Hezbollah forces skilfully succeeded last week in retaliating against Israeli occupying forces in the Sheba’a Farms bordering Lebanon, Syria and Israel, and killing two soldiers in the process. A Spanish United Nations soldier was also killed in Israeli retaliation. The attack has most certainly caused some worries in Israel, particularly for its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve of a important general election this March. Wednesday’s cross-border eruption followed an Israeli air strike that killed six of Hezbollah’s fighters and an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general in the Syrian Golan Heights 10 days earlier. Very few Arabs and non-Arabs will shed tears when it comes to Israeli military losses. This is understandable. Israel historically remains, and will continue to remain the grand enemy of the Arab world and beyond — ever since its brutal occupation of Arab lands in the June 1967 war.
But this time around the skirmishes between the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel are undisputedly unlike any previous confrontations along the Lebanese-Israeli border. The circumstances are starkly different and the political priorities are absolutely in different order.
Hezbollah has been heavily engaged for more than two years in illegal, wide and ugly military operations inside Syria, with the sole purpose of shoring up a criminal regime whose hands are soaked in the blood of its own people. In doing so, Hezbollah has consciously taken a decision to side with the evil regime in Damascus whose mandate expired a long time ago. On the direct instruction of President Bashar Al Assad, his infamously merciless intelligence forces committed unprecedented atrocities against Syrian youths demonstrating in the south of the country in the early days of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011.
The regime’s reaction soon spread to various parts of the country during that year and reached its climax at the end of 2012, thus threatening the very existence of Al Assad’s government. But it wasn’t until the beginning of 2013 that Hezbollah forces started to operate on the ground in and around the strategic Lebanese-Syrian town of Al Qusayr. This operation, which started on April 4, 2013, was one in which Hezbollah forces were remarkably effective in turning round the fortunes of the Damascus regime.
With a totally defeated army in the northern, eastern and southern parts of the country, Al Assad’s regime was by all accounts on the verge of collapse. Iran, the main regional backer of the Syrian regime, rushed to the rescue by sanctioning the immediate intervention of Hezbollah forces to quell the rebel uprising in Al Qusayr. Contrary to what Hezbollah and Iran claimed at the time, Daesh (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) was not on the conflict screen yet. However, Daesh’s role in Syria took a while to become effective. In fact, it did as of 2014, and when it did become that effective, its forces, made up of mostly foreigners, were far away from Qusayr and their presence had been limited mainly to the east and slightly to the north of the country.
Therefore, Hezbollah’s role in protecting Damascus from falling into the hands of rebels will be clearly marked in history books as one of the most cowardly acts of betrayal in modern times against Syrians. The Iranian-guided intervention in Syria by Hezbollah forces practically regained the main, and probably the only lifeline for the regime to survive the rebel offensive. The Al Qusayr battle in the third-largest Syrian province of Homs saved the regime’s only supply route to Damascus — thanks to Hezbollah and its Iranian backers.
Lost generation
Hezbollah will also go down in history as the force that largely helped spread unprecedented misery in the country. Internationally accredited human rights agencies agree that the war in Syria is resulting in the loss of a generation of children.
There are up to five million children who are in urgent need of aid and humanitarian assistance. Syria has now over 10 million displaced people and over 3.5 million registered refugees in neighbouring countries. The economy has declined over 45 per cent and unemployment is at over 50 per cent, three-quarters of the population lives in poverty and schooling has dropped almost 60 per cent.
Meanwhile, the killing in Syria continues with 2014 being the deadliest year in the four-year conflict, with over 76,000 killed, according to credible sources. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights recently said 17,790 of the dead were civilians, including 3,501 children.
Therefore, no matter how hard Hezbollah tries to justify its role in Syria and gloss it up as a part of an outdated “alliance of resistance and objection” against Israel, the reality clearly tells us a very different story. Sadly, in accepting to willingly side with a criminal leadership in Damascus, the once popular party has reduced itself to a mere tool in the hands of a regionally ambitious Iran.
Hezbollah’s general secretary may celebrate his little victory in Sheba’a, but in doing so, he will be dancing over Syrian skulls.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London.
