This is a great article.
By Hamid Dabashi
Al Jazeera
Published: June 25, 2011
As with the two households of fair Verona, where from ancient grudge breaks new mutiny, the fate of Hassan Nasrallah is tied with his raison d'être, the garrison state of Israel. As a perfectly legitimate political project, Hezbollah emerged in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, giving momentum and purpose to the cause of millions of Lebanese Shia categorically disenfranchised from the pathologically sectarian politics of Lebanon - a gift of French colonialism that keeps giving. For close to three decades, Hezbollah has defended both the cause of the Lebanese Shia and the territorial integrity of Lebanon with steadfast determination - outmaneuvering the expansionist Jewish state, giving a renewed significance to asymmetrical warfare, whereby they have indeed managed to defeat the mighty army at their own game.
But today, the Arab Spring has altered the very DNA of the geopolitics of the region. Nasrallah banks and thrives on Israel. But Israel is today in far more serious trouble than before, and picking a war with Hezbollah is not going to save its fragile future. After President Obama merely mentioned the term "1967 borders", Prime Minister Netanyahu had to give the US congress a full frontal AIPAC attack to assure himself (in vain) that he is still calling the shots. He is not. The Arab Spring is. Hamas leadership, as a result, has been infinitely wiser than Nasrallah in immediately reading the Arab Spring correctly and rushing for a rapprochement with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority - much to the chagrin of not just the Israeli leadership, but in fact of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its client project Hezbollah.
Continued. . .
