Mouin Rabbani, an extremely thoughtful and knowledgeable person who’s a Contributing Editor to Middle East Report, has responded to this recent JWN post about Hassan Nasrallah’s lengthy t.v. interview on Sunday evening in the following terms:
- I think some clarification is in order regarding Nasrallah’s statement [Sunday] in his interview with New TV about the recent war in Lebanon.
What he stated was that neither he nor any other member of the 15-member Hizballah leadership believed there was even a “one in a hundred possibility” that Israel would respond to the capture of two Israeli soldiers with such a ferocious war, that this assessment was based on decades of observing Israeli conduct, and that if they had instead believed that the 12 July operation would produce the war that it did, they would definitely not have authorised the attack.
But given additional statements he made immediately before and after the above, which have received virtually no coverage and not all of which are consistent with the above statement, I think it would be wrong to interpret this as a mea culpa or apology.
Before he made the above statement, and as part of his response to the same question, Nasrallah stated that shortly after the war began (2-3 days) Hizballah confirmed that the US and Israel had been preparing for an Israeli war against Hizbollah/Lebanon to be launched in September or October. This war would (according to Nasrallah) be launched on the basis of a pretext, or one provided by the Israelis (he mentioned the possibility of Israeli special forces landing in southern Lebanon and lobbing a few shells over the border), or if necessary without a pretext. It would also be an overwhelming assault, that aimed to eliminate the entire Hizballah leadership, its senior cadres (by bombing their homes), key Party installations etc., in a first wave of attacks so devastating that the organisation would be dismembered from the outset leaving only dazed and disorganised pockets of fighters to be easily mopped up thereafter. Nasrallah repeatedly made the point that key to Israeli planning and the success of its war would be the element of surprise.
But because the war was launched in response to a Hizballah action, Nasrallah continued, the vital element of surprise was lost. All the more so, according to Nasrallah, because the movement did not intend to inflict significant Israeli casualties on 12 July, rather only to capture Israeli soldiers. But the unanticipated clash/destruction of an Israeli tank by a landmine and resulting death of 8 Israeli soldiers on 12 July meant that Hizballah immediately went into a state of maximum alert. In other words, Israel failed to achieve on 13 July much of what according to Nasrallah it may well have achieved in September/October, and Nasrallah explicitly concluded that the results for Lebanon would have been devastating if US-Israeli planning had been permitted to proceed unimpeded by 12 July.
So in my view his statement was anything but a mea culpa. One can choose to accept his explanation at face value or not. But the overall (in significant part unstated) message Nasrallah sought to convey, I think, was the following:
— An Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006 was a certainty irrespective of Hizballah’s actions, because of Israeli and US intentions. Hizballah’s error was that, while it concluded already in 2000 that Israel would eventually return to Lebanon to wipe out the stain of its defeat and while Hizballah had been preparing for this for the past six years, it didn’t realise the moment was so close at hand. Thus, although it had no idea 12 July would lead to war, and would not have authorised the attack if it did, with hindsight the fact that the war occured when and how it did saved Lebanon from a much bigger – more or less imminent – calamity.
— Because Hizballah did not believe 12 July would result in war and would not have launched the attack if it did, it is out of the question that it was acting on behalf of Iran or Syria. It was an Israeli war, and could not possibly have been a Hizballah/Syrian/Iranian one, for the simple reason that it was unanticipated.
Additionally, given the extent to which Nasrallah has been presenting this as a strategic victory, I think it is highly unlikely that he intended his words to be understood as an apology or admission of a strategic error on Hizballah’s part. Seen in their full context, I think Nasrallah was claiming that 1) Hizballah does not play chess with the lives of Lebanese or the interests of the state, 2) while an error was made, it turned out to Hizballah as well as Lebanon’s advantage.
By the way, commenter Lisette also flagged this piece of reporting, by Patrick Bishop in today’s London Daily Telegraph, in which Bishop writes that Nasrallah, “became one of the most widely admired leaders in the Middle East overnight after a broadcast in which he impressed audiences of all persuasions… ”
Bishop wrote, as I had done on that earlier JWN post, that Nasrallah seemed to use much of the interview to reassure his Lebanese viewers that Hizbullah was eager to preserve the present ceasefire, and that it did not seek to transform Lebanon into an Islamic Republic (at least, not any time soon.) He noted, with regard to that last point, that Nasrallah “chose to give the interview to the liberal, secular New TV station, rather than to his propaganda outlet, al Manar, and the questioner was a woman journalist, Maryam al Bassam.”
Anyway, thanks to Rabbani and all who have helped provide us with more information about, and more context regarding, the t.v. interview.
But hey, if anyone can get hold of a complete trasncript of it, in Arabic or even better in English, please post that URL pronto onto the comments here.
A friend in Beirut wrote me a letter that included her very positive response on hearing Nasrullah’s interview. The letter writer is as secular a Lebanese as your can get. We are very mistaken if we think Nasrullah has limited appeal.
