed clashes between local families, to the increased trafficking of weapons and drugs, and prostitution,” a high-ranking officer within the ISF admitted to IPS.

Besides having to reign in on such activity, Hezbollah has been faced with a growing wave of discontent among its supporters.

Last month, during one of the protests against the kidnapping of 11 Shiite pilgrims in Syria and the arrest of Ali Shoaib, the local TV station MTV reported that demonstrators attacked a four-car Hezbollah convoy, which was escorting a party official, and forced it to turn back.

The 11 pilgrims were kidnapped on May 22 in the Syrian city of Aleppo as they were driving back to Lebanon from a religious pilgrimage to Iran.

They are rumored to be held by Syrian opposition forces, which blame Hezbollah for its staunch support of president Bashar al-Assad.

“Hezbollah seems to have forgotten about the issue and is not talking about it anymore, as if it never happened,” Hassan, a young man from Dahieh, who works in a clothing store, complained to IPS.

Many of Hezbollah’s once fierce supporters now also decry the party’s mismanagement of the multiple crises afflicting the country.

“The fact that Hezbollah is a main force within this government should grant me a feeling of security, but in reality it does not,” remarked Mohamad, a clean-cut young man in his twenties hailing from Nabatiyeh, a village located in South Lebanon.

Such complaints have become more widespread among the Shiite community. Since the beginning of the year, Lebanon has witnessed multiple Syrian incursions, rising sectarian tension, a wave of protests as well as electrical and water shortages. “Lebanon has no electricity and no security, and the situation is worsening every day,” Hassan told IPS.

“This government, which in theory is ours (as it is led by Hezbollah), is ironically working against us,” he added cynically.

His friend, Hatem, who just graduated from high school, lamented the soaring corruption in government.

“I am supposed to enroll in pharmaceutical school, but what for? The sector is oversaturated because politicians back illegal operators. I want to leave Lebanon; foreign countries take care of their people, but my government and leaders do not,” he said bitterly.

Despite such crippling criticism, the party still has hardcore supporters.

Rola, a young mother, said that her memories of the civil war keep her loyal to the Party of God.

“Who will protect us when (Christian) Lebanese Forces attack us? I have not forgotten Sabra and Shatila. Hezbollah is the only party capable of protecting me and all the Shiite community,” she told IPS.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre of September 1982 led to the deaths of about 1000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians residing in the two Palestinian camps, at the hands of a gang of former members of the Lebanese Phalangist militia, which were later integrated into the Lebanese Forces.

The killing spree was carried out supposedly in retaliation for the assassination of newly elected Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Phalanges.

Kassem Kassir, a political writer who specialises in Islamic movements, believes Rola’s attitude is likely shared by scores of others in the community.

“It is true that many complaints and remarks have been raised by the Hezbollah constituency. However, the bulk of them still follow the party politically. Just look at the recent partial Koura parliamentary elections, in which 97 percent of Shiites voted for the party’s candidate,” he told IPS.

“Members of the Shiite community might complain, but they will not mobilize against Hezbollah in the current uncertain regional situation.”

(END)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim Sunday of absolutely reliable intelligence linking Hezbollah to the bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria last week was apparently aimed at supporting his government’s determination to get the EU to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.

The Netanyahu claim in interviews on Fox News Sunday and CBS Face the Nation of “rock solid” intelligence on the bombing was accompanied by an announcement that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would travel to Brussels Monday to meet with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and foreign ministers of nine EU member states to persuade them to put Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organisations.

Netanyahu, who usually emphasises Iran’s role in terrorism, focused primarily on Hezbollah’s alleged culpability.

Unlike the United States, the EU has never officially considered Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation, but Netanyahu believes that pinning the Bulgarian bombing on Hezbollah gives him political leverage on the EU to change that.

Lieberman was quoted Sunday as saying the bombing in Bulgaria “has changed the way in which Hezbollah is seen”.

For months, Netanyau has been building a case that Iran has been carrying out a worldwide campaign of terrorism. That narrative is based, however, on a systematic and highly successful Israeli campaign of shaping the news coverage of a series of murky allegations about terrorist actions or efforts in Baku, Tibilisi, Bangkok and Delhi, and into stories fitting neatly into the overall narrative.

