Hezbollah Makes Vow to Step Up Sunni Fight
New York Times (blog)-1 hour ago
AITA
AL SHAAB, Lebanon — Thousands of men, women and children gathered in
this village near the border with Israel, jumped to their feet, ...
Hezbollah Makes Vow to Step Up Sunni Fight
Hassan Bahsoun/European Pressphoto Agency
Shiite Muslims gathered Friday for a televised speech by Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader.
By BEN HUBBARD
Published: August 16, 2013
AITA AL SHAAB, Lebanon — Thousands of men, women and children gathered
in this village near the border with Israel, jumped to their feet,
pumped their fists and cheered as Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah,
vowed on Friday to step up the fight against the radical Sunni Muslims
whom he accused of a car bombing on Thursday in one of the group’s
strongholds in Beirut.
The New York Times
The death toll from the blast in Beirut’s southern suburbs rose to 24 on Friday, making it the deadliest attack in Lebanon
in decades. Many Lebanese saw the attack as payback for Hezbollah’s
military support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the
civil war in Syria.
Addressing the attackers, Mr. Nasrallah insisted the bombing had not
affected the group’s position. “If you think that by killing our women,
by killing our children, by killing our innocents,” enemies will make
Hezbollah stop aiding the Syrian government, “you are wrong,” he said.
In fact, he said, such attacks would lead Hezbollah to double the size
of its forces in Syria, where, he said, they were fighting takfiris, or
extremists, who consider all but those who follow their school of
thought heretics.
“If this battle with these takfiri terrorists requires that I and all of
Hezbollah go to Syria, we will go to Syria,” he shouted.
The explosion on Thursday has exacerbated fears that the sectarian war
in Syria could set off similar violence in Lebanon. The attack, and Mr.
Nasrallah’s new emphasis on his group’s battle against Sunni extremists,
also underlines how much Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria has
complicated its status at home.
In short, Hezbollah has more enemies than it used to have.
Founded in the 1980s as a popular movement to fight Israel’s occupation
of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, while firmly based in Lebanon’s Shiite
community, has long tried to portray itself as a national resistance
movement that exists to protect all Lebanese. The strength of its
fighters, who constitute Lebanon’s strongest military force, once made
them — and Mr. Nasrallah — heroes throughout the Arab world.
That standing took a blow, however, when the group declared its support
for Mr. Assad early in the uprising against his rule in 2011, and it
declined further as Hezbollah fighters joined Syrian forces on the
battlefield against the rebels, who are primarily Sunni.
Many people in Lebanon have criticized Hezbollah for, in their view,
veering from its primary role: fighting Israel. Given the deep
sympathies of Lebanon’s Sunnis for their brethren in Syria, many have
increasingly come to see Hezbollah as the enemy.
But those tensions were scarcely mentioned on Friday as Hezbollah held
its annual commemoration of its 2006 war with Israel. Thousands of
people from nearby villages and beyond packed a central square to listen
to martial music and to Mr. Nasrallah’s speech, which was delivered by a
live video link from an undisclosed location.
Much of the village was destroyed during the 2006 war, but Hezbollah has
rebuilt it, with support from Iran and elsewhere, and new two- and
three-story houses line the main street.
Residents display a strong mix of rural hospitality, insistently
inviting visitors into their homes for meals and coffee, and of distrust
born from years of occupation by a foreign army and an ever-present
fear of spies. Almost no one agreed to provide his full name when
interviewed.
Many residents wrote off the talk of sectarian tensions in Lebanon,
instead putting the blame for the region’s problems on Hezbollah’s
traditional enemies.
“All of these splits were caused by Israel and America because they keep
trying out new strategies, and now they are trying to split the Sunnis
and the Shiites,” said Ali, a 34-year-old lawyer.
Like many here, he saw Hezbollah’s role in Syria as essential to its
fight against Israel, not a distraction from it. “The war in Syria is
not to defend Bashar al-Assad. It is to defend the axis of resistance,”
he said.
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