BEIRUT (AP)
-- Car bombings targeting Hezbollah strongholds south of Beirut have
shaken the Shiite militant group, bringing fear to a community that was
largely spared the violence plaguing the rest of Lebanon.
Nowadays,
pistol-wielding Hezbollah operatives man checkpoints guarding the
capital's southern suburbs, searching vehicles for explosives, frisking
residents and occasionally deploying sniffer dogs.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah says attacks inside Lebanon will not deter him from backing Syrian government.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said he is ready to fight
'radical' Muslims in Syria, a day after a deadly bombing in a Beirut
suburb left many dead.
Nasrallah in his speech on Friday also accused Sunni 'extremists' of
responsibility for the car bombing that killed at least 22 people.
"I will go myself to Syria if it is so necessary in the battle against the takfiris [radical Sunni Muslims]," he said defiantly.
BEIRUT |(Reuters) - Lebanon's leading Sunni
Muslim politician Saad al-Hariri accused Hezbollah on Saturday of
dragging the country deeper into Syria's civil war after the Shi'ite
militant group's leader said he was ready to go to Syria himself to fight.
BEIRUT (AP) -- Hezbollah's leader blamed Sunni extremists
Friday for a car bombing that killed 22 people in a Shiite neighborhood
south of Beirut, heightening fears that Lebanon will be dragged further
into sectarian fallout from the war in neighboring Syria.
BEIRUT | (Reuters) - A Sunni Islamist group
calling itself the Brigades of Aisha claimed responsibility on Thursday
for an explosion in southern Beirut which killed 10 people, saying it
targeted the militant group Hezbollah and promising more attacks.
"This is the second time that
we decide the place of the battle and its timing...And you will see
more, God willing," said a masked man, flanked by two others brandishing
rifles, in a video statement addressed to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
BEIRUT |(Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused radical
Sunni Islamists on Friday of being behind a car bomb that killed 24
people in Beirut and vowed that the attack would redouble his group's
commitment to its military campaign in Syria.
(Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed
Hassan Nasrallah emerged from hiding on Friday to deliver his first
major speech in years, addressing a rally in his southern Beirut
stronghold in support of the Palestinian conflict against Israel. "Israel
poses a danger on all people of this region...including Lebanon, and
removing it is a Lebanese national interest," Nasrallah told hundreds of
supporters in his half-hour speech.
The
charismatic Shi'ite cleric has lived mainly in the shadows, fearing
assassination, since Hezbollah fought an inconclusive month-long war
with Israel in 2006.
His
last major speech came a month after that conflict, when he declared
victory in front of thousands of supporters. Since then, he has made
occasional and brief public appearances - most recently last September -
but no lengthy public address.
Hezbollah
emerged in the 1980s as the most prominent Lebanese faction fighting
Israel's occupation of south Lebanon, but in recent months has lent its
military support to President Bashar al-Assad's battle against Syrian
rebels.
The militant group helped
Assad's forces recapture the Syrian border town from the mainly Sunni
Muslim rebels, an intervention which sharply escalated sectarian tension
in Lebanon, where most Sunnis support the anti-Assad rebels.
Nasrallah
said Hezbollah's enemies, including the United States, Israel and
Britain, were trying to exploit the political tensions to drive a wedge
between the Shi'ites and the rest of the region to marginalize their
role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We
want to say to every enemy and every friend...we the Shi'ites of the
world will not abandon Palestine, the Palestinian people or the sacred
sites in Palestine," Nasrallah said, to loud cheers of support.
Security
was heightened in the southern Beirut suburb where Nasrallah spoke,
with gunmen stationed at intersections leading to the hall where he
delivered his address. Buses were parked across the streets to prevent
access to all but pedestrians.
The
precautions were not academic. A huge car bomb hit the same Beirut
district a month ago, two blocks from where Nasrallah was speaking,
wounding 53 people.
