LEBANESE-ISRAELI BORDER, April 6: Street protests across the Arab world this week have been punctuated by the slogans “Open the Arab fronts” and “Where are the Arab armies?” as Israel pressed on with the reoccupation of the West Bank. But the only front likely to be opened up is in south Lebanon, where there is no Arab army, only Hezbollah — in its way the most formidable military adversary Israel has faced.

They confront each other along the frontier’s 70-mile length from the Shebaa farms high in the rugged foothills of Israeli-occupied Mount Hermon, where Israel, Syria and Lebanon converge, to a lush Mediterranean coast.

Ever since Israel’s withdrawal from its south Lebanese “security zone” nearly two years ago, Hezbollah militiamen, not Lebanese soldiers, have manned a score of frontline positions. They have been stockpiling weapons in secret locations, monitoring Israeli movements, training and drawing up battle plans; they are reportedly in a state of high psychological and military readiness.

The more the conflict in the occupied territories deepens, the more likely it is that they will come to blows because it is to the Palestinian struggle that Hezbollah now avowedly links its own.

Wednesday night saw the heaviest single Hezbollah artillery onslaught on Israeli positions at Shebaa since the withdrawal: 116 mortars, according to Unifil (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), in two and half hours. “We can’t see anything of it,” said Ajai Touma, Indian commander of the local Unifil observation post. “They just shoot and scoot.”

The Unifil observers were impressed by the high professionalism of Wednesday’s coordinated assault. “I think,” said one with experience of Afghanistan and central Asia, “that, in addition to its high motivation, this is the most disciplined, organised and educated Islamic militia I’ve seen. If they ever did get that order from their leadership, I’m sure they would fight to the last drop of blood.”

But no such order will surely ever come — at least not just out of the blue. It has so far been a carefully controlled and calibrated form of warfare, with its own rules, that is newly unfolding along the frontier.

But that does not mean there might not be a full-scale re-ignition of what for a quarter of a century before the Israeli withdrawal had been the last militarily active front in the Arab-Israeli struggle.

Since the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah has faced a choice. Should it remain true to its pan-Islamic mission, which, by definition, would not be complete without the liberation of the holy places in Al Quds from the Zionist usurper? Or, the liberation of Lebanese territory complete, should it become, exclusively, an ordinary Lebanese political party?

In practice, it deferred the choice by declaring the liberation incomplete. By suddenly discovering and proclaiming that the Shebaa farms are actually Lebanese, not Syrian territory, it retained a rationale for its continued “resistance” under a Lebanese banner.

Then, four months after the Israeli withdrawal, the eruption of the intifada greatly favoured the jihadist option. And, from being an inspiration and model for Palestinian militancy, Hezbollah has ever since been drawn inexorably towards direct involvement in it. Last August its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said his party was “getting ready for direct military intervention from Lebanon.”

The main questions, for a leadership known for its careful planning and judicious assessment of risk, were always: when and how?

“When we enter with all our strength on the side of the intifada, we must choose the right time, because the current confrontation cannot afford mistakes in timing, strategy, or the size of the act.”

Above all, Hezbollah wants to avoid any appearance of a deliberately unprovoked attack, falling outside its own definition of legitimate, Lebanese resistance, that is liable to bring down large-scale Israeli retribution on Lebanese and Syrians.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service