Hezbollah's Reinforcement for Gaza

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Gaza is fighting alone despite the meagerness of its resources. It would not have been possible for Gaza to remain alone had Gaza’s neighbors not cooperated with the Zionist state in imposing the siege. It has been established that the Arabs are harsher still in their siege of Gaza — if it were within their power to cut off the very air from the Palestinians there, they would do it. They closed the Rafah crossing, demolished the tunnels, and prevented others from extending a hand of humanitarian aid that might reach children and women. Arab history, in all its record of internal Arab conflicts, has not witnessed an uglier spectacle than the Egyptian regime’s treatment of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It is a dealing of the utmost malice and deep, black hatred. This, knowing that it was Egypt that lost Gaza in 1967, and that the responsibility for liberating the Strip rests on its shoulders. Had Egypt fulfilled its duty and responsibilities, it would have moved immediately to send weapons to Gaza, so that the resistance could inflict real damage on Israel and force it to lift the siege and withdraw from the West Bank.

For long years Gaza has suffered under the Arab-Zionist siege, and Hezbollah has always been quick to extend aid to Gaza through various channels. Hezbollah hosted members of the Palestinian resistance to train them in advanced military and security tactics, such as digging tunnels, methods of movement within them, establishing internal communication networks, and how to neutralize Israeli air power in order to preserve the resistance’s ability to continue. Hezbollah also smuggled weapons along arduous routes across sea and sand in order to get rockets into Gaza, and trained some Palestinians in rocket manufacturing and in setting up scientific research centers through which the payload, accuracy, and range of the rockets could be developed. It is likely that Hezbollah experts reached Gaza through tunnels smuggled in via Egypt, and helped the Palestinian resistance in the field across various combat operations.

But this most recent war, which is still raging as of this writing, has not seen major involvement from Hezbollah. We fully recognize that there are major obstacles facing Hezbollah that seriously limit its ability to provide military support to the Palestinian resistance, and these can be summarized as follows:

The Egyptian regime tightens its control over the border and prevents even medicine from entering Gaza. Had the Egyptian regime not been this strict, and had it allowed others to lend a helping hand, we would have seen large quantities of weapons entering Gaza, along with the combat expertise needed to use them. It would have been expected that Iran would send planes loaded with weapons to land at Cairo airport and then move on to the front, that we would find Hezbollah carrying out the same missions, and that we would also find other countries, such as Venezuela, providing military reinforcement to the besieged Strip.

…cost the Lebanese army a heavy price. And despite what it did, in close cooperation with the mayor of Arsal, outside forces emerged to tell us that were it not for Hezbollah, terrorism would never have arisen and taken root in Arsal. They turned Arsal into a launching station for firing rockets at Lebanese towns and utterly wrecking Lebanon. In Tripoli, meanwhile, failure was the lot of the March 14 forces, thanks to the awareness of Hezbollah and some Sunni leaderships in the city — even though thugs and hoodlums had entered the city and wrought corruption in it, and had obtained social and political cover from the March 14 forces.

There are many across the Arab arena hunting for Hezbollah’s head, both because they oppose the resistance in general, and because the party constitutes an extension of Iran. Most Arab regimes fight the resistance and wish it would vanish without return, because the continuation of these regimes’ rule is bound up with Israel’s existence and is threatened by the resistance’s successes. Iran, meanwhile, constitutes the principal focal point of defiance against American hegemony, which contradicts the foundations and principles of Arab defeatism and unconditional subservience to the powers of global arrogance, foremost among them America. It was no surprise that many forces gathered in 2006 to defeat Hezbollah. America provided support to Israel, several Arab countries allied with Israel, and internal Lebanese forces conspired, all so that Israel might inflict a defeat on the party — but they did not succeed.

The Party and Gaza Now

At the start of the war on Gaza, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech in which he expressed his strong support for the resistance and showed his readiness to extend a helping hand wherever possible. But Gaza remains alone to this day, and it is rare that we hear voices on the world stage supporting and backing the Palestinian resistance. The Palestinians bear part of the responsibility for this scarcity, because they have not gone around the world seeking friends and supporters, but that does not absolve the resistance’s friends of responsibility.

In his speech after the war broke out, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah described the resistance as his partners in Gaza, and repeated the word “partnership” more than once. I do not know whether there is something Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance are keeping hidden, but I see nothing that has surfaced.

The resistance in Gaza is alone, and it has been left to face things by itself in the Cairo talks, while we, the Palestinian people, are now in dire need of support and backing. We need someone to stand with us, and what is required is that the resistance not remain alone in the field. What is required is for Hezbollah to do something.

It is not required of Hezbollah that it enter a war against Israel now, since it is quite possible that its internal Lebanese circumstances do not allow for that, but the party is capable of undertaking certain actions and movements that could raise the level of tension in the region. Raising the level of tension in the region works to ease the intensity of the pressure on Gaza, and calls on the world to act quickly before the situation deteriorates and the scope of the fighting widens. It is not likely that Israel would open a front in Lebanon if Hezbollah, for instance, mobilized its forces, because Israel is in a major security predicament with Gaza, and is not interested in adding to its security concerns, which have already begun pushing Israelis to emigrate outside Palestine. What is needed is to raise the degree of tension and raise the degree of engagement of the Arab masses with the Palestinian resistance, but without reaching the level of war. Such activity on Hezbollah’s part would raise the morale of the Palestinian people and would affirm the Lebanese-Palestinian partnership. Hezbollah will not be spared the hostility of the March 14 forces, but one who has borne their ill deeds for years can bear one more kilogram.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مدد حزب الله لغزة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.