This clip is actually from over the summer but – since the basic contours of debate never really change in the Middle East – it’s still as depressingly fresh as the day it was recorded. Hezbollah’s recent and quite explicit refusal to implement 1701, this time in the context of “mocking a demand by visiting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,” doesn’t really change anything because it’s not anything new.
Foreign policy experts insisted that confidence building measures, including a precipitous Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, would moderate Hezbollah. Then they insisted that ceding the organization de facto civil authority over its jihadist statelet would make it “responsible.” Then they reassured the West that Hezbollah’s ascension to formal control over Lebanon would do the trick. Not so much, it turns out.
Meanwhile Hezbollah is still killing their Lebanese enemies and threatening to annihilate Israel, and their water carriers in the West and in the Arab world are still feverishly spinning tales of Israeli conspiracies.
Video:
References:
* Hezbollah rejects call by U.N.’s Ban to disarm [Reuters]
