Lebanon's new movement posted by bat020

Shortly after the start of Israel's bombardment of Lebanon, Israel's army chief of staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz boasted of how the IDF would "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years" - ie back to the time when Israeli invasion, bombardmment and occupation had shattered Lebanese society and the country was engulfed in civil war. The idea, presumably, was to paralyse Lebanon and take it out of the equation from a military point of view, opening things up for an attack on Iran and Syria.

But this strategy has failed. As even the mainstream news channels have noticed, the bulk of Lebanon has rallied behind the resistance, and the sectarian anti-Hizbollah forces have been marginalised. This feeling on the ground was reflected in a recent opinion poll that reported that support for Hizbollah's fight against Israel has risen to 87 percent.

This development has come as a surprise to many, but it stems from a deeper and more general turn away from sectarian politics on the ground in Lebanon. This week's Socialist Worker carries an article by Ghassan Makarem of the Samidoun network of activists that details how a cross-community relief effort for refugees in Beirut is rapidly mutating into a political movement that is consolidating Lebanon behind the resistance, putting pressure on the government, and breaking decisively with sectarianism:

The streets of Beirut are becoming more and more radical, day after day. It’s still quite early days, but you can see a new movement coming together. Young activists, environmental campaigners, human rights groups, religious organisations - they’re becoming radicalised by what’s happening.

We could tell at the beginning of last week that the whole atmosphere in Beirut was getting more political. It’s now three weeks since the refugee crisis started and the relief operations are running more smoothly. So people now have the time and energy to go to demonstrations and meetings, before going back to the relief work.

The atmosphere on the ground is leaning against the government, against the Arab regimes, against the “international community” - and for solidarity with the resistance.

Read the whole thing here.

Other coverage in SW this week - George Galloway on Tony Blair's complicity with Israel and the US, a comprehensive primer on the history of Hizbollah, and how Israel is taking revenge on the village of At Tiri.