Lebanon: Bush says Hezbollah suffered a defeat. Olmert agrees. Question: who is more stupid?

Who is more stupid, Bush or Olmert? Answer: both. It’s amazing what happens to people’s mouths when they live up their own assholes. Here are some pieces about what's really happening, something which seems to have escaped the two guys most responsible for this latest fuckup.


1. Why America wants Hizbullah beaten even more than Israel does -- by Henri J. Barkey (from Beirut’s daily Star)

As diplomats looked for a way to end the conflict in Lebanon, the United States was reticent to support an immediate cease-fire endorsing the status quo ante. What most observers failed to see in Washington's reluctance was how important it was for the US that Israel defeat Hizbullah. In fact, a successful conclusion was far more critical for Washington than for Israel.

Of course Israel wants to defeat Hizbullah. However, what would satisfy Israel may fall short of US strategic goals. Israel would accept a severely weakened Hizbullah that retreats north concurrently with the deployment of Lebanese and international forces to the border region. As far as the Israelis are concerned, a Hizbullah that remains armed within Lebanon but far away from Israel then becomes a Lebanese problem. The Lebanese will have to decide if they want Iran and Syria to continue supplying a militia within their own borders. Israel has amply demonstrated its fury and it is unlikely that a Lebanon-based organization will ever again risk a repeat of recent events.

Why would such an outcome fall short for the US? There are two reasons. The first is what can be called the Hizbullah model. It represents the nightmarish metamorphosis of a well-supplied and trained militia. If it can work in Lebanon, the model can be emulated elsewhere around the globe. Consider for one moment what Hizbullah has achieved: It has a parallel state structure in Lebanon complete with its own social services and rudimentary revenue collection system. It conducts its own foreign policy and, as events have demonstrated, its decision-making system is unaccountable to the central government. Worse, it has managed to build up a sophisticated arsenal of missiles and other armaments that intimidates the Lebanese Army.

Arms by themselves do not make the organization. Clearly, Hizbullah fighters have been trained at using weapons that no terrorist organization has hitherto acquired or mastered. It fired two Chinese-designed Iranian-built Silkworm missiles at an Israeli naval vessel. One of the missiles hit its target while the other sunk a nearby commercial vessel. The Silkworm is a weapon that armies use and it boggles the mind that a militia such as Hizbullah not only can acquire it but also use it with a modicum of success. Hizbullah is far more sophisticated and entrenched among a supportive population than Al-Qaeda. It is impossible to defeat it without inflicting civilian casualties. Therein lies Hizbullah's strength; it calculates that the outside world will relent in the face of civilian casualties.

The Hizbullah model can easily be exported to other failed or semi-failed states, ranging from Somalia to Sri Lanka, Iraq and Colombia and perhaps even to Pakistan one day. All you need is an external patron willing to invest resources just as Iran has in this case, and a supportive population base. One can easily imagine a scenario of a Venezuela-supported FARC in Colombia initiating action against Bogota's southern neighbor, Ecuador or Peru. The Hizbullah model completely emasculates the notion that a state is defined by, among other things, a monopoly over the means of violence.

The second reason is because of Iran's patronage. Bogged down in Iraq, the US is facing an emboldened Iran ready to challenge it at any moment of its own choosing. For Iran, Hizbullah is another strategic tool in an asymmetric conflict with the West. Hizbullah extends Iran's reach well beyond the immediate region and the Middle East, but also to far-flung places such as the South American continent where it has an entrenched presence in the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. In Iraq, the Mehdi Army has already modeled itself along Hizbullah lines, as has Hamas. Any outcome that does not end up with Hizbullah's disarmament is another step in the institutionalization of the model under Iranian tutelage.

The US as the sole superpower, which for better or worse also acts as the world's first responder, cannot afford to see the proliferation of Hizbullah-like organizations deciding the fate of nations. For the same reasons, it is critical for the international community that UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for Hizbullah's disarmament and the reinforcement of Lebanese authority, be implemented fully.

(Henri J. Barkey is chair of the International Relations Department at Lehigh University and a former member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.)


2. Out of touch with the public (editorial in Israel’s Haaretz Daily)

On the basis of the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's speech at the Knesset yesterday, it seems that the sense of failure felt by the public has yet to permeate the government. Olmert referred to the Israel Defense Force "action" as a move that resulted in a strategic change in the Middle East. This statement comes before it has become clear that the cease-fire is holding, that the abducted soldiers have been released, that the Lebanese army has been deployed in the south, and that Hezbollah is indeed being disarmed and not replenishing its arsenal.

