Indeed they are. Exactly one year after the Israeli Army’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon–an event Lebanese will celebrate on May 25 as National Liberation Day–this nearly uninhabited patch of hills and pastures at the juncture of Lebanon and Israeli-occupied Syria remains a bitter zone of contention. Hizbullah, the militant Islamic group that led the 18-year guerrilla struggle against Israel, insists that the area, known as the Shabaa Farms, belongs to Lebanon, and has vowed to continue attacking Israeli troops in the zone until they withdraw. Israel maintains the land is part of the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967, and says any withdrawal can only be part of a comprehensive peace deal with Syria. The dispute has helped keep Hizbullah at the forefront of Arab resistance to Israel, and provided an inspiration to Palestinians waging the intifada.
There are risks attached to Hizbullah’s campaign to force an Israeli pullout. In Lebanon, where few people have rallied behind the Shabaa Farms issue, some have begun to criticize the guerrillas’ tactics. In April, Hizbullah guerrillas fired rockets at an Israeli Jeep inside the zone and killed an Israeli soldier. Israel responded by bomb-ing a Syrian radar station near Beirut, killing three Syrian soldiers and sending a message to Bashar Assad, Syria’s president and Hizbullah’s patron, that he’d be held responsible for further guerrilla attacks. After the Israeli airstrike, a newspaper owned by Lebanon’s prime minister, Rafik Hariri, questioned whether Hizbullah actions could undermine Lebanon’s quest for stability and prosperity. But the guerrilla group clearly needs a raison d’etre, and has pinned much of its identity on the struggle. “Hizbullah is facing a terrible dilemma,” says one Western diplomat in Beirut. “They need to be seen every couple of months as territorial liberators, but if they keep it up, they risk losing more popular support.”
To be sure, Hizbullah is still riding a tide of good will that followed its victory in southern Lebanon. In the poor Shiite Muslim suburbs of southern Beirut, a Hizbullah stronghold, huge photographs of “martyred” fighters adorn countless lampposts and telephone poles. Across the former occupation zone, yellow Hizbullah flags flutter over observation posts abandoned by the Israelis. Plaques on the sites record details of guerrilla attacks and mark the date of the occupiers’ “ignominous departure.” “Hizbullah are national heroes. We owe them everything,” said Ahmad Laaben, who drove his family from the Bekaa Valley to the southern border to stare at Israeli soldiers just across the fence, an excursion that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
Hizbullah has tried to cement that support by providing services the government can’t. Hizbullah distributes potable water from street pumps across southern Beirut; a 140-bed hospital, founded by Hizbullah and financed in part by Iran, provides top-quality care to the poor. At south Beirut’s Great Martyrs’ School, hundreds of boys and girls receive an Islamic education laced with anti-Israeli rhetoric. Last week colorful posters made by the children in honor of Liberation Day displayed the Hizbullah logo and choice quotations of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s charismatic leader. Meanwhile, Hizbullah’s satellite television station, Al Manar, spreads the group’s hard-line message across Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world and has made Sheik Nasrallah’s as familiar a face in the region as Saddam Hussein’s.
Hizbullah has opted to stay out of direct involvement in the Al Aqsa intifada. Western diplomats say that Iranian mullahs pressured Nasrallah during his recent visit to Tehran to offer logistical support and weapons to Palestinian extremists such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But the sheik refused–reportedly arguing that the groups have been infiltrated by Israeli agents. In fact, Hizbullah fighters tend to look down on their counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. “Hamas people don’t have the awareness that we do,” says a longtime Hizbullah guerrilla. “If we want to be martyred, we ask, ‘Is it effective? How many of the enemy will die?’ We consider a human life to be a precious item, and you don’t sell it cheap.”
But many Lebanese now question whether winning the Shabaa Farms is worth any price. Few Lebanese had even heard of the farms until local commentators and politicians began calling for their return just before the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon. Part of the desolate, 1,500-meter-high Golan Heights region, Shabaa lies in a mountainous zone between Syria and Lebanon, whose borders were never demarcated. Until the Israeli invasion in 1967, Lebanese farmers owned property there and Lebanese shepherds grazed their flocks on the rocky hillsides. But according to United Nations officials who drew the “blue line” dividing up the borders between Syria, Lebanon and Israel before Israel’s withdrawal, 80 of 81 maps they consulted placed Shabaa Farms inside Syria. Western officials say Syria, which has kept the heat on Israel for two decades through its Hizbullah proxies in southern Lebanon, needed a pressure point–and hit on the Shabaa Farms as a logical choice. Hizbullah, searching for a new rallying cry, eagerly signed on.
But Syria could now prove to be a stumbling block. Assad may try to rein in Hizbullah to avoid provoking further direct confrontations with Israel. And with little backing from their countrymen, Hizbullah may have a hard time justifying war for the Shabaa Farms. They insist they’ll fight on regardless. “Maybe 10 percent of Lebanese supported the armed resistance when we started in 1982,” says Abdullah Qasir, a Hizbullah member of Lebanon’s Parliament. “By 1996 we had total unity.” Hizbullah guerrillas say they’re prepared for another long, brutal struggle. “Shabaa is much smaller than the security zone, and the Israelis have the high ground,” says a former Hizbullah fighter who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ala. “The Israelis watch our every move. Even at night infiltration is very hard.” But for Hizbullah, the costs of staying out of the fight may be even higher.
