U.K. GUARDIAN: "ONLY HEZBOLLAH CAN DEFEND LEBANON"

WOW.

Only Hizbullah can defend against an Israeli invasion (GUARDIAN)
In one sense Israel created Hizbullah. Its occupation of Lebanon after 1982 turned a group of suicide bombers into a resistance movement like Europe’s second world war partisans. Expecting foreigners to remove Hizbullah’s weapons is a non-starter. Israel is taking heavy casualties in attempting it. How would other foreign occupiers have more success?

Earlier this year Lebanese parties were holding a “national dialogue” to work out, among other issues, how to strengthen the Lebanese army and find a different role for Hizbullah’s guerrilla forces. “One option would be to absorb the militia into the Lebanese army and another would be to turn it into a national guard under government control,” Michel Faroun, an MP from the March 14 movement, said last week.

The dialogue on Lebanon’s defence strategy was only exploratory, since the government agreed that no decisions could be taken until Israel withdrew from the land known as Shebaa farms, occupied since 1967. The latest two weeks of Israeli attacks have reinforced Hizbullah’s argument that it cannot disarm until the Lebanese army is stronger.

It is not a question of redeploying the Lebanese army in Hizbullah’s place. Only Hizbullah knows the terrain well enough, and has sufficient experience and motivation to defend Lebanon against any future Israeli invasion.