The eyes of much of the Middle East, including onlookers in Israel, turned again today to a speech by the Secretary General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah. In a long anticipated speech, Nasrallah said he would provide evidence to support the claim that Israel was behind the assassination for the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. ( A good synopsis was blogged live here)
Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb on February 14th of that year. The assassination led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon six months later and a string of murders and assassinations which followed threatened to send Lebanon back into the sectarian violence it had overcome after the end of the Lebanese civil war.
Despite presenting his case for an hour and a half, sometimes showing videos which featured the ominous type of music you might hear in a Ramadan soap opera, we are no closer to knowing who was behind the killing of Rafic Hariri and it is likely that we never will be.
The presentation put together political analysis and circumstantial evidence that would lead one to believe that Israel could be implicated in the assassination. But this approach is not new. What is new, was the surprising revelation divulged by Nasrallah for the first time today, that Hezbollah compromised signals from Israel reconnaissance planes and has been doing so for years. He claimed that Hezbollah has a searchable archive of Israeli footage spanning space and time. It is from this archive, he claims, that Hezbollah was able to find Israeli aerial reconnaissance tracing the exact routes Hariri used in Beirut on a regular basis as well other potentially eye-brow raising clips. He then asks why, in the way a trial lawyer would in a closing statement, would Israel survey Hariri's daily route as well as spy on others who have no connection to Hezbollah.
This is not really interesting to me, though reading some initial reactions and watching some of the initial press coverage of this in the Arab world tells me many others are as intrigued as Nasrallah would like them to be. For those who are unaware, Israel considers Lebanon an enemy state, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Israel has footage of every square inch of Lebanese soil, or Syrian soil, or Jordanian soil, or even Iranian soil for that matter. Those in the Arab world who really question why Israel was taking this footage make the oft made mistake of underestimating Israel capabilities and use of information. As evidence this is at most circumstantial and, at the least, expected.
Yet regardless to that, the fact that Hezbollah was able to compromise Israeli reconnaissance for so long without being noticed shows just how adept and capable Hezbollah is. This is a feat that is probably beyond the capacity of the Lebanese Army. Israeli media, has not (as of this writing) acknowledged the hack. It's likely that the State has put a gag on this for a short period of time and will eventually confirm it.
This is precisely the sort of thing which has gained Nasrallah and his party their credibility. Unlike many Arab leaders who may talk a big game, when Nasrallah says he will do something, he almost always follows through, usually with some cost to Israel. With a mere militia, Nasrallah's party has been able to operate against the Israelis as well, or better than, any other Arab state often because of technological or strategic tactics.
This is reminiscent of the time during the war on Lebanon in 2006 when Nasrallah appeared on live television asking the audience to watch as an Israeli Naval vessel would momentarily be attacked. Sure enough, moments later Arabic satellite channels carried the images of an Israeli Naval vessel ablaze off the Lebanese coast. Israel would not publicly admit to this until hours later.
Nasrallah continues to be a master of presentation, media and messaging. I noted last week how he is also politically adept and used the border clash which took place last week to convey a message of unity.
In other news today, Rep. Howard Berman, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is putting a hold on the 100 million dollars in "security assistance" the US was to provide to the Lebanese Army.
This, along with a confluence of other factors including the seemingly warming ties between Lebanon and Syria over the past few years, the functioning of the current unity government, the increased aggressiveness of the domestic security apparatus to find Israeli spies, and the recent boldness displayed by the Lebanese Army to defend its territory suggests that Lebanon's armed capabilities today are under a far more serious and unified (though not yet united) command than they have ever been. Lebanon, even with Hezbollah at its disposal, does not constitute and offensive threat to Israel. It's increasingly clear however, that Lebanon will no longer be easy for Israel to push around.
To Israel, which has sought to divide and conquer Lebanon for decades (and it has often succeeded), this new yet fragile political reality must be cause for discomfort.
As much discomfort for Israelis as, say, watching a Hassan Nasrallah speech.
*UPDATE: Elias Muhanna, who live blogged the event, posted at the ME Chanel at ForeignPolicy.com today:
**UPDATE: Good job, Howard Berman. I am sure this was precisely what was intended when the congress decided to cut off the $100 million in military aid to Lebanon. From Reuters:
read more...
Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb on February 14th of that year. The assassination led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon six months later and a string of murders and assassinations which followed threatened to send Lebanon back into the sectarian violence it had overcome after the end of the Lebanese civil war.
Despite presenting his case for an hour and a half, sometimes showing videos which featured the ominous type of music you might hear in a Ramadan soap opera, we are no closer to knowing who was behind the killing of Rafic Hariri and it is likely that we never will be.
The presentation put together political analysis and circumstantial evidence that would lead one to believe that Israel could be implicated in the assassination. But this approach is not new. What is new, was the surprising revelation divulged by Nasrallah for the first time today, that Hezbollah compromised signals from Israel reconnaissance planes and has been doing so for years. He claimed that Hezbollah has a searchable archive of Israeli footage spanning space and time. It is from this archive, he claims, that Hezbollah was able to find Israeli aerial reconnaissance tracing the exact routes Hariri used in Beirut on a regular basis as well other potentially eye-brow raising clips. He then asks why, in the way a trial lawyer would in a closing statement, would Israel survey Hariri's daily route as well as spy on others who have no connection to Hezbollah.
This is not really interesting to me, though reading some initial reactions and watching some of the initial press coverage of this in the Arab world tells me many others are as intrigued as Nasrallah would like them to be. For those who are unaware, Israel considers Lebanon an enemy state, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Israel has footage of every square inch of Lebanese soil, or Syrian soil, or Jordanian soil, or even Iranian soil for that matter. Those in the Arab world who really question why Israel was taking this footage make the oft made mistake of underestimating Israel capabilities and use of information. As evidence this is at most circumstantial and, at the least, expected.
Yet regardless to that, the fact that Hezbollah was able to compromise Israeli reconnaissance for so long without being noticed shows just how adept and capable Hezbollah is. This is a feat that is probably beyond the capacity of the Lebanese Army. Israeli media, has not (as of this writing) acknowledged the hack. It's likely that the State has put a gag on this for a short period of time and will eventually confirm it.
This is precisely the sort of thing which has gained Nasrallah and his party their credibility. Unlike many Arab leaders who may talk a big game, when Nasrallah says he will do something, he almost always follows through, usually with some cost to Israel. With a mere militia, Nasrallah's party has been able to operate against the Israelis as well, or better than, any other Arab state often because of technological or strategic tactics.
This is reminiscent of the time during the war on Lebanon in 2006 when Nasrallah appeared on live television asking the audience to watch as an Israeli Naval vessel would momentarily be attacked. Sure enough, moments later Arabic satellite channels carried the images of an Israeli Naval vessel ablaze off the Lebanese coast. Israel would not publicly admit to this until hours later.
Nasrallah continues to be a master of presentation, media and messaging. I noted last week how he is also politically adept and used the border clash which took place last week to convey a message of unity.
In other news today, Rep. Howard Berman, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is putting a hold on the 100 million dollars in "security assistance" the US was to provide to the Lebanese Army.
This, along with a confluence of other factors including the seemingly warming ties between Lebanon and Syria over the past few years, the functioning of the current unity government, the increased aggressiveness of the domestic security apparatus to find Israeli spies, and the recent boldness displayed by the Lebanese Army to defend its territory suggests that Lebanon's armed capabilities today are under a far more serious and unified (though not yet united) command than they have ever been. Lebanon, even with Hezbollah at its disposal, does not constitute and offensive threat to Israel. It's increasingly clear however, that Lebanon will no longer be easy for Israel to push around.
To Israel, which has sought to divide and conquer Lebanon for decades (and it has often succeeded), this new yet fragile political reality must be cause for discomfort.
As much discomfort for Israelis as, say, watching a Hassan Nasrallah speech.
*UPDATE: Elias Muhanna, who live blogged the event, posted at the ME Chanel at ForeignPolicy.com today:
The short-term result of this new development will be the simple fact that the Lebanese will now have two different sources of authority on the question of who killed Rafiq al-Hariri. Just as the old binaries of the 2005-09 period were fading away (March 14 vs. March 8, loyalists vs. opposition, etc.), a new one has arisen to take their place. The questions the Lebanese will now ask eachother will be: "Do you believe the U.N. or Hizbullah?" "Which story is more convincing?" "Which evidence is more compelling?"
Public opinion on these questions is far more important than one would think. As Nasrallah himself suggested toward the end of his press conference, the political value of an indictment against Hizbullah members lies less in the potential for implicating senior officials or foreign governments than in the ability to tarnish Hizbullah's image in Lebanon and throughout the Sunni Muslim world. By presenting an alternative narrative to the version of events that will be laid out, presumably, in the coming months by the U.N. prosecutor, Nasrallah is attempting to paint the STL -- in the most vivid colors possible -- as an American/Israeli tool targeting the resistance.
In the eye of the storm is Saad al-Hariri, the victim's son and Lebanon's current Prime Minister, who has been the primary champion of the STL's mission to find and punish his father's killers. On the eve of an indictment, the tribunal that helped Hariri build the political movement that he leads today now threatens to place him in an impossible position. Far from strengthening his hand in Lebanon and promoting the interests of his international allies, Hariri is faced with the possibility that the multi-million dollar, five-year investigation will deliver a verdict that he must publicly denounce, or else risk losing control of the country.
**UPDATE: Good job, Howard Berman. I am sure this was precisely what was intended when the congress decided to cut off the $100 million in military aid to Lebanon. From Reuters:
Iran has offered support to Lebanon's army, a week after a deadly cross-border clash between Lebanon and Israel which prompted U.S. lawmakers to block funding to the Lebanese military.
The offer from Iran, which supports Lebanon's militant Shi'ite group Hezbollah, could fuel Western concern that Tehran is increasing its influence near Israel's northern border...
Iran's ambassador to Lebanon met Lebanese army chief Jean Kahwaji on Monday and said Tehran was ready to "cooperate with the Lebanese army in any area that would help the military in performing its national role in defending Lebanon."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Beirut next month.