Olmert's embarrassing claim that in every clash between Hezbollah and IDF soldiers our troops were victorious, does not reflect the truth that emerged during the toughest battles over the last month. During that time, the IDF was forced to occupy the same village over and over, and neither air- nor ground-based efforts managed to diminish the missile attacks against Israel until the cease-fire was put into force.

The public knows that the IDF did not win this campaign, and there is no chance of convincing it otherwise through fact-distorting speeches. The parents of the soldiers know the stories of food that never arrived and missing equipment that was bought with contributions. Those sitting in bomb shelters spoke of their suffering and distress and of an evacuation that was late in coming. On top of it all, the government exhibited indecisiveness and inconsistency in the face of Hezbollah's successes and the blows absorbed by the home front.

The fact that equipment was missing from emergency stores, and the soldiers were not trained for missions assigned to them is blamed on the lack of budgets. Similar claims were made regarding the condition of bomb shelters and the collapse of support services. If the condition of the economy is so great, as it is being described, the question that arises is "Where is the money?" Will the government know how to correct the mistakes if it is unable to acknowledge them?

"I hear the voices expressing discomfort," Olmert said, as if it were minor criticism. As if the media did not bring to the screens or in print the concerns of the whole nation during the past month. As if the head of the Northern Command was not dismissed in the middle of the campaign. As if thousands of soldiers were not deployed on a last-minute operation whose purpose still remains unclear. Most disturbing is his evasive statement that "also next time, there will be things we will need to correct. Because, ladies and gentlemen, this is war."

The war should not be allowed to slip us by without a thorough examination. The shock, felt intensely in every home, should not be allowed to be mired in demagogy. The Olmert government cannot be held responsible for all the failings, but it must be assigned the full responsibility of correcting the distortions. It was possible to understand from Olmert's speech that he does not comprehend the size of the breach, and therefore, it is doubtful whether he will be able to reach the necessary conclusions.

The reasons for which the army and home front were not ready for the anticipated war must be clarified, as should the extent to which Olmert was aware of the lack of preparedness when he decided to embark on the campaign. His government's right to exist depends entirely on whether it dedicates itself to correcting what needs to be fixed. If the prime minister's speech signals the start of an era of demagogy instead of self-examination, then the conclusion must be that he is not endowed with the necessary humility and courage to lead the essential shake-up of the system.


3. American support may no longer be enough
Israel's long-term future lies in connecting with its Arab neighbours, not a western superpower thousands of miles away
By Martin Jacques (from the good old Guardian)

This has been a war that did not happen by accident. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah was merely the pretext, long since forgotten in the absurdly disproportionate response by the Israelis, and the death and destruction that their country has wrought on Lebanon. Israel has, throughout its short existence, lived by the sword, safe in the knowledge that its military power, as an honorary western nation, is far superior to that of its enemies. Israel has managed to justify this behaviour, in the eyes of the world (or at least the west), by two means: first, the insistence that its very survival always hangs by a thin thread; and second, the remorse felt by the west over the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust.

Based on previous expectations, this was another war that the Israelis should have won. It was of their choosing, long in the planning and preparation; and from the outset they enjoyed the open support of the US. How wrong the Israelis have turned out to be. This is not a war they have won: indeed, as they have fallen so far short of their objective - the effective destruction of Hizbullah as a military force - it might well turn out to be a war that the Israelis have, in effect, lost. They surely expected that Hizbullah's resistance would crumble within a matter of days, but a month later Hizbullah appears to be as strong as ever, inflicting heavy casualties on the massive Israeli assault launched after the UN security council vote, its ability to fire rockets at Israeli cities little, if at all, impaired. Just as the US found that superiority in conventional arms was of little use in Iraq when confronted with urban and guerrilla resistance, rooted in the overwhelming opposition of the people, so Israel has discovered the same in Lebanon.

The ceasefire that is due to come into force today represents a serious setback for both Israel and the US. Its terms represent a significant retreat on what was previously proposed. One should not be deluded by the Israeli offensive launched after the ceasefire agreement had been adopted: it was a last desperate attempt to gain advantage before hostilities are obliged to cease, an attempt to snatch some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat. It is, in short, not a show of strength but a display of weakness. More importantly, the failure of the Israeli action against Hizbullah raises deeper questions about the means by which Israel has sought to govern relations with its neighbours, just as the failure of American policy in Iraq has brought into question the underlying precepts of neoconservative strategy. The common denominator has been a dependence upon, and belief in, the efficacy of military power above all else. Is it too much to hope that, at least in the longer run, Israel's failure in Lebanon will force a rethink among Israelis on the best means to secure their future?

