The Iron Grip of Hezbollah http://www.sundayherald.com/57113
EYEWITNESS: Up close with the organisation Israel is determined to crush, Hugh Macleod sees a fierce determination to fight on in South Lebanon THEY were on to us within a matter of minutes. As the thump of Israeli artillery pounding the valley below shook the house, the two Hezbollah gunmen who had run to intercept our car as we pulled into Arnoun, a strategic mountain-top village 5km from Lebanon's southeast border with Israel, stood blocking the doorway and demanding to know what we were doing here. "They were obviously not expecting to see anyone up here," said my translator, looking on nervously as the men, armed with American-made M16 automatic rifles and wearing camouflage, bulging ammo pockets and black beards, radioed a message to their commander. After taking names and numbers from our mobile phones, with a little cajoling and offers of some cigarettes, the Hezbollah men, known for their tight discipline and secrecy, agreed to talk - at least for a few minutes. "It is not going to be long before we defeat Israel," said the elder militiaman, pacing around the front room of the house set against the dramatic ruins of Beaufort castle, the mountain top fortress just above Arnoun that has been a strategic stronghold in the wars for the Holy Land for everyone from Christian crusaders and Palestinian militants to Jewish conscripts. "They will not succeed with their land incursion because those who believe in God will never surrender," he said, when asked if he was concerned about the prospect that four weeks into its fight with the militant wing of the Islamic group, Israel has launched its largest ground invasion of Lebanon since 1982, placing Arnoun, once again, on the front line. "This is a war for Lebanon, not for sects," the gunman insisted, blowing the cigarette smoke from his nose as he moved to the window, from where he could see the houses of Shebaa Farms, the disputed land at the borders of Lebanon, Israel and Syria that Hezbollah says it is fighting to liberate from Israeli occupation, as well as the Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli prisons. "In the end, Bush, Blair and all of them are oppressors. Blair has eyes, but he cannot see." We had come to Arnoun to visit a Lebanese Shia who we knew had returned to the village with the intention of defending his house . Though a veteran of the Lebanese civil war, the former fighter had been asked by Hezbollah to leave, assured that his fighting support was not required. There is no shortage of support for Hezbollah here. In this their heartland and bastion, people rally to their cause and the party's grip on the surrounding towns and villages remains tenacious in the face of the current Israeli onslaught. "Every Israeli rocket that lands here is like a sugar sweet to us," said 74-year-old grocer Hani Hamad, undaunted by the barrage, sitting beside untouched piles of fruit and vegetables in the once bustling market town of Nabatiyeh, 8km north of Arnoun, where the faces of the martyrs killed fighting Israel fly on flags and Hezbollah security keep journalists away from displaced families sheltering in a local school. As Israel continues to fail to make good on its threat to re-occupy south Lebanon up to the Litani River, around 30km north of the border, the success of Hezbollah's guerrilla warfare - its hit and run strategy, whereby small groups of militants are continuing to fire ever more rockets ever further into Israel - is galvanising unprecedented Arab and Muslim support for a group Washington considers a terrorist organisation. Every day, the skies above Tyre still hum with the sound of Israeli jets, Apache helicopters and drones seeking out the shifting launch sites from where Hezbollah fighters fire Katyusha rockets from the back of mobile launchers before melting back into the landscape. But a day after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had made an "unparalleled" dent into Hezbollah's capability, the militants fired 230 rockets into Israel and on Friday rockets struck near the Israeli city of Hadera, the deepest rocket attack into Israel since the conflict began on July 12. At least 75 Israelis have so far died in such attacks. Israel has put more than 10,000 troops into Lebanon and says it has carved out a zone containing 20 villages up to 7km from its border in an effort to create a buffer zone it hopes will be filled by an international peacekeeping force. But after four weeks of fighting, the first television images of captured Hezbollah fighters continue to be counterbalanced by pictures of anguished and injured Israeli soldiers returning from a front they have failed to wrest from Hezbollah's iron grip. An Israeli commando raid on a flat suspected by the Israelis of being used by a senior Hezbollah figure in the north of Tyre in the early hours of yesterday morning left at least eight Israeli soldiers wounded, with Hezbollah claiming to have killed one commando. Ambulance workers said six people were killed, including two from Hezbollah and one soldier from the Lebanese army who was at a nearby checkpoint. Outside the charred flat in the Abaseeye district of Tyre, which appeared to have been rocketed by an Israeli Apache helicopter, large smears of blood on pockmarked walls and driveways scattered with M16 cartridges showed evidence of the ferocity of the firefight. At least one armoured vehicle of the Lebanese Army was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, with Hezbollah claiming the Lebanese army had assisted them in their fight with the Israeli commandos who had landed near an orange grove, cut a hole through a barbed wire fence and targeted the second floor of an apartment building. In Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who once welcomed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Lebanese capital to discuss US support for Lebanese "sovereignty" and freedom from Syrian military occupation, now finds himself thanking the "martyrs" of Hezbollah while the UN continues to fail to call for a ceasefire in a conflict that has killed around 900 Lebanese civilians, injured over 3000 and displaced up to one million. An Israeli airstrike near the Syrian border that killed 33 people, mostly Syrian farmworkers, on Friday, a day after the bombing of bridges in the heartlands of the Christian north, provoked outcry from all corners of Lebanese society, drowning out efforts by Christian Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt to raise questions about the legitimacy of Hezbollah's fight. It was the second deadliest strike in Lebanon, after an air raid killed at least 54 civilians in the village of Qana last Sunday. "In the West you never understand the problems of the East," said Shukrallah Hajj, Archbishop of the Christian Maronite in Tyre, asked if he was concerned over the growing authority of Hezbollah. "It is very difficult to marginalise Lebanon from the Arab Israeli conflict. The message of Lebanon is peace but when there is conflict in the region we cannot absolve ourselves from that." In a speech on Thursday night, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah spelled out the regional implications of the conflict. "Go to Bush and be men for a day. Tell him what you tell your public, for in the new Middle East there will be no place for your seats of power," he said, addressing Arab leaders in comments sure to send shudders down the spines of the US-allied rulers of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a country which initially criticised Hezbollah's cross border raid to kidnap two Israeli soldiers. In Baghdad, as if on cue, tens of thousands of supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr demonstrated in support of Hezbollah on Friday, while in Tehran a crowd threw firebombs at the British embassy. In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed eight Palestinians on Friday and Saturday. Meanwhile, back on the frontlines of southern Lebanon itself Hezbollah's sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group's deadliest weapons in the fighting . Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a rag-tag militia. Hezbollah has fired Russian-made Metis-M anti-tank missiles and owns European-made Milan missiles, the Israeli army confirmed on Friday. On Thursday and Friday alone, these missiles killed seven Israeli soldiers and damaged three Israeli-made Merkava tanks - vaunted as symbols of Israel's military might. Israeli media say most of the 45 soldiers killed in four weeks of fighting were hit by anti-tank missiles. "They (Hezbollah guerrillas) have some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles in the world," said Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior military intelligence officer who retired earlier this summer. "This is not a militia, it's an infantry brigade with all the support units," Kuperwasser said. That next stage of the conflict would more than likely see Israeli forces push north towards the Litani River. Standing in their way are Hezbollah fighters who have already shown themselves to a be a formidable opponent. Despite the diplomatic overtures emanating from Washington and elsewhere, across south Lebanon there is a growing sense that things on the ground will get much worse before they get any better. For the time being at least, Hezbollah are not for turning. 06 August 2006 FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. 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