Did Hezbollah Win?
This past Wednesday, in a rare public appearance, Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nassrallah greeted the five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel after his organization returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers.
"The period of defeat is over and the time of victory has arrived," said a beaming Nassrallah to a jubilant mass waving Hezbollah and Lebanese flags in Beirut.
In contrast, a grim mood prevailed in Israel, where the prisoner swap was widely seen as a painful sacrifice. Israel returned five prisoners, among them Samir Kantar, the nation's most despised prisoner for his part in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack, and the remains of close to 200 Palestinian and Lebanese fighters in exchange for the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev: a painful reminder of Israel's futile efforts to force their release in the 2006 war.
Hezbollah had carefully kept the fate of the two missing Israeli soldiers a secret for two years, and even though the Israeli government had cautioned that the two men were almost certainly dead, it was not until television stations broadcast pictures of two black coffins being unloaded from a truck at the Israeli-Lebanese border that the country became certain of their fate. Meanwhile, criticism of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's performance intensified immediately after the exchange. Many Israeli analysts believe that this blunder has finally sealed Olmert's fate and destroyed his legacy.
There is no doubt that with this lopsided deal that Hassan Nassrallah has emerged as the victor. Even the New York Times has called the "Prisoners' Homecoming a Triumph for Hezbollah." The question remains: against whom?
On the surface, his victory is seen as against Israel and in particular against his nemesis Ehud Olmert. However, Hassan Nassrallah needed this swap deal to restore Hezbollah's image as a resistance movement dedicated to the fight against Israel after its standing was tarnished by its use of force against other Lebanese factions in May of this year.
Although a deal was brokered between Hezbollah and its rivals in Lebanon, resulting in the formation of a new government of national unity in which Hezbollah and its allies have veto power over important decisions, many of its rivals remained bitter over what many have considered as a mini coup orchestrated against them by Nassrallah.
For the time being, this triumph over Israel and Olmert appears to have united all conflicting parties in Lebanon. Yet not everyone in the Arab world has forgiven Nassrallah, and certainly not the Saudis, who tried to downplay his most recent triumph by publishing in the Saudi-financed London-based newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that the deal "cost Lebanon over $7 billion, more than 1,200 dead and 4,500 wounded Lebanese citizens."
As they say in the Middle East, "victory is in the eye of the beholder."
Jamal Dajani produces the Mosaic Intelligence Report on Link TV
Follow Jamal Dajani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamaldajani
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When you deal with terrorists you never win.
A few days ago the web site electronicIntifada presented evidence that Hezbollah had won a great victory over Israel by the excange of dead bodies. Hezbollah also received some of its living but imprisoned fighters from Israel in this exchange. Neither Hezbollah or Lebanon returned any living Israelis to Israel in this exchange. It's possible that electronicIntifada would give anyone a copy of their earlier blog if they were to apply to electronicIntifada. Google or other search engines might lead a web user to electronic
"the nation's most despised prisoner for his part in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack"
Nice way to whitewash the TERRORIST attack committed by this monster. He invaded a civilian home-- no military value whatsoever-- killed a civilian man in cold blood in front of his 4 year old daughter, and then smashed her skull open. A second child died at the hands of her mother, who accidentally smothered her while trying to silence her crying when the two were hiding from this monster and his fellow "guerillas
I think that the word "despised" says it all. Everyone knows this story. It's been all over the US media...wh
The lopsided nature of the deal only reflects the lopsided nature of Israeli reprisals. Israel retaliates for attacks on a ten or more to one ratio as a matter of (never officially expressed) policy.
So, and deal which unwinds a bit of this quid pro quo is likely to reflect that same ratio.
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If you set the value of an Israeli soldier at the worth of ten arabs, you can't expect to avoid then having to pay ten to one when you're trading for Israeli soldiers.
My husband is from the UK (I am from the US) He constantly tells me whether it's the US or Israel, or where ever in this messed up world : YOU DO NOT NEGOTIATE with terrorists. Period!
From what I watched of this messed up 2006 war, (and we watched it closely) I see that both sides LOST- NO SIDE WON. The people, the citizens of each country: Lebanon and Israel suffered from this war and I still wonder what and who was really behind it all. The question though is does Nassrallah or Olmert REALLY care? I think not... civilians are just collateral damage to both of them. Their power is far more important.
It's all just dirty power hungry leaders playing their games, and as usual, your hard working average citizen (the pawn) is the one that pays dearly for their deadly games.
I agree this is a stupid war which costs many civilians their lives. Olmert has done now with the exchange what he was supposed to do 2 years ago and could have speard all of these lives!
I'm getting really sick of this one sided sympathy for Israel. They got back TWO dead soldiers. Lebanon got back TWO HUNDRED dead soldiers. I don't see any coverage of the many, many families in Lebanon having funerals. Just the two from Israel. The huge amount of dead soldiers sent back to Lebanon are being treated like an afterthought in almost every single news story about this event - if it's mentioned at all.
Who started the war? Hezbollah or Israel? If Nassrallah did not order the abduction of the soldiers none of this would have happened.
First of all the idea that launching an invasion rather than negotiation is a legitimate response to abducting two soldiers is ridiculous. Also, even though we only hear about the two soldiers, the fact is that Israel was regularly abducting civilians, a far worse crime, without response. In particular:
"Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don’t know their names. You don’t know the names of victims. They were taken to Israel, presumably, and nobody knows their fate. The next day, something happened, which we do know about, a lot. Militants in Gaza, probably Islamic Jihad, abducted an Israeli soldier across the border. That’s Corporal Gilad Shalit. And that’s well known; first abduction is not. Then followed the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza"
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Ehud Olmert will go down in history as Israel's worst prime minister. He has performed poorly in Lebanon and has destroyed Israel's military supiriority for years to come...not to mention he is corrupt!
He will go down as Israel's George W. Bush. He will be lucky if he has a sewage plant named after him.
Great article and perspective!
The question I have is whether Hezbollah sees this exchange and "victory" as worth losing any brokering leverage they may have gained with Israel prior to the exchange? Its clear that Israel will never "trust" Hezbollah again...es
I do not expect Israel to trust Hezbollah neither the other way around. They're enemies. The bottom line, Hassan Nassrallah has shattered the myth of Israel's invincibility! He has proven that a small well-organized militia can defeat the strongest power in the region.
When you don't care about how many of your own countrymen die as a consequence of your irresponsible actions, it is indeed possible to score propaganda points against a more powerful enemy. That is what Nasrallah has done. Anyone who wishes the Lebanese people to live in peace so that they can tend to building their own society should hope that he never does it again.
You cannot dispute that Nassrallah is a master of manipulation. He knows how to push the bottons of Israel, the most pwerful country in the Middle east. He has succeeded where others have failed.
The House of Saud is right. An expensive victory. But a victory none the less for Hezbollah and for tiny Lebanon.
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