Israel, though geographically part of the Middle East, has never regarded itself as part of the region, politically, culturally or ethnically. It identifies itself with the west. And the west reciprocates. How else can one explain the intimate relationship that Israel enjoys with the US, or the fact that Israel competes in the Eurovision song contest and European football competitions? It is regarded as an honorary member of the west in the same way that Australia still is, or apartheid South Africa used to be. And the reason is not simply geopolitical, but cultural and ethnic.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the creation of the state of Israel, the reality today is that it is - by the manner of its creation, self-image and attitude towards its neighbours, and how it is regarded by the west - a western transplant sustained by an American life-support machine. Under such circumstances, the very idea that peace in the Middle East is in any meaningful sense possible is illusory. Israel has been the primary means by which the US has exercised its hegemony over the region. It has, using the classic imperial device of divide and rule, vested its means of control over the Middle East - as Amy Chua argues in her book World on Fire - in a small but privileged ethnic minority state, namely Israel. Whatever the recent rhetoric about democracy, such a mode of control means that western hegemony in the region has been primarily exercised by force. The Arab world has been rendered embittered, divided, resentful and politically frozen, in a manner that should surprise nobody. It is understandable that terrorism has become such a fixture in Arab politics: it is the weapon of the impotent, the disenfranchised and the unorganised in the face of profound grievance.

An enduring peace in the Middle East requires two things: first, that the Arab states accept Israel's right to exist; and second, that Israel must come to see itself as an integral part of the region. The latter requires the kind of transformation in Israeli - and western - attitudes that is not even conceived of, let alone discussed. Israelis typically regard themselves as superior to their neighbours, and the root cause of this mentality lies in their sense of racial superiority. Indeed it is impossible to explain Israel's attitude towards the west on the one hand and its Arab neighbours on the other without understanding its racial character and motivation. Israelis aspire to be treated on a par with westerners - that is, of course, white westerners; by the same token they have contempt for Arabs, including those who are citizens of Israel, whom they look down on as less civilised than themselves. Israel behaves in the manner of a settler colony whose people do not believe they are of the region but who none the less think they have every right to be there.

There is a deep irony here. Israel was created as a result of one of the worst racial atrocities in modern history. It was in part the sense of guilt and sympathy that persuaded the west that it must help the Jews create their own state. From the outset, two factors were always likely to haunt the project: first, it involved the annexation of land that was Arab; and second, it implied the foundation of an ethnic state, with all the exclusivist and racist attitudes that this potentially involved.

Let us hope that the failure of the war in Lebanon might begin the process of persuading the Israeli people that their long-term future lies in viewing their Arab neighbours as equals and seeking to live with them in peace, rather than viewing themselves as an appendage of the most powerful country in the world situated thousands of miles to its west.

(Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics Martinjacques1@aol.com)


4. We simply blew it -- by Yoel Marcus (from Israel’s Haaretz Daily)

The cease-fire has caught us in the worst possible position: We didn't win and we didn't lose. We simply blew it. It was a war with too many people being led and no one leading; a war with too much bluff and bluster at the top; a war with too many Churchillian speeches and not enough thinking about what we were trying to achieve and where we were heading.

What makes an army - or its chief of staff, to be exact - get up one fine morning and persuade a semi-rookie government to launch an all-out war at the drop of a hat because two of our soldiers were kidnapped? How did a whole country get sucked into this thing, without an organized plan, without a defined objective, without calculating how it would end, without giving thought to the costs and the damage that would be inflicted, without knowing how long it would last and what constituted a victory?

Ariel Sharon had the knack. Whatever he did, good or bad, in the course of his long career, he did with leadership. Before he started something, he knew where he was going and what he wanted. He had strength, patience and the ability to keep his eye on the target.

When he decided to cross the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War, he knew in advance what the objective was. He planned his route and correctly assessed the Egyptians' breaking point.

When he decided to confront the PLO, which was breathing down Israel's neck on the Lebanese border, he set himself a goal, went into Beirut and saw to it that the top echelons of the organization, headed by Yasser Arafat, were expelled from our northern border.

