Hezbollah believes
Hizballah believes in linkages. That's a term for the idea that everything in the middle east depends on something else that must happen before after or with it. Hizballah believes in a Palestine Settlement, or maybe just Palestine because they don't believe in Israel. Some in Israel believe in linkages too, that its all about Iran
Is Iran driving new Saudi diplomacy? | csmonitor.com. But not the folks in the U S: 'linkages, what linkages?' This at least is the thesis put forward last month in a Washington Post column by
Robert Satloff - Forget the Domino Theories - washingtonpost.com who proclaims: "The wise men (and woman) don't know their history. In boldly suggesting that "all key issues in the Middle East are inextricably linked," the authors of the Iraq Study Group report seem stunningly indifferent to the past 25 years of Middle East politics." It's true, I think, the Israel-Palestine situation rarely, if ever, comes up in middle east political discussions.
The bigger question is does anyone know or care what Hizballah thinks? Does anyone know or care about Arab public opinion in general? Shibley Telhami does. Telhami who professes across the way at the government department at Maryland does public opinion research with Zogby polls in the middle east. It is a project which does ongoing polling in six countries over an extended period. In early December he released the most recent Lebanon portion through the Brookings Inst.
Lebanese Public Opinion Amidst a New Cycle of Violence (for the graphs.
2006 University of Maryland/Zogby International public opinion poll) I had seen a Kuwaiti news service piece on this, had saved it and typed a few notes up, then set it aside. Ironically when I picked it up again to write this post I see Laura Rozen has it up in her web log War and Piece
Via Marc Lynch, a new Zogby International poll (.pdf) co-released by Shibley Telhami . I would feel scooped, but I don't get paid for this. I have ground the Kana Article through Apple's OS X summarizer and extracted a few sentences to give you the sense of it Analysts of a recent annual public opinion poll taken in Lebanon said they were struck by how emboldened the Shia appear in Lebanon and the region, and how the confrontation between the United States and its allies in the region, versus Iran and its allies in the region, is coloring the attitudes of people of all sects and religions.
...David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist and Mideast writer, said his conclusions, based on the poll results, are that the Shia-dominant Hezbollah in Lebanon, who are backed by Iran and Syria, believe they are winning in the region, that Israel is weaker, and they feel no need to compromise on a two-state solution in the Palestinian Israeli conflict -- an idea which he described as "consistently the most dangerous" one in the Middle East.
...One of the most lopsided findings among all the poll questions, showing up among all Lebanese, was the agreement that the step the United States could take that would most improve their views of the U.S. would be if America would broker a comprehensive Mideast peace with Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders and establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Kuna site|Story page|Analysts of poll in Lebanon struck by Shia rise in...12/1/2006
Some earlier comments from Prof Telhami are also illustrative. From a forum held last summer and reprinted in the September Middle East Policy :
... who cares about Arab public opinion. We have a lot of people in this town who say, what does it matter? Public opinion in the Arab world really doesn't matter much. ... you have in this case is a huge gap between public opinion and governments, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and others that have been very bold in a way in going against that tide and taking the position that Hezbollah is at least in part, if not mostly, to blame for the Lebanese crisis.
...All of the discourse that followed 9/11 was initially about the political systems in the region: the absence of democracy is correlated with the strength of anti-American terrorism. It was conventional wisdom. When you look at this environment in which we operate, you see that our policies are widening the gap between governments and publics. Try to imagine how the Saudis or the Egyptians or the Jordanians tomorrow morning are going to be able to open up their political system when they have a strongly opposed public opinion
...the first casualty of all of this most certainly will be any idea that democracy or a more participatory kind of political system will emerge as a consequence of this widening gap that can be addressed in the short term by insecure governments only through increased repression.
Blackwell Synergy - Middle East Policy, Volume 13 Issue 3 Page 1 - September 2006 (manually cherry-picking the quotes)
In Lebanon Hizballah has been able to leverage the border war with Israel to undergo a transformation from being merely a representation of Lebanese public opinion at odds with official state opinion to being the Government. Aided in part by the degree it has already usurped common public services among the Shia'a. Part of the disinclination the the US and allied goverments have with according any degree of legitimacy to Hizballah is that it is not seen as behaving as a government: organizing and apportioning a societies resources to its public needs. But as a distributor of some other entities largess and not disinteresdly. This can be seen as a distortion of the political economy of Lebanon. One that prevents a close accounting of Hizballah's leadership and aims. The end of the year was also full of articles concerned with the collapse of the Cedar revolution, as Hizballah tries to force the the current government to step down In a very general way this is true for Hamas as well. Hamas coming to political power within the Palestine authority seemed to catch the Administration off balance, Now it seems some took it as an unendurable affront. A post in Conflicts Forum posited a link between the recent accidently discovery that Israel was moving large arms shipments to Fatah
Israel Confirms Arms Shipment Sent to Aid Abbas - New York Times and the State Department specifically that Elliot Abrams may be trying to deliberately facilitate a civil war within Palestine 'Elliot Abrams' uncivil war - Conflicts Forum. This is the wrong appraoch. Though it fits with Secratary Rice's new realpolitic based foreign policy free of the least moral anchor
Waking Up to Reality: Condi makes nice in the Middle East. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine. If you can conjecture or at least frame Hamas's attraction to Palestinian voters, beyond its own base
Old allegiances crumble in battle for Palestinian hearts and minds | Israel and the Middle East | Guardian Unlimited, is based on frustration and represents a desire to send a message then it is possible to return a message that this represents a costly tangent off the road to a lasting settlement.
It was a little surprising to read that talks of some kind were occuring between Israel and Syria regarding their issues
Syrian, Israeli backdoor talks now emerging | csmonitor.com. While it was unclear what sort of talks these were, I tend to think that truly independent conversations among academics is so unremarkable that it would never get written up in the papers; therefore what we saw described here probably was low level back-channel diplomacy. One thing that seemed clear about this, that it was over when it was sent public. This brings up the question of just how much leeway does Israel really have in exploring avenues such as this, Rozen's War and piece web log brought up the subject of the "American Veto" which seems centered largely in the vice presidents office
Cheney kept abreast of Israel-Syria talks. One can only hope such oversight extends as much to initiating war as it does to wayward peace talks.
11:33:25 PM  ;;
|
|