Nasrallah was
speaking on the occasion of Jerusalem Day, marked each year on the last
Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in accordance with a
tradition established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late ruler of Iran and an
"Some
might think that the elimination of Israel is a Palestinian interest,"
Nasrallah said. "Yes, it is a Palestinian interest but not just that. It
is in the interest of the entire Islamic world, it is in the interest
of the entire Arab world … and it is also in the national interest for
every country in the region."
(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Stephen Kalin; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Michael Roddy)
BEIRUT (AP)
-- The leader of Hezbollah rallied hundreds of cheering supporters
Friday with sectarian pledges of support for Palestinians, a sign of the
unease the group feels as turmoil grows within its home of Lebanon.
Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah's first public appearance in almost a year came as
Lebanon's president vowed not to be intimidated after two rockets struck
near the presidential palace. The rocket volley followed President
Michel Suleiman criticizing Hezbollah's involvement in the civil war
ravaging neighboring Syria, violence that has spread into Lebanon.
In
his speech Friday, Nasrallah did not directly mention the rockets.
Instead, he vowed to remain loyal to the Palestinian cause and appeared
to be speaking mostly to his Shiite base in Lebanon and across the
Muslim world.
"We say to America, Israel,
Great Britain and their regional tools, we say to every enemy and friend
... we in Hezbollah will not abandon Palestine and the people of
Palestine," he said.
"Call us terrorists, criminals, try to kill us, we Shiites will never abandon Palestine," he added, firing up the crowd.
Nasrallah's
rare use of sectarian language, highlighting the Shiite character of
his group, is a departure from previous speeches during which he
portrayed Hezbollah as a Muslim anti-Israel resistance group. It
appeared aimed at whipping up support among Shiites across the Arab
world, and reflects the extent which the group feels on the defensive.
Nasrallah
has been living underground since the 2006 month long war between his
group and Israel, fearing Israeli assassination. He has since made very
few and only brief public appearances.
His
extended appearance Friday - he spoke for more than half an hour among
crowds- is an attempt to show confidence at a time when his group is
under growing pressure at home because of its involvement in Syria's
civil war. On Thursday, Suleiman gave a speech criticizing the
involvement of Hezbollah in Syria's conflict in supporting forces loyal
to Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad.
Suleiman
suggested Hezbollah's weapons be folded into that of the national
Lebanese army. The president said that "resistance weapons have
trespassed the Lebanese border," in a reference to Hezbollah. The
Iranian-backed group has a formidable weapons arsenal that rivals that
of the army.
That night, two rockets struck
near the presidential compound in Baabda, southeast of the Lebanese
capital, Beirut. It was the second time in two months that rockets have
been fired in the area amid tensions related to the civil war in
neighboring Syria.
Suleiman said Friday that the attack will not intimidate or make him change his convictions regardless of the party behind it.
"Repeated
rocket messages, regardless of the sender or the target ... cannot
alter national principles or convictions that are expressed freely and
sincerely," the president said in the statement issued by his office.
The statement did not say whom officials believed were behind Thursday
night's attack.
The rare criticism by
Suleiman, a Maronite Catholic, angered Hezbollah and its allies. A
pro-Hezbollah newspaper put a picture of Suleiman on its front page
Friday with a bold-headlined single word: "Irhal," Arabic for leave.
Who
fired the rockets remained unknown Friday, as scores of troops and
police officers scoured the perimeter around the presidential palace in
search of evidence. Anti-Hezbollah politicians immediately blamed the
group and lauded Suleiman. Hezbollah condemned the "terrorist" attack
and the "lowly and blatant" attempts to link between the rockets and the
speech by Suleiman in which he criticized the group.
Hezbollah's
open participation in the war is highly divisive in Lebanon, and has
enraged Sunni Muslims there who sympathize with the overwhelmingly Sunni
rebels fighting to topple Assad. Hezbollah fighters were instrumental
in helping Assad's forces achieve victory over the reb
Lebanon's Shia Hezbollah, which has deployed fighters to fight
alongside Assad's forces in Syria, in a statement released on Monday
condemned the "horrific massacre" of regime troops by rebels in Khan
al-Assal neigbourhood in the northern province of Aleppo.