Sharon spent more than three years mulling over the disengagement plan. From the moment he decided, he took charge, persuaded people and made it happen. When he saw his party would not allow him to complete the job, he founded Kadima as a vehicle for ending the occupation.

Ehud Olmert stepped into Sharon's extra large shoes without having the qualities of a true leader. He tried to talk like Churchill, but the Chamberlain in him crept through. In his first speech to the nation, he pledged to wipe out Hezbollah and stop the rockets from falling on Israel. In his second speech, delivered at a military college, he promised that his achievements would change the face of the Middle East.

Now, what was the basis for his grand declarations? His prophetic abilities and rhetorical brilliance? Or something his chief of staff, Dan Halutz, said? Since I assume Olmert didn't pull this stuff out of a hat, my guess is that the chief of staff convinced him. Halutz was the leader, and Olmert was led.

The question is whether Olmert posed the right questions and the army gave him truthful answers. Did Olmert ask, for example, whether the army was capable of knocking Hezbollah out of commission, or at least disarming it? Did he ask about the risks to the home front and how well Israeli citizens could be expected to stand up under a barrage of missiles? Did he inquire whether it was truly possible to win the war on the strength of air power alone? Did he ask whether Hezbollah could really be neutralized without a massive land operation? Did he ask whether Israel could declare a military victory by the time the guns died down? And if so, for how many years?

Dan Halutz may be a brilliant pilot, but he is overconfident, and that is what convinced Olmert. Judging by the outcome of this war, one might also say he led him astray. After 3,500 rocket strikes on half the country, a million citizens turned into refugees, the last-minute call-up of reserves soldiers without equiping them - handing them ancient guns and antediluvian flak jackets, and at a certain stage, not even supplying them with food - the war is ending with an agreement cobbled together by the United States to save Israel from a humiliating defeat. Not only is there no victory, but our power of deterrence has been hobbled.

The government did not give sufficient thought to how this "rolling operation" would roll. Halutz's self-confidence had a hypnotizing effect. President Bush likes it when Israel wins. His demand for a quick cease-fire stems from the fear that Tehran will race to rehabilitate Hezbollah, and before we turn around Lebanon will be an Iranian province.

Olmert has made a mess of things, but there is no justification for dragging the country into another round of elections. Neither is there any need to torture ourselves with investigation committees to reach the conclusion that we were sucked into an unplanned war that our army did not win. The man who failed, who deluded us, who was overconfident and transmitted the disease to the government, is the chief of staff. He should be the one to go.


5. If Sharon were dead, he'd be turning in his grave -- by Geoffrey Aronson (from Daily Star in Beirut)

If former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were dead he would be turning in his grave. In the few short months since his incapacitation, the new strategic concept that he championed for the Gaza Strip, like its model on Israel's northern frontier with Lebanon, has been all but destroyed by an Israeli military establishment that was never reconciled to it and by a newly installed civilian leadership that chose not to confront the generals.

Putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again is still possible on Israel's Palestinian front, where the betrayal of Sharon's plan, for all the destruction wreaked on Gaza, can be remedied. But Israel's ill-conceived adventure in Lebanon represents sweet revenge for militants in Israel who continue to be seduced by the idea of a Lebanese protectorate first outlined in the abortive May 17, 1983, peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, a fantastic idea that can only be realized, if at all, in the aftermath of a terrible regional war that threatens to unfold.

Say what you want about Sharon, it is near certain that he would never have been bamboozled into the war that the generals, cheered on by Washington, sold his successor Ehud Olmert in the few short hours after Hizbullah forces attacked Israel and captured two soldiers. As the architect of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon saw his grand vision of domination over its northern neighbor, the destruction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a massive transfer of Palestinian refugees to Jordan collapse into an Israeli commission of inquiry that forced him from the Defense Ministry.

Sharon went into what was to be a short-lived political exile, but Israel's occupation of the southern rump of Lebanon continued for 18 long and bloody years. Prime Minister Ehud Barak's 1999 campaign for the premiership was going nowhere until he promised to withdraw Israeli forces from the country. The Israeli public, though not the generals, was sick of sending sons to a foreign land that reliably hemorrhaged Israeli casualties. Israel's retreat across the border in May 2000 was viewed at the time as the end of a sad chapter in Israel's history, never to be repeated.

