What awaits Lebanon and the Lebanese if the opposition wins the coming parliamentary elections? The answer came in the form of a "notification" distributed by the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc to participants in this week's national dialogue session. In it, the party warns of all-out military maneuvers that Israel will carry out at the end of next month, or a week before the elections, with the participation of all of its agencies, institutions and weapons. In addition, the Lebanese state is supposed to join up completely with the resistance in preparing for the outbreak of a "surprise" war with the Jewish state.

The "notification," which was mostly devoted to stressing the massive Israeli maneuvers as well as their meaning, threat, background and dimensions, was clear in its conclusions: dialogue is a mere waste of time and effort; the only defense strategy that the party accepts, and strives for, is one that it lays down, according to its own thinking, in coordination with its external allies Syria and Iran, and in line with its conception of the role of the country, its institutions, its army and its citizens. In even more clearer terms, it is a consecration of Lebanon as a sole, permanent arena of confrontation with Israel. Hezbollah affirms that it is being targeted by these maneuvers and calls for a comprehensive Lebanese response at the civil, military and political level, covering hospitals, blood banks, water, telephone, electricity, the army, the security apparatuses, the media, embassies, diplomats… because it believes it necessary to confront Israel "in a way suitable to the nature of the challenge" that it represents and "be ready for the worst."

In this sense, Hezbollah is portending an inevitable new war with Israel, one whose timing depends on factors connected to both it and the Jewish state. The Lebanese state can take no action except to prepare for this war, since anything else would have no point. In the event the party and its allies gain the parliamentary majority, then Parliament will be one of the means of imposing the change that Hezbollah wants in the structure of the state and its orientations. This is so that the state becomes a substitute for its institutions, and even an extension of them. They will perform what the party lays down in the form of missions and roles, because Hezbollah believes, based on a "slip of the tongue" by the same party official, that the Lebanese state "disappointed" it during the July War of 2006, and was a part of the "hostile" plan targeting it, and that it should "go away, just like Bush and Olmert." The party tried to bring down the state twice, when it occupied downtown Beirut, and then the entire capital.

If the party, based on its paper presented to the national dialogue session, is completely aware of Israel's intentions and huge preparations for the war, why does it offer it justifications as it stockpiles rockets, boasts of its arsenal, and tries to open new fronts with the enemy, by sending its men to Egypt and acknowledging, in turn, the transfer of weapons to Gaza? Why bring Lebanon into a struggle that it usually wages by itself? It is because Damascus and Tehran, which the party's working paper say are also targeted by the Israeli maneuvers, are not about to expose themselves to an undesired war with unpredictable consequences. On the sidelines of his recent visit to Austria, the Syrian president implicitly recognized, while expressing pessimism about the possibilities for peace with the current Israeli leadership, that the Syrian front will remain calm, when he said that Hamas and Hezbollah will not attack Israel from Syrian territory.

Hezbollah's working paper quotes an Israeli general who says the goal of the maneuvers is to "bring people into the 'culture of emergency,' as if the war is about to begin tomorrow morning." Our question is this: is there a difference between this goal and what "Hezbollah's generals" are promoting?

Hezbollah is Paving the Way for a New War

Hassan Haidar Al-Hayat - 30/04/09//

What awaits Lebanon and the Lebanese if the opposition wins the coming parliamentary elections? The answer came in the form of a "notification" distributed by the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc to participants in this week's national dialogue session. In it, the party warns of all-out military maneuvers that Israel will carry out at the end of next month, or a week before the elections, with the participation of all of its agencies, institutions and weapons. In addition, the Lebanese state is supposed to join up completely with the resistance in preparing for the outbreak of a "surprise" war with the Jewish state.

The "notification," which was mostly devoted to stressing the massive Israeli maneuvers as well as their meaning, threat, background and dimensions, was clear in its conclusions: dialogue is a mere waste of time and effort; the only defense strategy that the party accepts, and strives for, is one that it lays down, according to its own thinking, in coordination with its external allies Syria and Iran, and in line with its conception of the role of the country, its institutions, its army and its citizens. In even more clearer terms, it is a consecration of Lebanon as a sole, permanent arena of confrontation with Israel. Hezbollah affirms that it is being targeted by these maneuvers and calls for a comprehensive Lebanese response at the civil, military and political level, covering hospitals, blood banks, water, telephone, electricity, the army, the security apparatuses, the media, embassies, diplomats… because it believes it necessary to confront Israel "in a way suitable to the nature of the challenge" that it represents and "be ready for the worst."

In this sense, Hezbollah is portending an inevitable new war with Israel, one whose timing depends on factors connected to both it and the Jewish state. The Lebanese state can take no action except to prepare for this war, since anything else would have no point. In the event the party and its allies gain the parliamentary majority, then Parliament will be one of the means of imposing the change that Hezbollah wants in the structure of the state and its orientations. This is so that the state becomes a substitute for its institutions, and even an extension of them. They will perform what the party lays down in the form of missions and roles, because Hezbollah believes, based on a "slip of the tongue" by the same party official, that the Lebanese state "disappointed" it during the July War of 2006, and was a part of the "hostile" plan targeting it, and that it should "go away, just like Bush and Olmert." The party tried to bring down the state twice, when it occupied downtown Beirut, and then the entire capital.

If the party, based on its paper presented to the national dialogue session, is completely aware of Israel's intentions and huge preparations for the war, why does it offer it justifications as it stockpiles rockets, boasts of its arsenal, and tries to open new fronts with the enemy, by sending its men to Egypt and acknowledging, in turn, the transfer of weapons to Gaza? Why bring Lebanon into a struggle that it usually wages by itself? It is because Damascus and Tehran, which the party's working paper say are also targeted by the Israeli maneuvers, are not about to expose themselves to an undesired war with unpredictable consequences. On the sidelines of his recent visit to Austria, the Syrian president implicitly recognized, while expressing pessimism about the possibilities for peace with the current Israeli leadership, that the Syrian front will remain calm, when he said that Hamas and Hezbollah will not attack Israel from Syrian territory.

Hezbollah's working paper quotes an Israeli general who says the goal of the maneuvers is to "bring people into the 'culture of emergency,' as if the war is about to begin tomorrow morning." Our question is this: is there a difference between this goal and what "Hezbollah's generals" are promoting?