Facing
army advances in Homs, the rebels last week seized the key Khan al-Assal
bastion after months of fighting. Some 150 regime troops died in
fighting with rebels for control of the region. The Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights said more than 50 of those killed were executed by
rebels.
Hezbollah meanwhile "renewed the call to the Syrian people to sit together at the negotiating table".
[AFP]
By Frida Ghitis,
on ,
Column
When the European Union voted to add Hezbollah’s name to its list of
terrorist organizations, it simultaneously added one more item to the
growing list of costs the Lebanese group is incurring for its brazen
intervention in Syria’s civil war.
Jumping into the Syrian fray
is taking a significant toll on Hezbollah, and it could ultimately take
an even greater one on Lebanon. Still, Hezbollah calculates the risk
would be even greater if it sat out the uprising against Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad. Whether that decision will pay off is yet to
be seen.
Europe was careful to name Hezbollah’s “military wing”
in its terrorism decision even though the organization is thoroughly
unified. In effect, without its military operations Hezbollah would not
amount to very much. But some in the EU thought the distinction might
help prevent even more instability in fragile Lebanon, where the Shiite
militant group is the most powerful political and military player,
complete with a private military force that is stronger than the
national army.
Despite those concerns, there was no getting
around Hezbollah’s long string of politically motivated attacks on
civilians, which clearly met the definition of terrorism. The U.S. State
Department’s annual terrorism report said, “Iran and Hezbollah's terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s.”
Europe
managed to look the other way for a long time. But when a number of the
plots unfolded on European territory, the pressure on Brussels to
follow its own rules increased. Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors have
been linked to a string of attacks in recent years, including several
last year, one of them in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and
a Bulgarian driver, and a thwarted one in Cyprus for which a Hezbollah
operative was convicted. As Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said,
“The EU has decided to call Hezbollah what it is: a terrorist
organization.” His 28 colleagues agreed and voted unanimously to
blacklist. And yet, it was Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria that finally
tipped the scales.
The European move complicates Hezbollah’s
operations, freezing assets and making travel and financial transfers
more difficult, and potentially crippling fundraising activities in the
continent. But the decision is significant for another reason: It is
part of a trend that has seen the steady collapse of the heroic image
Hezbollah worked for decades to construct.
The group’s crumbling
reputation is weakening Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, at a time when
Beirut is at a perilous political standstill.
On July 10, the
head of the country’s Christian Maronites, Michel Aoun, announced he was
removing his party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), from its
alliance with Hezbollah. As a result, the so-called March 8 alliance,
which had been the ruling coalition under the previous government,
ceased to exist. The country has been unable to form a new government
for months, and the obstacles only seem higher with each passing day.
Aoun’s decision was based on discord over a number of issues—Syria is
one of many—and Hezbollah is still working hard to lure him back into the fold. Without the FPM, Hezbollah loses the last fig leaf in its claim to be anything other than a Shiite sectarian group.
It may be too late for that anyway. Sunnis throughout the region now view Hezbollah as the enemy.
The
organization had been widely admired throughout the Middle East for
standing up to Israel. It portrays itself as a patriotic Lebanese
organization. Critics had long complained that Hezbollah was, in fact,
undermining Lebanese sovereignty and accused it of acting for the sake
of Iran more than Lebanon. Those charges are much more difficult to
dispute now.
For Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the fierce regional backlash that followed his decision to fight in Syria could not have come as a surprise.
He
clearly knew Hezbollah would pay a price, otherwise he would not have
kept his intervention secret for so many months. But Assad’s troubles
grew to the point where Nasrallah concluded it was riskier for Hezbollah
to allow the Syrian regime to fall than to be seen backing Assad.
Hezbollah’s survival could not be guaranteed without Assad, who allows
Syria to act as a conduit for Iran’s massive and indispensable
sustenance of Hezbollah.