Barak has been noticeably absent from the parade of Israeli generals and politicians who have filled Israel's airwaves these last weeks. The Lebanese model he fashioned was based upon the following logic: In the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement with Syria, Israel and Hizbullah, each through unilateral moves, established new "rules of the game" to contain their continuing rivalry within acceptable military limits. Aware of the terrible damage that each party could inflict upon the other - in civilian dislocation if not on the field of battle - an uneasy truce held for six years.

Unlike Hizbullah, which articulated limited goals, Israel, nominally lead by Olmert and the cheerleading of the Bush administration, expanded Washington's "war on terror" to include the ruination of an already fragile Lebanese political system - once championed in Washington - that is an inescapable part of the "collateral damage" accompanying the desired destruction of Hizbullah's military and political power. Within days, but not quickly enough for still-suffering civilians in both nations, attainment of these fantastic and radical objectives proved to be beyond Israel's military capacity. Even in the wake of this strategic failure, insistence upon "searing defeat into the consciousness" of Hizbullah and its regional patrons still risks widening the war to Syria, opening the gates of hell to a regional war.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Despite the failure of its overriding objective of employing force to destroy and not merely tame Hizbullah, the strategic concept that Israel is pursuing resembles nothing if not the objectives outlined in the ill-fated May 17, 1984 peace treaty initialed a generation ago. This document, which has yet to be mentioned in the cascade of commentary accompanying the war, represents the last time Israel, victorious on the battlefield, defined its vision for Lebanon. Israel demanded what was then described as a special "security region" including most of Lebanon south of the Litani River overseen by Israel and its local militia, the US, and troops of a pliant regime in Beirut.

The current demand for international supervision of the Lebanese-Syrian border, and the creation of a security zone monitored and enforced by the hapless Lebanese Army and foreign troops reflect ever greater hubris than Sharon showed as he surveyed his conquests from the palace at Baabda.

A more expeditious and less perilous return to sanity can be hoped for in Gaza, where ironically, the stakes are not as high. Here Sharon's strategic concept, retreat from Gaza and the maintenance of an uneasy standoff between Israeli and Palestinian forces of all stripes, can be resurrected, and perhaps even improved. The main ingredients of such a deal are an exchange including Israeli soldiers, Palestinian prisoners, and Palestinian politicians held hostage; a more explicit cease-fire entailing an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; an end to its operations there and in the West Bank; and an Israeli readiness to enable a more disciplined effort lead by the Palestinian Authority to "unify the security services" in support of a renewed truce.

These will not in and of themselves signal a stable accommodation between Israel and the ruling Hamas movement. Without them, however, the soldiers on both sides will command the battlefield.

(Geoffrey Aronson is director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, DC. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.)


6. A Defiant Hezbollah Rises From the Rubble
After holding its own against the powerful Israeli army, the militia is unlikely to disarm.
By Megan K. Stack

BEIRUT — Hezbollah's urban nerve center is a shattered shell. Its most loyal followers trudged homeward to a heartland laid to waste. And yet the Shiite organization lighted up the night sky with fireworks Monday and declared itself triumphant over Israel.

Israel meant to break Hezbollah with its monthlong offensive, but instead the militant organization has been strengthened politically in Lebanon, analysts say. The movement has a fresh boost of popularity, at least for now, and a renewed sense that it is entitled to keep its armed militia outside the control of the Lebanese army, they say.

Hezbollah's newfound clout has come at a staggering cost to Lebanon's infrastructure, economy and civilians, hundreds of whom died under the rubble of Israeli bombs. The fragile central government, which the U.S. administration strove to present as an example of democracy taking root in the Arab world, also has suffered from the month of fighting.

"The reality is, they have weakened the government significantly," said Charles Ayoub, editor of Ad Diyar newspaper. "What room do [officials] have to maneuver? If Nasrallah says he won't give up the weapons, what are they going to do?"

The U.N. resolution that paved the way for the truce calls for Hezbollah's disarmament. So, for that matter, does an earlier, long-ignored resolution. But the terms for giving up the weaponry are vague. And as a prominent party in the Lebanese government, Hezbollah will have a hand in deciding how and whether the language translates into fact.

If anything, analysts say, the war has worsened Lebanon's underlying instability, bolstering Hezbollah at the expense of more moderate, secular figures in government.

"Most of the government really thought that Hezbollah could be trimmed by the Israelis, and that would give them less of a problem," said Judith Palmer Harik, a Hezbollah expert. "But it didn't work out that way, and now there's nothing they can do, in my opinion, to get Hezbollah away from doing what it wants.

