Open Democracy on Lebanon

There are a number of good articles on OpenDemocracy.net today about Lebanon - here's a quick synopsis.

Paul Rogers, Prof. of Peace Studies at Bradford and OD's regular security analyst, argues that Israel had essentially no other choice to do what they have done because of the limits of their current strategic worldview. He argues that whilst in the short-term this might work, it can't work in the longer term because of two factors: 1) firstly the tactics necessary only further radicalise others against Israel meaning that, at best, more trouble is just pushed further into future; and 2) because of the increasing availability of hi-tech weapons from the Chinese and Russian arms markets will limit how successful these military responses are anyway. The heavy damage done to Israeli warship by anti-shipping missile plus the targetting of Haifa are indicative of this. So ultimately he argues that Israel will realise that a political solution is only way to gain security. I was quite pleased to read this as this as essentially it's what I have been arguing in various discussion as well. Indeed it looks kind of obvious from where I'm sitting. But of course no one has been trying to kill me with Katushas for the last week and a half.

Fred Halliday, Prof. at LSE, pulls no punches on Hezbollah when reflecting on two days he spent with them in 2004. It's a very interesting and slightly sad personal article - particularly listing a number of fellow leftwing intellectuals and writers, both Middle Eastern and Western, murdered by various Lebanese factions or other foreign governments all connected to the blood letting of the Lebanese Civil War. The article deserves to be read in full but here are some choice snippets from his interview with Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of Hezbollah:
"On the matter of political relations with Iran, the sheikh was absolutely clear. Hizbollah regards the Iranian spiritual leader, in this case Khamenei, as its ultimate authority; all major political decisions regard Hizbollah are referred to – when not actually taken in – Iran."
And:
"[T]here was no margin of doubt in the sheikh's view that Israel was an illegitimate state and that it should be abolished. This position was bolstered, as evident in his book, by the deployment of quotes from the Qu'ran denouncing Jews and calling for a struggle against them. I put it to the sheikh that this use of the Islamic tradition, in a context of modern political conflict, was racist, a point he evidently did not accept."

Finally, after two lefties, arch righty Prof. Roger Scruton of Oxford pertinently writes about how Hezbollah damages the idea of Lebanon as a sovereign state. He includes some interesting information on the Lebanese national army that I had not come across elsewhere:
"75% of the Lebanese army is Shi'a. This preponderance is owed less to confessional bias (though that exists) than to the fact that young, unemployed Shi'a from rural districts are by far the easiest recruits – a demographic trend not foreseen when the confessional state was set up. Not surprisingly, the Lebanese army, confronted with the task of disarming Hizbollah, refused to enter into conflict with its co-religionists, and has relinquished the southern border to this heavily armed, and insanely belligerent Islamist faction." He also notes that the current Minister of Defence, a post always traditionally reserved for a representative of the Greek Orthodox community, is now also a Shi'a.