Hezbollah, the good guys.

[Mediocrates]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3538151.stm


Good news, Hezbollah is the good guys now. The Beeb says so.


New era for Hezbollah

By Hugh Sykes
BBC, Lebanon

The Party of God - are they terrorists, or defenders? It is the eternal question.

The US still brand Hezbollah as terrorists.

Hezbollah, whose name translates as "the party of God", see themselves as defenders of southern Lebanon.

The group was formed - with financial backing from Iran - in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Some 22 years on, Hezbollah is a mainstream Lebanese political party, with nine members of parliament.

Most are Shia, but one is a Sunni Muslim, and one is a Maronite Christian.

Gone are the days when talking to Hezbollah required cloak-and-dagger contacts in southern Beirut
Hezbollah run medical clinics, and they have their own TV station, al-Manar.

Its output is a surreal mix of propaganda, news, football, and there is even a children's programme called "Goldfinch".

Al-Manar also have an English-language website.

New openness

And gone are the days when talking to Hezbollah required cloak-and-dagger contacts in southern Beirut.

Now, you just call them, arrange an interview, and take a taxi.

I went to see Nawaf al-Moussawi, Hezbollah's head of international relations, at their office near a mosque and just down the road from a funfair with a small ferris wheel.

There was no visible security - I just took the lift to the second floor, and was welcomed into a room decorated with the Lebanese flag, the flag of the Hezbollah Party, and photographs of the former Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and of his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Iranian connection is particularly troublesome to the US.

They accuse Iran of continuing to sponsor a "terrorist" group, and they blame Hezbollah for the suicide bomb attacks on the US embassy and the US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 in which 326 people died.

Hezbollah say they had nothing to do with those attacks.

At the time responsibility for them was claimed by what was then a new group, Islamic Jihad.

But terrorism experts believe a senior Hezbollah member, Imad Mugniyeh, was involved.

'Understanding'

Hezbollah are also believed to have been behind many of the kidnappings of foreigners, including Terry Waite and John McCarthy.

And they were specifically accused of executing two captives, US army colonel William Higgins, and the head of CIA operations in Lebanon, William Buckley.

Hezbollah have said they understand why the attacks on the Americans took place - as a response to the US entering Lebanon and appearing to take sides in the civil war.

Soon after that assertion, a car bomb was detonated near the home of the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Fadlallah.

He survived, but 83 people were killed.

This attempted assassination was widely rumoured to have been carried out by the CIA.

Hezbollah say their resistance eventually forced Israel to withdraw from most of Lebanon.

Prisoner swaps

And the Party of God has now become so "official" that Israel does deals with it.

At the end of January 2004, hundreds of Hezbollah and Palestinian fighters were freed in return for just one Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers.

Commentators in Lebanon described it as a golden deal, but this apparently unbalanced exchange had happened before.

In 1985, three captured soldiers were returned to Israel in return for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, 160 of whom had been convicted and jailed for murder.

Hezbollah is backed by Syria, too.

American pressure on Syria may explain why Hezbollah now has to be very careful to ensure that its military activities are exclusively defensive - so that they can no longer be branded as terrorists.

Evidence for this is that "unauthorised" Palestinian activity against Israel from Lebanese territory is often stopped by Hezbollah.

[Mediocrates]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3256858.stm

It appears that the PA has been unfairly accused all these years of being associatred with terrorism...again the Beeb says so.


Analysis: Palestinian suicide attacks
By Tarik Kafala
BBC News Online

Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis aim to kill and injure as many people as possible, and create the greatest amount of fear. The victims are, most often, civilians going about their daily life.

The attacks, and the death, injury and destruction they cause, have become one of the hallmarks of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Across the world they are widely condemned as brutal acts of terrorism - though the attacks are pointedly not condemned by some Arab or Islamic governments.

In one of the bloodiest attacks of recent years, in March 2002, 28 Israelis were killed and more than 100 injured as they sat in a hotel dining room in Netanya to celebrate the Jewish Passover.

The attacker was a 25-year-old man from Tulkarm in the West Bank.

Palestinian officials routinely condemn suicide attacks, though they tend to phrase this in terms of condemnation of the killings of all civilians on both side.

They are also often accused by Israel of not doing enough to stop the attackers and of celebrating the "martyrdom" of the attackers.

Israel has also accused the Palestinian Authority of funding some suicide attacks and rewarding the families of attackers. Evidence for this has been sketchy.

