Monday, May 12, 2008

Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a former visiting scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Center an expert on Hezbollah talks to AlJazeera english, Here.

"It is a very critical situation. It is quite unprecedented since the end of the civil war, in that basically now this conflict is one between Hezbollah's resistance and the government. Never before has a government not recognised Hezbollah's resistance.

"The only compromise the sides can make at this point is over the clashes. Because these are clearly controlled clashes.

"As for the government's decisions regarding the telecom network and the head of airport security, nothing short of revocation of those decisions will settle this conflict. Nasrallah said so.

"The government has pushed itself into a very tight corner, it is going to be very difficult for them to backtrack. And Hezbollah is going to accept nothing short of the government reneging on those decisions.

"Apparently there are reports of alleged negotiations between the two sides and perhaps members of the government were willing to offer, for example, another security chief that Hezbollah could choose. Any face saving device. But according to these reports Hezbollah has turned down such offers.

"That's why I think it's going to be very hard for them. There is no middle ground here at all. When Nasrallah depicts the conflict as one which is something of an existential one, targeting the resistance, and draws parallels with the [2006] July war, this renders the whole conflict a 'May war' if you like.

"This is a new war. It is a war directed against the resistance - at least that is how it is perceived. There can be no compromise now, just as there was none back in July [2006]."




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