Hossein Jaberi Ansari sat in an interview to Mehr News Political service last week to discuss the developments since the inception of Hezbollah on the ground of the Palestinian issue. Mr. Jaberi Ansari criticized the Arab countries to prefer and actually working with Resistance in a master-and-client mode of operation where these countries occupied higher grounds in terms of benefits and costs, a mode which weakened the Resistance front in upcoming years:
We are on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 33-Day War between Hezbollah and Zionist regime, which was a golden chapter in the history of Hezbollah and a blemish on the Zionists’ record; for a start, would you please present our readers with an analysis of the war and the changes the war brought in the military arrangement on the ground as well as Hezbollah’s military capability which helped defeat the Zionists?
I remember that I had been speaking to a high-ranking Hezbollah official who was trying to talk in Persian that Imam [Khomeini] “once told us to start from the scratch;” in many occasions as well, I would tell the meetings that many great plans are started from the scratch or even before the scratch. The piety, the perseverance and cooperation along drawing up past experiences soon would advance the plan from the scratch down to a place of triumph, which no middle minds would understand the scope and the depth.
Hezbollah’s feat in 33-Day War was not a conventional experience, and it evaded conventional measures of success; Zionist regime have one of the strongest armies of the world and the region. Their plan was quite ambitious and they continued the war to such magnitude since their master plan was to obliterate Hezbollah and the Resistance as well as their institutional tinges for good.
However, the course of events was contrary to their plan and displayed a higher level of Hezbollah’s achievement in the path to legitimate defense and resistance. I think, in any analysis of the War, we should examine the time span when Hezbollah was conceived and when the War started. In the time of Hezbollah’s birth, Zionists had advanced up to capital Beirut, camping in the outskirts of the city; Egypt, the most formidable of all Arab countries had a great shift of alliance from Resistance, leaving the Arab camp in confrontation with Israel, which was of detrimental consequence for Palestinian issue; in such circumstances, Islamic Revolution of 1979 had emerged, toppling the corrupt ancien régime which improved the balance of power to the interests of Muslim nations and especially Palestine.
Despite the fresh spiritual force, despair engulfed the Arab world who was grieving the outgoing Egypt from the alliance which they believed no confrontation with Israel would bring anything concrete results for the Arab camp; as manifest in the Arab League session of the time, which demonized Egypt through a three-point resolution, they opposed Egypt’s shift of the pivot; however, the general trend was the mode of hopelessness and even Palestinian Resistance and the SAF were walking in a track where they perceived the idea that no Arab power would curb Israel from its expansionist policies.
In such time, the Revolution in Iran provided a dim hope: that even without Arab states faltering in their support of the Resistance in the Palestinian territories, the project would be advanced; the Islamic Revolution, mainly based on grass-roots support, provided an example for the Arab masses especially in Palestine. The idea gave birth to Intifada, with new movements in Palestine and within the Resistance front, with Hezbollah, which relied upon public resistance and Islamic ideology which endorsed legitimate defense emerging in Lebanon; HAMAS is a product of such times when Islamic Jihad was still in formative years.
Intifada had provided a tool for Palestinians against Zionists for decades since and smaller public intifadas emerged by the public, with gradually two major movements controlling its direction: the first is states under the name of Arab-Israeli war which is more officially known in history, and the second is public movements, a resistance front with a more elitist hue, elites here meaning the pioneers and the providers of arms in small scales to the people, and which triggered armed opposition.
The so-called beginning from the scratch, now largely grown by piling of experience of past decades, posed ultimately on Zionists in 2000, unconditional retreat from parts of the Occupied Territories.
This is for the first time in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict that Zionists are forced to leave the lands they had occupied unconditionally; this was of a huge impact on the conflict, which was the fact that until this time, Resistance was content of keeping the dim light of hope for the posterity; now however, there was a political agenda of resistance, which imposed itself to the concrete political entity which seeks certain results. Its mission was no longer keeping the posterity informed and motivated.
This was a strategic change in regional equation of power; before that, we have a turning point in April 1996 where Zionist regime invaded Lebanon, to which Hezbollah responded, with a balance delicately kept by Nissan Agreement (April Agreement) of 1996 by international mediation. Up to that time, Israel would feel free to target any point in Palestine, with assassinations, bombardments, and other military operations crippling the Resistance front, with no obvious boundary on the horizon for its atrocities.
Strategic change however came in 1996 when for the first time, the Zionist Regime is under international pressure and Resistance front finds chances of responding to Israel’s unrestrained onslaughts on Lebanon and elsewhere; after that, Hezbollah would respond legitimately to Zionist attacks which before any international arbitration panel and any Islamic court would deem defensive and legitimate, enjoying international acceptance, thus greatly forestalling Zionist’s untrammeled invasion of Lebanon and Palestine. These developments coincide Camp David when Yasser Arafat was facing an agreement seen by the Arab world as the end of Intifada and systematic concessions made by Palestinian side; however, Arafat was talking from a position of strength thanks to sum of developments on the ground that, conditions signing of Camp David on a general agreement of the deal by Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (then Organization of Islamic Conference). All this is under the influence of Intifada and Islamic Revolution and the waves sweeping the whole region. With that, a new Intifada emerged in Palestine; Arafat was put under siege in his office and poisoned under suspicious circumstances. He was allowed to go outside for treatment before his death, however the treatment is belated and Arafat’s mission is over.
I had been saying elsewhere that Israel had enjoyed the despair, spiritual defeat, and general feeling of disunity of its rival front; psychological warfare is important. The regime’s existence is benefited more from the systematic incompetence of the Arab world and world of Islam in general than its real strength; the situation has given dominance to the mood that resistance against Zionist regime would achieve nothing concrete; the invaluable contribution of the resistance front has been to help Arab countries to overcome this general reluctance which served submission.
In recent years, repeated cases of great strategic errors of judgement, that is, failure to identify strategic priorities and turning a blind eye on them has been the source of trouble for Arab rulers, with states swept by the destructive consequences of this error of judgement. In fact, triumph of the resistance in 1996, 2000, and 2006 in Lebanon and other minor victories in Palestine notably retreat from Gaza Strip would have been more and more restricting for the Zionist regime if the trend had been continued; however, the case was to the contrary and the regime found opportunity to free itself from the restrictions of the situation and for the time being, it breathe.
You said that the Islamic Revolution provided Resistance broader and newer vistas; what achievements and mutual success brought by both what is now identified as ‘Resistance front,’ and the Islamic Revolution? Would it be said that it had been only the Islamic Revolution which improved and supported Resistance, or else, they [Resistance] also had something concrete for further success of the Revolution as their contribution?
A distinguishing feature of the Revolution is that in its interaction with Resistance front, it established a new trend; other states would prefer master-and-client approach in dealing with the Resistance front; however, the modus operandi of the Revolution in dealing with Resistance front was based on common ideals and objectives and mutual cooperation in attaining those ideals, while both sides occupied a relatively flat ground in political stature. Hezbollah of Lebanon provides a quite distinctive phenomenon; before the Revolution, countries in the region developed a master-and-client mode of interaction with the Resistance which was a major source of the stalemate in Palestinian question.
Islamic Revolution and Hezbollah provide example of a cooperation based on common ideals; the reality is that popular movements in the region which profited from this mode of cooperation; their local and limited scope turned larger and more extensive in scope and represented wider Muslim front against the Zionism and other imperial powers and their intervention. Thus, Islamic Revolution was a turning point in time in history and a momentous event which instilled hope to a front already destroyed by their internal conflict over the necessity of resistance or the necessity of abandoning it; the charismatic leadership of the late Imam Khomeini was also contributed to the development.
End of Part One