Suicide attacks routinely draw a severe military response from the Israeli army ranging from direct attacks against alleged militants or the planners of attacks to 24-hour curfews in urban areas.

Israel's current insistence that there can be no political progress before a cessation of suicide attacks means that the militant groups that lead the attacks in effect have a veto on the peace process.

'Bringing the war to Israel'

For the attackers and the organisations that send them on their missions, the horror, death and destruction is precisely the point.

SUICIDE BOMBING FACTS
First suicide attack: Hamas kills eight people in Afula in April 1994
120 Israelis died in attacks between 1994 and September 2000
462Israelis killed and 3,000 injured in attacks since September 2000 (updated March 2004)
Source: Human Rights Watch and news reports
Yahya Ayyash, a leading Hamas bomb maker who was killed by Israel in 1996, was quoted as saying that the use of "human bombs" was a way to "make the [Israeli] occupation that much more expensive in human lives, that much more unbearable".

Many Palestinians see suicide attacks as the only form of armed resistance to occupation available to them, given the vast superiority of the Israeli army. Palestinians often attempt to explain the attacks as desperate acts or revenge born of their suffering under occupation. They point to the large number of Palestinian civilian deaths as a result of actions by the Israeli army.

Polls taken in the West Bank and Gaza have in recent years suggested that about 60% of Palestinians support suicide attacks to some degree.

History of attacks

The first Palestinian suicide attack in Israel killed eight people in April 1994 in the centre of Afula.

Hamas said it carried out the attack in response to the killing of 29 praying Muslims in February of that year by West Bank settler Baruch Goldstein.

Between 1994 and September 2000, the beginning of the current intifada, some 120 Israelis were killed in suicide attacks. A series of attacks in 1996 and 1997 cemented the tactic of targeting crowded buses or cafes with nail bombs.

Suicide attacks have greatly increased during the current intifada.

Since September 2000, about 436 Israelis have died as a result of these attacks. The number of injured is close to 3,000.

Militant groups

The main organisations behind the suicide attacks are Hamas (an acronym in Arabic of The Islamic Resistance Movement), Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Hamas is ideologically committed to an Islamic state in Israel and the Palestinian territories - though the organisation does have a pragmatic thread that allows it to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority and to call ceasefires when it believes there are opportunities for political progress.

MILITANT GROUP PROFILES

Much of the popular support for Hamas among Palestinians comes from the social services that the organisation provides - schools, clinics and food distribution centres.

Attempts by the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Hamas have been made much more difficult because of the organisation's popularity.

Islamic Jihad, which shares the aims and methods of Hamas, has nothing like its popular backing. It does not run any social services.

This is a reflection of Jihad's ideological stance which holds that the Arab-Israeli conflict will only be resolved through armed confrontation.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who have been behind a number of suicide attacks, are closely linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah political faction.

The brigades are neither officially recognised nor openly backed by Mr Arafat and Fatah, though members tend also to belong to Fatah.

Israel alleges that Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader in the West Bank often mentioned as a successor to Yasser Arafat, is the leader of the brigades. He has been in Israeli custody since April 2002.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group with an Arab nationalist and Marxist-Leninist ideology, has also carried out suicide attacks inside Israel and against Jewish settlements.

The group is believed to be behind the October 2001 killing of hardline Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The attackers

Suicide bombers are typically unmarried men in their 20s - though there have been a number of attacks by women.

The individual bombers do not necessarily have a background of being religiously devout, but their actions are almost always framed as acts of self-martyrdom.

For the attackers and the groups that send them, this gives their deaths religious sanction and means their suicide can be celebrated.

The attackers, who are often recorded on video declaring their intentions to murder Israelis, most often cast their attacks as acts of revenge and seem to believe that they will go straight to paradise.

Part of the pact between a bomber and the group that sends him is that the attacker's death will be celebrated and his family provided for.

Suicide attacks are often launched at short notice.

The group behind the attack will usually select a target, arrange for the transport of the bomber into Israel and supply the explosive device.

Explosives are usually wrapped closely around the attacker or sewn into clothing.

Countering the bombers

In response to the suicide attacks, Israel has adopted a range of security measures - none of which have been entirely successful.

One tactic against attacks has been the effective re-occupation of the West Bank.

During the most intensive wave of suicide attacks in the current intifada, in March 2002, Israel seemed overwhelmed - there were 16 attacks in this month alone.

The Israeli army was sent into the West Bank to re-occupy all the Palestinian cities, in the biggest Israeli military deployment since the 1967 War.