Netanyahu used sweeping language about the alleged intelligence underlying his charge that Hezbollah carried out the Bulgarian tourist bombing, but refused to offer any further information to back it up.

In the interview on Fox News Sunday, Netanyahu said, “We know with absolute certainty, without a shadow of a doubt that this is a Hezbollah operation….” But despite being asked by interviewer Chris Wallace for some indication of the nature of the intelligence, he would say only that information had been shared with “friendly agencies”.

When the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, Tamir Pardo and Yoram Cohen, briefed the Israeli cabinet Sunday on those agencies’ efforts against what were described as Iranian and Hezbollah plans for terrorism in more than 20 countries, they were not reported to have presented hard intelligence supporting the claim of Hezbollah responsibility for the Bulgarian bombing.

If the Israeli government did share intelligence information on Hezbollah and the Bulgarian bombing with the Central Intelligence Agency as Netanyahu claimed, it did not register with the senior U.S. officials on Jul. 19.

When a “senior U.S. official” was quoted by the New York Times that day confirming the Israeli assertion that the bomber who carried out the operation was “a member of a Hezbollah cell operating in Bulgaria”, he was apparently merely making assumptions rather than relying on any hard evidence.

Also on Jul. 19, Pentagon press secretary George Little said, “I don’t know that anybody has assessed attribution for this cowardly action….”

On Jul. 20, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration was “not in a position to make a statement about responsibility”.

Netanyahu declared immediately after the news of the Bulgarian bus bombing Jul. 18 that Iran was responsible for the attack. In support of the charge, he cited recent alleged terrorist incidents in a number of other countries. “All the signs lead to Iran,” he said.

But Netanyahu offered no proof, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington acknowledged to CNN on Jul. 19 that it had no proof that Iran was the instigator of the attack.

Netanyahu also argued in his Fox News interview as well as in an appearance on CBS Face the Nation that an Iran/Hezbollah connection to the bombing of the Israeli tourist bus could be reasonably inferred from a Hezbollah terrorist plan that had been discovered in Cyprus only a week earlier.

“The whole world can see who it is,” said Netanyahu on Fox News Sunday. “You would have known or been able to surmise it from Cyprus a week ago.” A “Hezbollah operative” in Cyprus was caught planning “exactly the same attack, exactly the same modus operandi”, he said.

But the case to which Netanyahu referred is much less clear-cut than his dramatic description. In fact, it is unclear who the alleged Hezbollah operative really is and what he was actually doing in Cyprus. The 24-year-old Lebanese man with a Swedish passport was arrested in his hotel room in Limossol Jul. 7 – just two days after he had arrived in the country — following an urgent message sent to Cyprus from Israeli intelligence that the man intended to carry out attacks, according to Haaretz Jul. 14.

The Israeli press have portrayed the unnamed Lebanese as “collecting information for a terror attack” being planned by Hezbollah (Israel Hayom) and as identifying the “vulnerabilities that would allow for maximal damage among a group of Israeli tourists in their first hours on Cyprus ” (Ynet News).

But those descriptions may not reflect what the Lebanese man was actually doing. A senior Cypriot official told Reuters a week after he was taken into custody, “It is not clear what, or whether, there was a target in Cyprus.” And other Cypriot authorities were reported by the Cyprus Mail Jul. 20 and by Associated Press Monday to have said they believe the man was acting alone.

The Cypriot Greek-language newspaper Phileftheros reported that he was found with information on tour buses carrying Israeli passengers, a list of places favoured by Israeli tourists, and flight information on Israeli airlines that land in Cyprus, suggesting that he planned to detonate explosives on board a plane or bus.

But despite an intensive search, no indication has been found that the man is linked to any explosives.

A lone individual arrested in his hotel room without any explosives hardly presents a close parallel to the bus bombing in Burgas. Contrary to Netanyahu’s breathless description of what happened in Cyprus, the arrest may turn out to have been an overreaction by Mossad to unconfirmed information the agency had obtained three months earlier that someone might be interested in harming Israeli tourists in Cyprus, reported by Ynet News Jul. 15.

Details that have emerged about the cases of Lebanese and Iranian citizens arrested at the insistence of Mossad in Thailand in January and Kenya in June also suggest that sensational press accounts of alleged terrorist plans by the suspects inspired by the Israelis may have been highly distorted, and that the individuals arrested may turn out not to be terrorists at all.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.