In late-May, with Lebanese Shiites dying by the dozens in the Syria, Nasrallah at last showed his hand, announcing that Syria’s war is Hezbollah’s war.
The speech almost instantaneously earned the scorn of the Arab street,
where Assad is viewed as a butcher. The influential Sunni cleric Yusuf
al-Qaradawi proclaimed that Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God in
Arabic, is “the Party of Satan.”
In Lebanon, Hezbollah was
accused of endangering the country’s fragile peace and threatening to
bring the Syrian war across the border. The intervention in Syria has
deeply sharpened sectarian divisions in Lebanon, triggering many
outbreaks of deadly fighting. A couple of weeks ago, a massive car bomb
in a Hezbollah-controlled suburb south of Beirut killed some 50 people.
Hezbollah
predictably blamed Israel, but the talk in Lebanon was about whether
the bomb was set by militant Salafists, by the Syrian opposition or by
Hezbollah’s Lebanese enemies.
The starkest conclusion from the
speculation is that Hezbollah has a rather long list of enemies, at
least some of whom are prepared to go to great lengths to hurt the
Shiite group.
According to one report, the CIA has warned the Lebanese government
that al-Qaida affiliates are planning a major anti-Hezbollah bombing
campaign. For Washington, incidentally, the situation is an unnerving
sectarian minefield. The U.S. cannot officially communicate with
Hezbollah, which it long ago listed as a terrorist group, but Washington
would rather not see a bombing campaign, which could unleash a major
war in Lebanon. The Lebanese government is heavily weighted with
Hezbollah representatives.
Instead of a champion of Lebanon, Hezbollah is viewed today by much of the region as an enemy of Sunnis—even as an enemy of Arabs and Muslims—and a protector of a brutal dictator.
The
rising cost of Hezbollah’s decision to help Assad is evidence of
Nasrallah’s calculation. Clearly, he believes that a toppled Assad would
be even more costly for Hezbollah. If Assad survives, Hezbollah can try
to rebuild its reputation. In the meantime, the steep price of helping
the Syrian dictator continues to rise.
Frida
Ghitis is an independent commentator on world affairs and a World
Politics Review contributing editor. Her weekly WPR column, World Citizen, appears every Thursday.
Photo:
Portrait of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on a wall in a
Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon (Photo by Flickr user jaumedurgell,
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License). http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13117/world-citizen-hezbollah-s-costly-support-for-syria-s-assad
A Syrian suspected of staging an attack last week against a
Hezbollah convoy in eastern Lebanon has been arrested by the army,
Lebanon's official National News Agency has said.
"A Lebanese army
intelligence unit raided on Monday night a house in Majdal Anjar in
the (eastern) Bekaa valley and arrested a man," said the NNA on
Tuesday.
It said the man, a Syrian, is "suspected of having
planted several days earlier the bomb on the road leading to the Masnaa
(border post) that targeted a Hezbollah vehicle".
On July 16, one
person was killed and three others wounded in a bomb blast that hit a
convoy of vehicles of Lebanon's powerful Shiite movement, that was en
route to the Syrian border, a security source said.
The dead man was among the passengers of the convoy but it was not clear if he was a Hezbollah member. - AFP
BEIRUT (AP)
-- Syria's main Western-backed opposition group has welcomed an EU
decision to place the military wing of Hezbollah on the bloc's terror
list, calling it a "step in the right direction."
In
a statement issued Tuesday, the Syrian National Coalition group also
calls for leaders of the Lebanese Shiite militant group to be put on
trial for their role in the Syrian war.
Hezbollah has sent its fighters to bolster President Bashar Assad's forces in their assault on rebel-held areas in Syria.
The
EU's 28 foreign ministers reached the decision to blacklist Hezbollah's
military wing Monday after prolonged diplomatic pressure from the U.S.
and Israel, which consider the group a terrorist organization.
BEIRUT