Troops remained for nearly two months. Their withdrawal was followed by another wave of suicide attacks.

In June, the troops were sent in to the West Bank again and have remained there since then on the edges or inside most Palestinian towns and cities.

For long periods Palestinians have been under curfew and unable to make the simplest local journey.

'Targeted assassination'

Israel has practiced "targeted assassination" since the 1970s.

The approach has been central to attempts to stop suicide attacks. Military and political leaders of militant groups can be targets.

The Israeli authorities say the tactic is a legitimate one because those killed by their security forces are directly involved on the planning and execution of attacks on Israeli civilians.

Critics have described the assassinations as extra-judicial killings, and pointed out that they appear to provoke suicide attacks and perpetuate a cycle of violence.

Other staple measures are raids against suspected militants plotting attacks, mass arrests, curfews, and stringent travel restrictions.

Once an attack has taken place, Israeli forces usually demolish the home of the suicide bomber's family and can arrest family members.

Some of these tactics are criticised by human rights groups as collective punishment.

Israel's top-ranking soldier joined the critics in October.

Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said that current hard-line policies against the Palestinians were working against Israel's "strategic interest... increase hatred for Israel and strengthen the terror organisations".

Israel's controversial West Bank barrier is, Israeli officials say, another attempt to prevent suicide attacks.

Israeli officials point out that a fence between Gaza and Israel has effectively blocked suicide attacks from the area where Hamas and Islamic Jihad draw most of their support.

[Mediocrates]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palestinians/profiles/1654510.stm


Who are Hamas?

By Martin Asser
BBC News Online

Branded terrorists by Israel and western countries, Hamas is seen by its supporters as a legitimate fighting force defending Palestinians from a brutal military occupation.

It is the largest Palestinian militant Islamist organisation, formed 15 years ago at the beginning of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

The group's short-term aim is to drive Israeli forces from the occupied territories, an aim it hopes to realise through attacks on Israeli troops and settlers in the Palestinian territories and - more controversially - against civilians in Israel.

It also has a long-term aim of establishing an Islamic state on all of historic Palestine - most of which has been contained within Israel's borders since its creation in 1948.

The grass-roots organisation - with a political and a military wing - has an unknown number of active members but tens of thousands of supporters and sympathisers.

Up to 40,000 people rallied in Gaza in December 2002 to mark Hamas' 15th anniversary where they heard the group's blind and paralysed spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, predict Israel's destruction by the year 2025.

"The march of martyrs will move forward... Resistance will move forward. Jihad will continue, and martyrdom operations will continue until the full liberation of Palestine," he said.

Opponent of Oslo

Hamas is divided into two main spheres of operation:

social programmes like building schools, hospitals and religious institutions military action and terror attacks carried out by Hamas' armed underground wing Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades

It also has a branch in exile, formerly in Jordan - where one of its leaders, Khalid Meshal, was the target of a bungled Israeli assassination attempt in 1997.

King Hussein tolerated Hamas' presence but his successor, King Abdullah II had the group's headquarters closed down and senior figures expelled to Qatar.

Hamas came to prominence after the first intifada as the main opponent of the Oslo accords - the US-sponsored peace process that oversaw the gradual and partial removal of Israel's occupation in return for Palestinian guarantees to protect Israeli security.

Despite numerous Israeli anti-insurgency operations and clampdowns by Yasser Arafat's new Palestinian National Authority created under Oslo, Hamas found it had an effective power of veto over the process by launching suicide attacks.

In February and March 1996, Hamas carried out several suicide bus bombings, killing nearly 60 Israelis, in retaliation for the assassination in December 1995 of Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash.

The bombings have been widely credited with turning Israelis off the peace process and bringing about the election of hardline right-winger Binyamin Netanyahu who was a staunch opponent of the Oslo accords.

Growning support

In the post-Oslo world, most particularly following the failure of US President Bill Clinton's Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 and the second intifada which followed shortly thereafter, Hamas has been gaining power and influence as Israel has steadily destroyed the power structure of the avowedly secular Mr Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.

In towns and refugee camps besieged by the Israeli army, Hamas organises clinics and schools which serve Palestinians who feel entirely let down by the corrupt and inefficient PNA.

And Palestinians of most political persuasions have cheered each new suicide attack carried out by Hamas (and its fellow militants Islamic Jihad and the secular al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade).

