Talking peace

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah did not expect the operation that led to the capture of two Israeli soldiers would lead to an all-out war.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's admission that his outfit did not expect that the operation that led to the capture of two Israeli soldiers would lead to an all-out war is not surprising. Considering the destruction that visited Lebanon, Nasrallah would have to be downright foolish to admit to the contrary - that he ordered the operation, fully aware that it could lead to all-out war. Conventional wisdom would be that Nasrallah can afford to sound reasonable and responsible because he won the war against Israel. But that could be wrong because the actions and motivations of the main protagonists - Hezbollah and Israel - as well as their backers, Syria, Iran and the US, are not yet known with any degree of certainty. Israel, for example, may have just been waiting for the opportunity to 'take out' the Hezbollah, before it became too strong.

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Such facile analyses, so soon after the ceasefire, are somewhat hazardous. In 1973, for example, there was much angst over the successes of Egypt and Syria, but later it became clear that notwithstanding their early successes, the two had come close to utter defeat. Another contemporary myth is that the Hezbollah fought better than the Arab soldiers in the past. The Jordanian Arab Legion in 1967 and the Egyptian and Syrian forces in 1973 fought with no less tenacity and bravery than the Hezbollah. But those were conventional armies, while the Hezbollah is largely a defensive militia.

Nasrallah's constituency is mainly in southern Lebanon and he has promised that it will help rebuild the area which was devastated by Israeli bombardment. There is, therefore, a strong incentive for Hezbollah not to adopt a bellicose posture because it is aware that its own constituency has paid the much larger price in terms of those killed and property destroyed. Nasrallah most of all knows how much hurt the Israelis have inflicted on Lebanon and the Hezbollah, and he would be cavalier indeed if he chose to ignore it.