Excerpts: Hizbullah's Nasrallah Truce rejection 28 March 2008

+++THE DAILY STAR (Lebanon) 27,March '08:"The Islamists really are true
believers"By Michael Young,Opinion Editor
QUOTE:"Over the yearsacademics,
journalists,and others, particularly the Westerners, among them who write
about militant Islamist groups, have tended to project their own liberal
attitudes and desires onto such groups, misrepresenting their intentions
and largely ignoring what these groups say about themselves"
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EXCERPTS:
Recently, we've heard Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah, pick up on a theme dear to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It goes something like this, to borrow from Nasrallah's speech last Monday
(24 March) commemorating Imad Mughniyeh, Hizbullah's operations chief: "Now
we are left with one question: Will Israel cease to exist one day? ... Yes
... Israel will cease to exist."
Nasrallah has often mentioned Israel's eventual evaporation. In 1992,
following his appointment as head of Hizbullah, he described the party's
long-term strategy as "fighting against Israel and liberating Jerusalem, as
well as Imam Khomeini's proposal - namely ending Israel as a state."
But the more interesting question, ... is whether Nasrallah himself
believes what he says. And then to ask what this tells us about armed
Islamist movements located in Israel's neighborhood.
... Nasrallah actually does mean what he says, and has been saying it with
considerable consistency for quite a long time.
. . .Why is the topic important? Because over the years academics,
analysts, journalists, and others, particularly the Westerners among them,
who write about militant Islamist groups, have tended to project their own
liberal attitudes and desires onto such groups, misinterpreting their
intentions and largely ignoring what these groups say about themselves.
Inasmuch as most such observers cannot really fathom the totalitarian strain
in the aims and language of armed Islamists, totalitarian in the sense of
pursuing a total idea, total in its purity, they cannot accept that the
total idea can also be apocalyptic. Where Nasrallah and the leaders of Hamas
will repeat that Israel's elimination is a quasi-religious duty, the
sympathetic Westernized observer, for whom the concept of elimination is
intolerable, will think much more benignly in terms of well-intentioned
"bargaining." Hamas and Hizbullah are pragmatic, they will argue, so that
their statements and deeds are only leverage to achieve specific political
ends that, once attained, will allow a return to harmonious equilibrium.
This argument, so tirelessly made, is tiresomely irrelevant. No one has
seriously suggested that Hizbullah or Hamas are not pragmatic. But one can
be pragmatic in the means and not in the ends. If anything, pragmatism is
obligatory in the pursuit of an absolute idea. And what characterizes those
pursuing the absolute idea? In his essay "Terror and Liberalism", Paul
Berman provides a partial answer, writing how French author Albert Camus
noticed that out of the French Revolution and the 19th century had grown a
modern impulse to rebel. That impulse, Berman wrote, "mutated into a cult of
death. And the ideal was always the same. It was not skepticism and doubt.
It was the ideal of submission ... it was the ideal of the one, instead of
the many. The ideal of something godlike. The total state, the total
doctrine, the total movement."

Hizbullah and Hamas are themselves products of rebellion - rebellion against
what they took and still take to be a foul, unjust political order in
Lebanon or Palestine or the Middle East in general. That drive has,
naturally, even necessarily, pushed them to advocate the absolute negation
of everything embodying that allegedly unjust order. Their motivating force
is submission to the pursuit of the just idea, and this goes to the very
heart of Islam itself, indeed denotes its very meaning, which is based on
the embrace of total submission to God. Nasrallah may rarely employ
religious terminology, but everything about the way he structures his
thoughts, contentions, or vows reflects a deeply religious mindset.
One thing eternally confusing outside observers is that Hamas and Hizbullah
are what have come to be described as "nationalist Islamists." Because
nationalism started essentially as a Western notion, because its reference
point is something reassuringly tangible like territory, not Armageddon, the
Westernized writer will see something of himself or herself in such
Islamists groups, and will resort to the terminology of modern nationalism
to describe their actions. Hizbullah liberated South Lebanon, Hamas is
trying to do the same in Palestine; their goals are no different than those
of courageous patriots everywhere who have fought against foreign
occupation. ...
But what the observers won't grasp is that nationalism does not necessarily
disqualify religion; time and again the two have advanced hand in hand, even
in unlikely settings. ... when Hamas describes the land of Palestine as an
endowment handed down from God ... is it not terribly naive to suppose that
the group's refusal to recognize Israel is just a ploy to strengthen its
hand for a Camp David II or III?
One has to be careful in reading the statements of Islamist groups - or any
political group for that matter. The flexibility of tactics counts for much.
When Nasrallah argues that he will continue negotiating with Israel for the
release of Arab prisoners, he's temporarily replacing his long-term
undertaking to hasten Israel's demise with short-term gain. Ultimately,
Hizbullah may fail in making Israel vanish, but it's what Hizbullah and
Hamas say about themselves, the way they define their aspirations, that
determines their behavior. For outside observers to ignore or reinterpret
their words in order to justify a personal weakness for these groups'
revolutionary seductions is both self-centered and analytically useless.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.

+++JORDAN TIMES28 March '08:" Hamas, Islamic Jihad reject Egypt
truce"Agencies
QUOTE:"Hsmsd and Islamic Jihad rejected an
Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel"
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EXCERPTS:
HAMAS AND ISLAMIC Jihad on Thursday(27 March) rejected an Egyptian-brokered
truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip after fresh talks in Egypt, saying it
must include all Palestinian territories.
Hamas political bureau member Jamal Abu Hashem and senior Islamic Jihad
member Khaled Al Batsh met two aides to Egyptian security chief Omar
Suleiman to discuss the proposed ceasefire, an Egyptian security official
told AFP.
But following the talks on the Gaza-Egypt border, the two movements said
that any truce with Israel must include both the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and
the occupied West Bank.
. . .Egypt, one of only two Arab states to have signed a peace deal with
Israel, has been seeking to broker a truce or lull in fighting between Hamas
and the Jewish state after an upsurge in violence last month.
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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA