Hezbollah and the Axis of Refusal: Hamas, Iran and Syria

Abstract

Hezbollah has acquired a dual and contradictory reputation: as a legitimate political actor in Lebanon and as a terrorist organisation in the USA and Israel. This duality can be explained if we understand that Hezbollah is a nationalist entity that defines itself primarily within the Lebanese polity, as well as an anti-imperialist party intent on countering the regional hegemony of Israel and the USA. Forming alliances with Hamas, Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has become part of a ‘rejectionist’ axis that seeks to oppose perceived imperialism in the Middle East; this stance has become increasingly entrenched in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Characterisations that focus on Hezbollah as a military opponent confirm the organisation's perceived need for a rejectionist stance. International acceptance of Hezbollah as a legitimate political actor within the Lebanese polity, on the other hand, would help to bring the basis of the rejectionist axis into question.

Notes

The author would like to thank Professor A Richard Norton for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

1 The ‘A-team of terrorism’ label was coined by Richard Armitage, former US deputy secretary of state. Hezbollah has appeared on the US State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations almost since that list's inception in 2001; it was also placed on the Canadian and Australian lists of terrorist organisations, in December 2002 and June 2003, respectively. Despite US pressure, and the insistence of the UK and the Netherlands, the European Union has so far refused to place Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organisations.

2 Strindberg and Warn have argued that the designation of Hezbollah and Hamas as ‘enemies of the United States’ owes a lot to stereotyping and over-simplification. They see a Manichean model based on a neo-Orientalist vision of a ‘global Arab–Islamic Terrorist cabal’ and on Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ theory which allows the US to lump together Hezbollah, Hamas and their state allies, Iran and Syria with ‘Osama bin Laden, al-Qa'ida and the Taliban as enemies of the civilized world’. A Strindberg & M Warn, ‘Realities of resistance: Hizballah, the Palestinian rejectionists and al-Qa'ida compared’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 34(3), 2005, pp 24–25.

3 Several US officials condemned Hezbollah in association with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, in which a number of US Air Force personnel lost their lives; however, the imputations of Hezbollah's involvement in this attack remain unsubstantiated.

4 AR Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007, p 45.

5 According to Mona Harb and Reinoud Leenders, the charities maintained by Hezbollah include two categories of institutions: those providing services related to the armed resistance—for example, Al-Shahid and al-Juraha—and those delivering services to a wider group of needy users—for example, Al-Mua'ssasa al-Tarbawiyya and al-Qard al-Hassan. Hezbollah also supports other, more autonomous charitable institutions, three of which are branches of Iranian institutions: Al- Imdad; Al-Hay'a al-Suhiyya; and Jihad al-Bina'a. See M Harb & R Leenders, ‘Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, “terrorism” and the politics of perception’, Third World Quarterly, 26(1), 2005, pp 173–197.

6 The most important lapse occurred in May 2008, when Hezbollah turned its weapons inwards and used them against fellow compatriots when its armed wing attacked predominantly Sunni West Beirut.

7 M Kramer, ‘What do the present financial crisis and US Middle East policy have in common?’, Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, reprinted in The New Republic, online edition, 26 November 2008, at http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/, accessed 7 March 2009.

8 Other commentators who express a view similar to that of Kramer include Eyal Zisser and Magnus Ranstorp. For example, Zisser says ‘It now seems obvious, however, that Hizbullah has not changed, and that it remains a radical and militant organization whose principal objective is to lead an armed struggle against Israel. The fact that in recent years its military power has grown to strategic proportions, with the aid and encouragement of Iran, proves that the Lebanese “veil” worn by Hizbullah is exceedingly thin. Sham “Lebanonization” allows the organization to continue building its military strength undisturbed and to attract a political following for future struggles, not only against Israel but also within Lebanon.’ E Zisser, ‘The Return of Hizbullah’, Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2002, at http://www.meforum.org/499/the-return-of-hizbullah, accessed 16 March 2009.

9 KS Aghaie, The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi'i Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran, Seattle, WA: Washington University Press, 2004, p 87.

10 Ibid, p 110.

11 Ibid, p 132.

12 Ali Shari'ati, an Iranian studying sociology in Paris in the 1960s, was influenced by the ideas of Jean Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon. Fanon's work, especially The Wretched of the Earth, so excited Shari'ati that he translated the book into Persian. Fanon and Shari'ati also corresponded and exchanged ideas, especially about the role of Islam in the broad anti-colonial war. Shari'ati was struck by Fanon's understanding of violence as a means of liberation from colonialism; he therefore restated liberationist themes using Shi'i terms and symbols. Nevertheless, Fousi Slisli has argued that Islam is naturally prone to resistance against colonialism or to aggression through resistance. Slisli maintained that ‘there is an elephant in the Wretched of the Earth … It is Islam and its anti-colonial tradition in Algeria. Fanon continuously cites and exalts this tradition … But if Fanon cites [it] everywhere, he does not reference it anywhere’. Slisli maintains that ‘what The Wretched of the Earth actually describes is the combination of two systems of organization—one Marxist, the other Islamic’. F Slisli, ‘Islam: the elephant in Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 17, 2008, p 97.

