War (of Words) with Syria
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Monday, May 12, 2003
[Commonwealth Club, the nation's largest and oldest public affairs forum, hosts a speaker who will discuss Hezbollah.]
HIZBOLLAH: THE NEW POLITICAL/MILITARY MODEL
DWIGHT JAMES SIMPSON, Ph.D., Professor of International Relations, San Francisco State University
Hizbollah is an active political party in Lebanon, with elected representation in the Lebanese Parliament. Its military wing engaged Israeli occupation forces and the Israeli-sponsored South Lebanese Army, both of whom withdrew from Lebanese territory. Simpson's analysis of Hizbollah is based on extensive field experience throughout the Middle East, including a rare interview with Hizbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah.
via SF Indymedia announcement of this talk, followed by a trail of comments, including wisenheimer remarks by the editor of this page.
[Firecrackers at picnic spark international incident.]
Lebanon denies bomb thrown at Israeli town; Hezbollah ready to confront attack
AP via Ha'aretz -- May 12
BEIRUT - Lebanon yesterday denied reports that an explosive charge was thrown at an Israeli settlement from its territory, while a high ranking Hezbollah official said the guerrilla group was ready to confront any possible Israeli attack on Lebanon.
A Lebanese security official said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press that Israeli media outlets had erroneously reported that Lebanese youths had "thrown an explosive charge across the border" toward an Israeli settlement near the southern Lebanese town of Marwahin.
The statement said "picnicking youths (had thrown)... firecrackers at the mentioned area."
U.S. to Syria: Don't Be 'On Wrong Side of History'
Reuters -- May 11
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that Syria would find itself "on the wrong side of history" if it tried to destabilize postwar Iraq or continue harboring radical Palestinian groups.
Powell spoke in an Israeli television interview after launching talks with Israel and the Palestinians on implementing a new "road map" peace plan.
He said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should have "every incentive to respond" to issues he raised in talks with him in Damascus a week ago addressing strategic change in the Middle East after the fall of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in a U.S.-led war.
Washington wants Syria to help in rounding up Saddam loyalists, discourage the spread of mass-destruction weapons in the region and cease backing Palestinian and Lebanese groups that Washington classifies as terrorist, concerned that their conflict with Israel could endanger the "road map."
"What I said to (Assad) very clearly is that there are things we believe he should do if he wants a better relationship with the United States, if he wants to play a helpful role in solving the crisis in the region," Powell told Israeli TV.
"So if President Assad chooses not to respond, if he chooses to dissemble, if he chooses to find excuses, then he will find that he is on the wrong side of history," he went on.
Powell has dismissed suggestions that Syria was next on any list of U.S. military targets after Iraq.
After his meeting with Assad, Powell said Syria had taken measures to rein in Palestinian militant groups with offices in Damascus by carrying out "some closures."
Syrian officials said later the groups' offices served as media outlets and that none had been shut down. They said they were interested in dialogue, not ultimatums from Washington.
Assad, in a Newsweek magazine interview released on Saturday, linked curbing radical Palestinian groups to getting the occupied Golan Heights back from Israel.
Israel captured the Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and Assad said Syria was prepared to negotiate with Israel to get it back.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week he was ready to reopen peace negotiations with Syria but without guarantees of the outcome.
thanks, tom
Khatami In Beirut, Hizbullah High On The Agenda
IslamOnline -- May 12
BEIRUT, May 12 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Iran's President Mohammad Khatami arrived in the Lebanese capital Beirut Monday, May 12, to a tumultuous welcome by Lebanon's Shiites for a landmark three-day visit, the first by an Iranian head of state since Tehran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Greeted at Beirut airport by the Lebanese triumvirate of President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Khatami's motorcade drove through tens of thousands of people lining the route, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
[Much ado about a few comments by two Brits in Syria. Political speech seen as criminal act by Telegraph reporter.]
British Muslim students in Syria support suicide raids
The Daily Telegraph -- May 11
By Damien Mcelroy in Damascus
British muslims studying at a radical Islamic teaching centre in Syria have admitted that they support suicide attacks against Israeli targets.
Two men, who gave their names as Amir Aziz and Tahir Sharaf, told The Telegraph that they admired the action taken by Asif Mohammed Hanif, the Briton who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv bar almost two weeks ago, and his alleged accomplice, Omar Khan Sharif.
[Interview with Bashar al Assad.]
On U.S. Demands, Iraq and Sharon
Washington Post -- May 11
Syria's 37-year-old president, Bashar Assad, is facing tough choices. Recently, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asked Assad to stop Palestinian groups that support terrorist activities from functioning freely in Damascus, as they have for years. Moreover, Powell asked Assad to rein in Hezbollah -- the Lebanese-based terrorist group that operates with Syrian complicity. The U.S. focus on Syria intensified during the recent war, after military supplies and volunteers flowed across its border into Iraq. In Assad's first interview with a U.S. publication, he talked last week in Damascus with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth about the U.S. pressure and the prospects for peace between Israel and Syria. Excerpts:
Nasrallah: U.S. offers to conditionally recognize Hezbollah
Ha'aretz -- May 11
By Daniel Sobelman, Haaretz Correspondent
The secretary-general of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, says that the United States has offered to recognize his organization and its political role in Lebanon in return for a suspension of its violent actions against Israel, the adoption of a neutral position in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and intelligence cooperation between Hezbollah and the United States.
Nasrallah stressed that Hezbollah would not disarm as demanded by the United States and Israel.
via tacitus
[An analysis of Syria's grip on Lebanon.]
Lords Over Lebanon
Syria's still in charge, but the U.S. presence in Iraq could change that.
Slate -- May 8
By Michael Young
Although it went unreported in the international media, during last weekend's visit to Beirut by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, 250 protesters took to the streets demanding the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. Riot police intervened and several demonstrators were imprisoned or taken to the hospital. Judging from Powell's mollifying statements on Syria, they can probably expect little help from Washington.
[Nasrallah continues to voice defiance.]
Hezbollah may help Iraqis if they decide to fight Americans
AP via San Francisco Chronicle -- May 8
SAM F. GHATTAS
BEIRUT -- The Hezbollah leader said Thursday his guerrilla organization -- which fought Israeli forces to a standoff in southern Lebanon -- might join Iraqis if they decide to launch an insurgency against U.S. forces.
"It is a matter first for the Iraqi people to decide," Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said on the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.
Nasrallah also said his guerrillas would not disarm as the United States has demanded.
"My information is that what was demanded is for the resistance to end and be disarmed," he said expectations voiced by Secretary of State Colin Powell during a visit to Syria and Lebanon last week.
"This matter is out of the question," Nasrallah said on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.
"Are we supposed to confront the Israeli aggression by speeches?" he said in the lengthy interview which included telephone calls from viewers. "People without weapons are helpless ... All they can do is stage a demonstration."
[In my commentary I've said a few times that US pressure on Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah are at least in part about the US responding to direction from Likud. Thanks for the verification Ariel!]
Sharon Says Ready for Talks with Syria
Reuters -- May 8
By Maia Ridberg
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday he was ready to reopen peace talks with Syria without preconditions, three years after contacts collapsed over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
Sharon said his government would wait before entering into any diplomatic initiative with Syria to give time for U.S. pressure on Damascus to rein in Palestinian militants based there, as well as Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, to bear fruit.
'I held serious consultations with the foreign minister and we came to an agreement that we must wait a number of weeks to avoid interfering with American pressure on Syria or Lebanon to take steps necessary for the security of Israel,' said Sharon.