Beirut: In the aftermath of intense clashes this past weekend between Hezbollah militiamen and Jabhat Al Nusra extremists near the town of Brital in the Bekaa Valley, fresh skirmishes occurred on Tuesday in Assal Al Ward and Al Jibbeh, along the Lebanon-Syria border. Simultaneously, a bomb attack in South Lebanon, which targeted an Israeli patrol in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, further complicated matters for Beirut as the government negotiated the release of its military hostages. Clearly, what were already tense conditions added to public woes, as Lebanon confronted existential challenges. “This is a message.. Even though we are busy in Syria and on the eastern front in Lebanon our eyes remain open and our resistance is ready to confront the Israeli enemy,” Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Shaikh Naim Qasim told Lebanese OTV television late on Tuesday.
Inasmuch as the Shebaa action was “addressed exclusively to Israel,” party officials could indeed claim that their decisions protected the country, even if that logic escaped most. Qassem explained that “the bombs were detonated based on the movements of the enemy’s troops and this means that the resistance is ready and its eyes are open.” He amplified that Israel ought to know that the “resistance is vigilant and would respond to any retaliatory act.” He specified that this particular operation was in response to the September 5, 2014 death of Hezbollah member Hassan Ali Haidar, who was killed when Israel detonated a booby-trapped spy device, which he attempted to defuse in the southern town of Adloun. Qassem rejected any linkages with developments in the Bekaa Valley, “even if other parties might understand another connotation.”
Speaking to the pro-March 8 OTV television network, Qassem reaffirmed that Sunday’s deadly clashes, with revised death tolls for Hezbollah militiamen hovering between 8 and 10, resulted in “very heavy losses on the gunmen” with dozens of Al Nusra elements killed. YouTube videos posted online by Al Nusra showed the results of some of the clashes, which included significant Hezbollah losses, and that illustrated the type of American weapons used by the Lebanese militia.
While it was difficult to gauge the extent of casualties, all parties upped their political rhetoric, with Shaikh Mohammad Yazbek from Baalbek insisting that Daesh would have reached Beirut were it not for Hezbollah actions.
Speaking at a funeral for slain party fighter Ammar Assaf, Shaikh Yazbek slammed March 14 camp critics for being “irresponsible,” adding: “We did not hear your voices, nor the voices of your masters, when the Israeli enemy’s army opened fire at the Lebanese army and when a number of army troops and Internal Security Forces members were abducted. We did not hear you speaking or condemning, but you rather pressed on with your seditious approach.” “Enough with your incitement against Hezbollah,” hammered the cleric, who insisted that the party would carry on with its “approach and resistance, whatever the price might be.”
Earlier, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea invited Beirut to “take a binding decision on Hezbollah’s withdrawal from Syria,” reiterating his call for a “joint command and control center” with the anti-Daesh international coalition. On Monday, the pro-Hezbollah Al Safir daily reported that a well-informed source revealed a bombastic allegation, which had the Maronite Patriarch Mar Bisharah Butros Rai saying: “If the Christians in Lebanon were surveyed about the current developments, they would reiterate that had it not been for Hezbollah, Daesh would have reached Jounieh,” the heart of Christian Lebanon. In his absence from the country, a high-ranking Maronite cleric, Bishop Samir Mazloum responded: “The Cardinal said no such thing.”
Whatever the connections between clashes in both the North and the South with the country’s domestic challenges, Hezbollah fighters maintained their vigilance in Lebanon as well as Syria. This past weekend’s clashes in Brital, the most recent anti-Israeli bombing in Shebaa, and important battles that resulted in the fall of a strategic Russian listening post at Al Hara, Syria—less than 15 kilometers from the occupied Golan Heights—to the Free Syrian Army, all indicated that Lebanon was hardly protected.
