Unmanned aircraft or unmanned nation?

It is not the first time nor will it be the last that Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, talks about military and political accomplishments to cover the bitter reality. The truth is, the only thing Hezbollah has ever achieved is destroying the Lebanese institutions. A few days ago, Nasrallah talked about an unmanned aircraft passing through the Israeli airspace. Is it an unmanned aircraft or a whole unmanned nation? The Secretary General of Hezbollah explained that the Iranian-made drone was launched from Lebanon, and was taken down after flying over occupied Palestine and over the nuclear reactor in the Naqab desert. He keenly repeated that the drone was made in Iran, but he did not mention the crisis Iran is currently facing. On one side, he celebrated Hezbollah’s ‘psychological’ victory over Israel, but was he trying to cover up the Iranian crisis, who is trying to become more important in the region? Whether this drone recorded some important information about Israeli nuclear installations or not, the world would still believe that Lebanon is the only open front with Israel. Can Lebanon afford this? That’s the serious question, considering the summer 2006 war and its destructive consequences for the country and the Lebanese people. Despite all the Arab aid made available to Lebanon after the Israeli offensive, there are still villages in the south suffering from the aftermath.   The war killed 1300 Lebanese citizens, destroyed dozens of villages. Following the conflict, what Assad did was rather extraordinary:  he claimed victory, mocking all the other Arab leaders. He did not take into consideration Hezbollah’s efforts to put in place a cease-fire, which was ordered by the UN Security Council. The United Nations Security Council created a demilitarised buffer zone in south Lebanon. The UN Security Council also demanded Israel and Lebanon to respect a permanent ceasefire and to find a comprehensive solution to the crisis. Sending a drone over occupied Palestine is not important. What is more important is what happens afterwards. Such action could be a message to Israel from Hezbollah saying that Lebanon is now under Iranian protection. Lebanon can’t be considered as a battlefield anymore – nothing has changed since the Cairo agreement in 1969. The Arabs have imposed the Palestinian military presence in south Lebanon. In other words, Lebanon had to sacrifice their sovereignty to make up for the Arab’s inaction in 1967 to be able to say “we are resisting against Israel!” Since then the army has returned to South Lebanon, but nothing’s changed since 1969. Up until 1982, the Palestinian militants had fun in south Lebanon. Shiite and Christians areas and even Sidon were persecuted by the Israel. So far, we don’t know how Palestine could be liberated from South Lebanon. We don’t know why Lebanon was made into Israel’s experimental field - unless there is an undeclared Arab-Israel agreement on restricting the confrontations in the south of the country. After the Israeli invasion of the small nation in 1982, Lebanese fought back and resisted. The “patriotic” resistance went on until Iran took control of the Shiites in the region through Hezbollah. The undeclared Arab – Israel deal is still valid, where Iran replaces the Arab party. What did Hezbollah’s Secretary General want when he proudly announced the launch of a drone from Lebanon to Israel?  Maybe Hezbollah is trying to satisfy their supporters for religious reasons,  maybe the party fears the consequences of their involvement in the Syrian crisis. Hezbollah wanted to show that they had Iran on their side; Iran losing Syria does not mean it will lose Lebanon. What can also be understood from Nasrallah’s talk is that no one can ignore the deep Iranian presence in Lebanon, even if there were regional deals with the ‘Great American Satan’ and the ‘Small Israeli Satan’. In other words, Iran is holding the peace and war cards in the region through Lebanon, and whoever wants to negotiate with Iran about its nuclear programme should take that into consideration. But for the Lebanese, Shiite or not, are a detail for Iran – they were treated the same way by most of the Arabs during the presence of the Palestinian militants on the Lebanese territory.  -- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.