13 The Open letter also states ‘America, its Atlantic Pact allies, and the Zionist entity in the holy land of Palestine, attacked us and continue to do so without respite … This is why we are, more and more, in a state of permanent alert in order to repel aggression and defend our religion, our existence, our dignity’. The last paragraph of the letter maintains, ‘We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world’.

14 Norton, Hezbollah, p 38.

15 H Assi, ‘Hezbollah New Manifesto: we want a strong, united Lebanon’, at http://www.almanar. com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=113379&language=en, accessed 5 December 2009.

16 The Movement was the brainchild of Imam Sadr and Catholic Bishop Gregoire Haddad and had no Islamic identity.

17 A translation of this document is available at http://212.150.54.123/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=409, accessed 2 March 2009.

18 N Qassem, Hizbullah: The Story from Within, London: Saqi Press, 2005, p 187.

19 Ibid, p 288.

20 Ibid, p 191.

21 J Alagha, Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006, pp 150–151.

22 H Assi, ‘Hezbollah New Manifesto’.

23 Asher Kaufman claims that the Shebaa Farms situation arose from the way that France originally delineated the Syrian–Lebanese borders. After their independence both countries did nothing to rectify the border anomalies. Since 1920 maps have located the area within Syria; however, in all practical matters the area was considered a part of Lebanon. See A Kaufman, ‘Who owns the Shebaa Farms? Chronicle of a territorial dispute’, Middle East Journal, 56(4), 2002, pp 576–596.

24 Hezbollah rejected what is known as the ‘Blue Line’, the border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel that was established by the United Nations' cartography team for the purposes of confirming the Israeli withdrawal. The ‘Blue Line’ is not identical to the original border between the two countries that was established in the armistice of 1948 following the Arab–Israeli war.

25 See Norton, Hezbollah, p 90.

26 See D Sobelman, New Rules of the Game: Israel and Hizbollah after the Withdrawal from Lebanon, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Publication No 69, 2004, at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/, accessed 7 March 2009.

27 International Crisis Group, ‘Israel/Hizbollah/Lebanon: avoiding renewed conflict’, Middle East Report, 59, 2006, at http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4480, accessed 7 March 2009.

28 Poll conducted by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, reported in ‘Briefing: Lebanese public opinion’, Mideast Monitor, 1(3), 2006, at http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0609/0609_6.htm, accessed 28 March 2009.

29 The term ‘Divine Victory’ is a play on Nasrallah's name.

30 A Saad-Ghorayeb, ‘Hezbollah's apocalypse now’, Washington Post, 23 July 2006, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072101363.html, accessed 16 March 2009.

31 AN Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizbullah, Syracuse, NY: University of Syracuse Press, 2004, pp 33–48.

32 Ibid, p 63. See also M Levitt, ‘Hezbollah finances: funding the Party of God’, in J Giraldo & H Trinkunas (eds), Terrorism Financing and State Responses: A Comparative Perspective, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

33 Qassem, Hizbullah, p 240.

34 Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizbullah, p 71.

35 International Crisis Group, ‘Hizbullah and the Lebanese crisis’, Middle East Report, 69, 2007, at http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5113&l=1, accessed 7 March 2009.

36 See Alagha, Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology, p 172; AH Cordesman, ‘Preliminary lessons of the Israeli–Hezbollah war’, Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2006, at http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/060817_isr_hez_lessons.pdf, accessed 7 March 2009; GE Fuller, ‘The Hizballah–Iran connection: model for Sunni resistance’, Washington Quarterly, 30(1), 2006–07, pp 139–150; and M Mazzetti, ‘Some in GOP say Iran threat is played down’, New York Times, 24 August 2006.

37 Qassem, Hizbollah, pp 56–57.

38 PG Pinto, ‘Pilgrimage, commodities, and religious objectification: the making of transnational Shi'ism between Iran and Syria’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 27(1), 2007, pp 109–125.

39 See A Shatz, ‘In search of Hezbollah’, New York Review of Books, 51(7), 2004, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17060 (accessed 8 March 2009); and E El-Hokayem, ‘Hizballah and Syria: outgrowing the proxy relationship’, Washington Quarterly, 30(2), 2007, pp 35–52.

40 GC Gambill & ZK Abdelnour, ‘Hezbollah between Tehran and Damascus’, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, 4(2), 2002, at http://www.meib.org/articles/0202_l1.htm, accessed 8 March 2009.

41 Alagha, Shifts in Hizbollah's Ideology, p 173.

42 M Wärn, ‘Stressing the probable, postponing the improbable: Hizballah in the shadow of the Al-Aqsa intifada’, Civil Wars, 6(3), 2003, p 125.

43 S Mishal & A Sela, The Palestinian Hamas, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp 65–66.

44 N Noe, Voice of Hezbollah, London: Verso, 2007, p 250, emphasis added.

45 Quoted in JP Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism, London: IB Tauris, 2004, p 161.

46 It is worth noting that most allegations of operational links between Hezbollah and Hamas originate from Israeli intelligence sources. They tend to be speculative and should be treated with caution. The Washington Institute's report is available online: Z Palti and M Levitt, ‘Assessing Hizballah's West Bank foothold’, 2004, at http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2154, accessed 8 March 2009.

47 F Halliday, ‘The left and the jihad’, Open Democracy, 8 September 2006.