I watched Hasan Nasralla’s latest TV interview as I did with all his messages and speeches since the onset of the crisis in last July. I did not interpret the statements of Nasrallah that Helena discussed as an apology or an admission of fault. I also did not glean any glimpse of recklessness in taking the decision to take the Israeli soldiers as prisoners (Helena seems to consider it reckless). The following lines from the article of Yoram Peri in the WaPo that Helena used in the previous post accurately represent my position on this particular point: “rather, the question will be whether it was wise to opt for full-scale war as Israel’s response to the kidnapping of the two soldiers. And if a military operation was indeed the appropriate response, what should have been its timing, nature and scope.” I do not even consider his statement a surprise or something new since he expressed similar statements to the same effect in previous speeches whether indirectly or directly but the difference here is that he elaborated at length on the point in this speech and also that his newest statement was expressed after the ceasefire rather than during the war. Helena referred to statements of high ranking cadre in Hizb Allah who made similar statements and I’ve read several reports to the same effect in the first week of the war in July. I truly can not agree with those who characterize the statement as a “bombshell”. Many analysts exhausted themselves in speculations about the motives of Nasralla’s statement. I’m sorry to disagree here also and I beg your pardon. It is true that the man is a cunning and shrewd leader but above all he is honest and has a great degree of transparency. He simply described what was going on during the decision making process as a matter of fact. This is one thing but the implications of this statement is something else. We all can speculate about the implications but this does not mean that the man was aiming to a specific direction or has a specific motive . I hope I can present my understanding to the events in a separate comment but the aim of this comment is to give some links to the interview since Helena asked for some links. Unfortunately, I am not aware of English transcripts and all the following links are in the Arabic language but I hope Helena will do some translation particularly that she is preparing for an article in the BR. Here are links to two sites where you can download an audio for the interview. Files in the first site are in zip form and the site is affiliated with Al-Nour radio broadcasting station which belongs to Hizb Allah. The first site has the interview in two files while the second site has it in five files. Here are the links:
http://www.ghaliboun.net/sayedspeeches.php
http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/
1. http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/Storage/Pres_416/movie1.mp3
2. http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/Storage/Pres_416/movie2.mp3
3. http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/Storage/Pres_416/movie3.mp3
4. http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/Storage/Pres_416/movie3.mp3
5. http://www.3poli.net/Presentations/Storage/Pres_416/movie5.mp3
Here is a quasi-complete transcript for the interview published at assafire newspaper on Aug. 28. No other Arabic newspapers -to my knowledge-published complete transcripts similar to the one published by assafire.
http://www.assafir.com/iso/oldissues/20060828/local/3135.html
Here is an interesting article in today’s assafire where the interviewer Maryam Bassam give her recollections about the arrangements and the behind screen details. It is an extremely interesting article and I will give some points about it in a separate comment but hope that someone can give a complete translation.
http://www.assafir.com/iso/today/local/3351.html
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/08/nasrallahs-interview-on-new-tv.html
Friend M.H. Thank you so much for contributing all those links! And thanks, too, for giving your own interpretation of the speech and its context.
I tend to think you may be right that it wasn’t asmuch of a ‘bombshell’ (possibly, a bad metaphor there, anyway, in the circs…) as I had portrayed it as. On the other hand, it was evidently a very significant political utterance.
Btw, I have to tell you I find audio and all multimedia nearly impossible to handle. Working in text is challenge enough for me!
BBC Monitoring – available through Lexis-Nexis – has been translating every appearance by Nasrallah since the war began, and often before that as well.. For some reason, they haven’t translated the New TV interview.. At least not yet..
Some points from the interesting article where Maryam Albassam recounts the story of her encounter with “Al-Sayed” {Lebanese call Hasan Nasrallah Al-Sayed or Al-Sayed Hasan}:
1. His shoe was the first thing Maryam looked at when she met Hasan Nasrallah. Guess why? Not because she was shy but because she wanted to see that thing that a great number of Lebanes are heared talking about when they say ‘we would prefer to die before a grain of dust attach to the shoe of Al-Sayyed’.
2. The day before the interview Maryam was involved in a violent conversation with a member of Hizb Allah. The next day he phoned and asked to pass by to continue the conversation. He came accompanied by another person and Asked if her channel would like to interview HN. She was amused and said when. He replied now. Are you kidding? No. They took her cellular phone so that she cannot tell anyone. They accompanied her to her house to choose suitable clothes as she requested.
3. One big problem for Maryam was how to attach her headscarf in a proper way so that it does not recede backwards (something she said that she does not like in women who conduct interviews in many TV channels). Women in her family told her that the secret is in the hairpin used to attach the scarf and the site where it is inserted. Guess what? HN was the one who told her the proper way when she asked him for help before the interview.
4. The interview was conducted in an apartment and not a bunker. The aircondition was shut off so that the interview can be conducted in a noiseless environment.
5. People of Hizb Allah did the filming of the interview and other technical details and they handed her the videos at the end of the interview. Maryam even borrowed a pen from HN to take notes.
6. What questions have you prepared? She responded: I prepared nothing. You know how I came here. He told her to ask whatever she likes and whatever comes to her mind. Whatever you feel the Lebanese people would like to ask. No matter what you ask, I will answer and nothing will be censored. Just do not ask me about persons.
7. She asked him out of the screen about whether he follows the jokes that circulate among the Lebanese about Hizb Allah. He said that he followed some and told her one about how the Shia are currently becoming highly educated because the refugees (mostly Shia) were housed in schools.
Thanks so much for that!
I don’t understand the logic of this explanaiton at all.
“What he stated was that neither he nor any other member of the 15-member Hizballah leadership believed there was even a “one in a hundred possibility” that Israel would respond to the capture of two Israeli soldiers with such a ferocious war, that this assessment was based on decades of observing Israeli conduct, …”
and then:
“But because the war was launched in response to a Hizballah action, Nasrallah continued, the vital element of surprise was lost. ”
How can you first be surprised, and then say that the element of surprise was lost?
Also, I enjoy this immensely:
“with such a ferocious war, that this assessment was based on decades of observing Israeli conduct, and that if they had instead believed that the 12 July operation would produce the war that it did, they would definitely not have authorised the attack.”
Hizbollah attacked Israel? How on earth could you have allowed that to slip by? I thought that Hizbollah was a legitimate, indigenous Lebanese resistance movement, that never hurt a fly.
Mideastwire has a partial translation up: here