Many Palestinians see "martyrdom" operations as the best way to revenge their own losses and counter Israel's seemingly-inexorable march to colonise the West Bank and Gaza, denying Palestinians justice and their legitimate national aspirations.

But there have been efforts to unite the various Palestinian factions, with Cairo hosting a series of meetings in 2002 and 2003 to negotiate a possible suspension of terror attacks.

A draft agreement between Hamas and Mr Arafat's Fatah faction stipulated that Hamas would cease attacks in Israel if the Israeli army pulled back to its positions before the intifada.

But Hamas has always shied away from signing up to a ceasefire while Israel occupies Palestinian territory and its troops are responsible for the deaths of Palestinians there.

"The killing of civilians must be punished by the killing of civilians," as Mahmoud al-Zahhar, a senior member of Hamas, put it.

Assassinations

As well as inflicting by far the most casualties on Israelis - with attacks that are generally better-planned and executed than those of their militant rivals - Hamas has lost many members of its leadership in Israeli assassinations and security sweeps.

Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades leader Salah Shehada died in July 2002 when an Israeli F-16 jet dropped a one-ton guided bomb on the apartment block in Gaza, killing Shehada, two members of his family, his bodyguard, and 11 others - mainly in neighbouring buildings.

Shehada's successor, Mohammad Deif - whom Israel blames for the 1996 bombings - has escaped several attempts on his life.

But Hamas attacks on Israel have continued thick and fast, with suicide bombings and armed assaults claiming hundreds of lives. Three Hamas supporters were even convicted of an (unsuccessful) attempt to poison Israeli diners at Jerusalem restaurant.

On the other hand, the group has shown itself willing to periodically suspend attacks in favour of Palestinian diplomacy, if the group sees fit.

"The main aim of the intifada (uprising) is the liberation of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, and nothing more. We haven't the force to liberate all our land," Hamas political leader Abdel Aziz Rantissi told the BBC in 2002.

"It is forbidden in our religion to give up a part of our land, so we can't recognise Israel at all. But we can accept a truce with them, and we can live side by side and refer all the issues to the coming generations."

The suspensions have often - but not always - come to an end when Israeli forces launched their own attacks killing Hamas activists.

[Mediocrates]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1658443.stm

Not really, not in any meaningful way. Thank god for the Beeb once again.

Who are Islamic Jihad?
Islamic Jihad may be one of the best known names associated with Palestinian militancy, but it has always been a relatively small and shadowy organisation.

The group - made up of a handful of loosely affiliated factions divided up into cells - has traditionally concentrated on attacking Israel, eschewing the prominent social, welfare and political role taken on by other Islamist groups like Hamas or the Lebanon's Hezbollah.

This is a reflection of Jihad's ideological stance which holds that the Arab-Israeli conflict will only be resolved through armed confrontation.

Israel is considered - along with pro-Western, secular Arab regimes - as a manifestation of Western imperialism in the Islamic lands; going into battle against it is therefore the first step to fulfilling the goals of Islam.

Jihad has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, ranging from armed infiltrations of Jewish settlements and ambushes to car bombs and suicide bombings on Israeli buses.

But Jihad cells have also resorted to less "conventional" terrorist tactics, such as the stoning to death of two 14-year-old boys abducted from a West Bank settlement in May 2001.

The most devastating intifada operations have been a car bomb attack against an Israeli bus in June 2002, killing 17 people, and the ambush in Hebron against settlers and Israeli troops on 15 November that left 14 Israelis dead.

In all more than 60 Israeli lives have been lost in Jihad attacks during the intifada, with about 40 suicide attackers dying in the process.

Origins

The group, also known as PIJ in the West, was founded by three Palestinian students studying in Egypt in the late 1970s - Fathi Shikaki, Abdul Aziz Odeh and Bashir Moussa.

Although Sunni Muslims, they were inspired by the Islamic revolution which installed a Shia theocracy in power in Iran.

Booted out of Egypt to Gaza after the assassination of President Sadat by Egyptian Islamist soldiers, the leadership of PIJ began organising in the Israeli-occupied territories and elsewhere in the early 1980s.

Their first successful strike is thought to have been in Gaza, the killing of an Israeli military police captain in August 1987, a few months before the first Palestinian intifada.

The following year Shikaki and Odeh were expelled again, this time by the Israeli authorities, to Lebanon - but that did not prevent PIJ from launching a series of bomb and other attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets.

Fighting Oslo

The group has had a mixed history of relations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. A shared liberation ideology brought them together in an earlier period of the Palestinian revolution - until Mr Arafat renounced the armed struggle against Israel in the late 1980s.