"This is a victorious group. Do they want to be disarmed at this point?" Harik said. "That is such a nonstarter."

Back in Washington, President Bush strove Monday to undercut Hezbollah's boasting by portraying the organization as the losers.

"Hezbollah, of course, has got a fantastic propaganda machine, and they're claiming victories," Bush said. "But how can you claim victory when, at one time, you were a state within a state, safe within southern Lebanon, and now you're going to be replaced by a Lebanese army and an international force?"

But even the anticipated deployment of 15,000 Lebanese and 15,000 international troops won't necessarily drive Hezbollah's militia from the southern borderlands. Many analysts believe the Lebanese army is more likely to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Hezbollah than to shut it down. Foreign troops are no novelty, either — the militia was founded and flourished under Israeli occupation and amid international observer forces and is deeply rooted in the civilian population of the southern towns and villages.

Before the war erupted in mid-July, Hezbollah representatives had agreed to participate in national negotiations about disarmament.

Even then few analysts put much stock in the notion that the guerrillas would voluntarily lay aside their guns. Nevertheless, the fact that the powerful organization agreed to talk about its weapons was taken as a sign that Hezbollah sensed it had to compromise with domestic critics of its militia.

Not so now.

It is unclear what remains of Hezbollah's arsenal. But the group made it plain Monday that the sacrifice of its weapons was off the table for the time being. Nasrallah scoffed at the idea that the "resistance" should lay down its guns in order to build a strong Lebanon. It should be the other way around, he argued.

"First you have to build a strong, capable, just and secure country for all Lebanese, so that you can tell the people, 'We can protect your dignity and honor, and there is no need for the weapons of the resistance,' " he said.

Ibrahim Moussawi, foreign news director at Hezbollah's Al Manar television station, was even more blunt.

"Hezbollah will not give up its weapons. This is a red line. The Israelis couldn't do it, so nobody can," Moussawi said.

"There is no army that can disarm Hezbollah. These 14 of March idiots can't do it," Moussawi said, referring to the bloc of Lebanese politicians who led the charge that ended Syrian dominance here last year and who then turned their attention to Hezbollah's weapons.

Asked what effect Hezbollah's hardened determination to keep its guns could have on Lebanon's ever-shaky national unity, Moussawi responded angrily.

"Hezbollah is not going to be asked about national unity while they're giving their blood to defend the country," Moussawi said. "Hezbollah has to ask them about national unity. They are not in the place to ask about it. How do you ask if you don't defend your country?"

Hezbollah's claims of victory are a reminder that Lebanon remains a fundamentally unstable state. This country shredded itself to pieces in a 15-year civil war, then stood by as its politics were buried under the smothering blanket of de facto Syrian occupation for more than a decade.

A little more than a year after disentangling itself from Syrian domination, Lebanon is still hobbling along under the leadership of a fractious and fledgling government. Aside from Hezbollah, its only military power is a feeble army widely deemed incapable of defending this small Mediterranean nation.

The perennial problems that Hezbollah has long used to justify keeping its weapons also remain untouched.

The dispute over whether Israeli troops should relinquish their hold on the Shabaa Farms, which is also claimed by Lebanon, has not been resolved. Nor has the fate of Lebanese prisoners being held by Israel — men whose captivity inspired Hezbollah's commandos to steal into Israel and take two soldiers prisoner, provoking the long weeks of war.

The fighting polished Hezbollah's image, both at home and throughout the Muslim world, as its fighters held their own against the storied Israeli army.

Domestic critics have been temporarily silenced, pressured by a wartime atmosphere that encouraged solidarity during the crisis.

In his speech Monday, Nasrallah spoke out harshly against Lebanese who dared to criticize Hezbollah.

"We heard them speak from their air-conditioned offices … while people were watching their houses being demolished," he said. "This is really unethical, and a big mistake."

Meanwhile, Lebanese officials were scrambling to figure out how to fulfill their obligations to the United Nations Security Council resolution that paved the way for the truce.

Hezbollah's objections to disarmament reportedly has split the Cabinet and complicated the next moves.

Those concerns were nothing to Nidal Shaib, a 35-year-old taxi driver and longtime loyalist to the Communist Party who joined his brothers to sweep up the wreckage of a badly damaged building in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Until this war, he said, he respected Nasrallah but didn't support him. Now he celebrates him as the man who made Israelis suffer, Shaib said.

"Now I totally accept him. He's a great leader," he said. "Even greater than Che Guevara."