Lebanon - a reassessment
By ASHER SUSSER
Anyone following the war in Lebanon in the Israeli media could not but come away engulfed in deep depression. Israelis and their media tend to focus obsessively on themselves, their own losses and failings, remaining largely oblivious to what is happening on the other side of the divide. This is as true about Gaza as it is about Lebanon. In contrast to the uniform and self-centered discussion in Israel, the war with Hizbullah and its consequences are being discussed in Lebanon and the broader Arab world in a more diverse and more sophisticated debate.
In the Arab world, views vary from the one extreme, which sees the ultimate victory of the Arabs in more missiles and rockets that will surely bring Israel to its knees in the not too distant future, to those at the other end of the spectrum, according to whom Hizbullah, Lebanon and the Arabs have, in fact, been defeated.
At the height of the war, as Hizbullah rockets regularly sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis scurrying to the shelters like "rabbits and mice," as some of the Arab media noted with undisguised gratification, the mood tended to be militantly euphoric, buoyed by the widely broadcast images of Israeli suffering and humiliation. But as the war came to its conclusion and life in Israel returned pretty much to normal, opinion in the Arab world has shifted to more sober analysis, as Lebanon, Hizbullah and the Shi'ites face the daunting task of what will probably be years of multi-billion dollar reconstruction.
Even a cursory perusal of the Arab press, will reveal that Hizbullah's status in Lebanon has changed for the worse, as many Lebanese come to the rather shocking realization that the south of their country, unknown to them, had in fact been transformed into an Iranian and Syrian launching pad against Israel posing an existential threat to their own livelihoods and to their entire country. Hizbullah is now on the defensive, trying to protect its political assets against a more assertive Lebanese domestic majority, that seems more determined than ever to contain Hizbullah's "state within a state," so that they are not drawn again into a destructive war with Israel, without as much as a word of consultation
excerpt from
jpost.com |
