Why Hezbollah's victory may lead to peace in the Middle East: An interview with Franklin Lamb

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3380.shtml

---snip---

Franklin Lamb, PhD, is an author and director of "Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace" who works from Beirut. His latest book, "Hezbollah: A Brief Guide for Beginners," will soon be published in Arabic and English.

Question: Between May 7 and May 10, Hezbollah took over Beirut, shut down the city's TV and communications facilities, blocked the main highways, closed the airport, and surrounded the homes of the leading political leaders with armed gunman. The action was taken in response to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's decision to outlaw Hezbollah's telecommunication network and sack the head of security at Beirut airport. Although the incident has been downplayed in the Western media, it appears that Hezbollah achieved a total victory and is now recognized as the strongest group operating within Lebanon. What affect will Hezbollah's victory have on the political dynamic within Lebanon?

Franklin Lamb: I don't believe Hezbollah achieved a 'total victory' as the question suggests, but its achievements were certainly strategic and that sets out the future in many respects. As you rightly imply, Hezbollah's emphatic statement by its quick move into the March 14 areas was aimed at Israel, the Bush Administration and their agents and allies in Lebanon and the Middle East.

What provoked the precise timing of the action was the fact, as Sheik Naim Qassim, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General told this observer and a former American ambassador and other US citizens who met with him on Monday May 10 in Dahiyeh, was a 10-hour "series of conference calls" from the Welch Club to the Serail (Government House) that immediately preceded the Siniora government decision to move against Hezbollah, its vital optic fiber phone system and the Airport security office. According to Hezbollah sources there were other US planned assaults on the opposition which have not been made public. . . .

[Vegasaurus]

1. The only decent part of this piece of crap article

is when he notes that there will be no attack on Iran by either the US or Israel during the remainder of Bush's term.

People all over the DU are having heart attacks over an attack on Iran, but it isn't going to happen.

That's about the only sensible thing Mr. Lamb says.

A well-armed Hezbollah, controlling Lebanon, creates more instability in an already very unstable region.

[Igel]

2. No, there's something else.

He puts his blinders back on late in the interview--insisting that 19th-century European models as worked out by early 20th century theoreticians is the best way to understand a very much non-European culture.

But early on he nails the problem: A culturally determined, deeply perceived sense of humiliation on the part of many, mostly traditional, Arabs and Muslims.

[bemildred]

3. Mr Lamb does have his flaws.

Sometimes I feel he just wants things too much. But he is well educated and not just a propagandist, though he is that too.

It is worth mentioning that humiliation is sort of "normal" in colonized and occupied cultures, and that better relations depend on some sort of remedy for that. The British and India get along well enough now, but the Indians do what they like.