PIJ subsequently did its best to blow Arafat's Oslo peace process off course - conducting some devastating attacks such as the bombing of a military bus stop near Netanya in January 1995 and a suicide nail bomb in Tel Aviv in March 1996.

Attacks like this, which killed 19 and 13 Israelis respectively, increased the determination of Israel's then-Labour government to pursue peace.

The attacks also went a long way towards shaking public confidence in Israel, which saw the election of a right-wing government in May 1996 that presided over deadlock in negotiations that the peace process never recovered from.

But back in October 1995, while Labor was talking peace with Mr Arafat, Israel's security forces were fighting a ruthless anti-terror campaign, during which Fathi Shikaki was gunned down in Malta by unknown assassins - thought to be working for the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.

Leadership of the organisation passed to Ramadan Abdullah al-Shallah, whose academic links in the West (he has a doctorate from the University of Durham and had just left a post at the University of South Florida) caused some controversy.

Its string of successful attacks have brought PIJ new support from Palestinians angry over harsh Israeli security measures and Israel's perceived intransigence towards a return to peace talks.

It has also grown increasing close to Hamas, as the two groups' methods and long-term goals have converged.

Ordinary Palestinians have also come out on to the streets to celebrate Jihad violence visited on Israel, while what is left of the Palestinian Authority has singularly failed to clamp down on the group.

[NewsGuy]

Hizbullah is a perfect contender for praise from the BBC for a few reasons:

1. They are Muslim terrorists, which automatically makes them noble victims.

2. They mass-murdered Israelis and Americans, which makes them noble defenders of freedom.

3. They train and help other Muslim terrorists to mass-murder Israelis and Americans

A feather in the cap of the BBC.

[Mediocrates]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1760492.stm

Once more with fervor boys, the Beeb sets us straight.

Profile: Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is an armed Palestinian group associated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation.

The group, which emerged shortly after the outbreak of the current Palestinian intifada, has carried out operations against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, and suicide attacks on civilians inside Israel.

The brigade is neither officially recognised nor openly backed by Mr Arafat and Fatah, though brigade members tend also to belong to Fatah, the Palestinian leader's political faction.

Although other militant groups, as well as Fatah, agreed to a temporary suspension of attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in June 2003, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has not.

Israeli forces have often targeted the group's leaders.

Raed Karmi, its then leader in the West Bank, was killed in an explosion in January 2002.

Israel alleges that Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader in the West Bank, is also the head of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

Mr Barghouti was captured by Israeli forces in April 2002 and is on trial.

'Arafat's miscalculation'

Analysts say that unlike Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades does not want an Islamic state, but uses Islam to inspire its struggle for an independent Palestine.

The brigade is said to have grown out of Fatah's need to be seen to be putting up some kind of resistance to Israeli raids into land that was meant to be under Palestinian control.

By allowing the brigade to operate, in the hope that it would make life difficult for the Israeli army, Mr Arafat may have made both a military and political miscalculation.

One of the Israeli responses to attacks by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and other groups were the heavy attacks against the Palestinian Authority during 2002, which saw much of the authority's infrastructure destroyed.

Mr Arafat's tacit backing for the brigade has also allowed Israeli officials to paint him as backing terrorism.

[NewsGuy]

Could have called this thread "The BBC's Extreme Muslim Makeover"

:)

[ForceRecon79]

We still owe Hezbollah and scum like Imad Mugniyah for the attacks in the 80's....and America is like the Irish and the Italians....we never forget a blood debt.

[Katoom]

Contrary to popular belief, Hezballah was not frormed to defend Lebanon from Israeli attacks, Hezballah was formed when they split from the secular Shiite movement AMAL (they claimed AMAL was not religous). Their mission statement in 1982 was to create an "Islamic Republic" in Lebanon (following Ayatollah Khomieni's idea that Iran's main export should be the Islamic Revolution)....


From is creation in 1982 until the end of the civil war in 1991, Hezballah was just another militia in the Labanese civil war. in fought with its predecessor AMAL, and it fought with the Communist Party of Lebanon.


when the Civil War ended and all the militias surrendered their weapons (or most of their weapons) to the Lebanese amry, Hezballah was allowed to keep its weapons in order to "Liberate" south Lebanon from Israeli occupiers.

The real reason Hezballah was allowed to keep its weapons was to ensure Syrian and Iranian dominance in Lebanon...