Hezbollah: Sporting a poker face in a game of solitaire
By Miguel Guanipa (07/21/06)
One Israeli pilot commented in his diary how it is the rule for all Israeli fighters to recheck every coordinate they receive before hitting a target so as to ensure minimal collateral damage, if any. This is partly done in order to legitimize their grounds for defending themselves against another country’s aggression in front of a watchful world community. It is also one of Israel’s forms of viable currency for a continued military operations campaign against its enemies until they are safely pronounced incapable of retaliating for at least another extended period of tranquility.
Hezbollah’s use of civilians as human shields for their own military outposts is seldom denounced by the same world community, which sometimes is forced into the unenviable task of arbitrating conflicts that are more often than not initiated by perennially hostile nations such as Iran and Syria, who continue to harbor members of this and other terrorist groups.
This fragile season of containment was abruptly broken by some of Hezbollah’s tunnel digging division recently when they decided to make an incursion into Israeli territory that ended in the killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the abduction of three others, which are presently being used as bargaining chips for the release of Israeli held prisoners loyal to the Lebanese militant group.
In this respect, Israel finds itself at a strategic political disadvantage when doing what every sovereign country is supposed to do if provoked by an enemy: defend itself.
Hezbollah (which is Arabic for “Party of God”) is fully aware of their favorable underdog status accorded to them by the United Nations -which has virtually turned a blind eye to a resolution demanding their full disarmament - and the considerable value of Israeli soldiers to their native land from past dealing with that country. Historically both parties have engaged in arguably unequal trading of prisoners; a recent one in 2004 involved the release of 420 Palestinian prisoners, 30 Lebanese and Arab prisoners and the remains of 60 Lebanese militants in exchange for an army reserve colonel, an Israeli civilian and the remains of 3 Israeli soldiers.
With such a lopsided bargaining precedent it should come as no surprise to Hezbollah militants that Israel has retaliated with what some world leaders have denounced as a highly disproportionate response to the abduction of two of their soldiers, no doubt felt by Israel as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
These past exchanges contingent upon a mutual agreement for the cessation of all hostilities on both sides, coupled with the recent unwarranted provocation by Hezbollah’s guerrillas should be a reminder to those who insist in highlighting the presumed benefits of negotiating with terrorists. At the very least it should make clear that such concessions do not always achieve their desired ends.
Hezbollah, which shares a predisposition with every other terrorist organization to thrive in chaos, knows that the best opportunity for metastasis will always be one that necessitates the destabilization of any regime. It is within such a framework that they also forge lasting bonds with other rogue nations who share one common objective; this objective also happens to be the stated goal of virtually every radical Islamic element in that region: the removal of the state of Israel.
The question that begs to be answered is: what is the best way to negotiate with someone who is solely and irrevocably committed to your destruction?
Bearing this in mind, it is not unreasonable to surmise that as far as the state of Israel is concerned, negotiations with Hezbollah –or any other group which has been declared a terrorist entity- can be likened to entering the cage of a hungry lion with a spacious serving of prime rib, expecting it will not tear you to pieces out of deference for your generosity.
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