WASHINGTON - Hopes by the George W Bush
administration for the emergence of an implicit
Sunni-Israel alliance against an Iranian-led
"Shi'ite crescent" have faded over the past week
as Arab public opinion has become increasingly
united by outrage over the Jewish state's
continuing military campaign in Lebanon and
Washington's refusal to stop it, according to
Middle East experts.
Fueled by saturation
television coverage of the destruction and
suffering wrought by Israel's attacks, popular
sentiment in both Shi'ite and Sunni communities
has moved strongly behind Shi'ite
Hezbollah, whose leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, has become a symbol of
resistance to Israeli and US power, these analysts
agree.
"Resistance rises above
sectarianism," said Graham Fuller, a former top
Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Rand Corporation. "Sunni masses by
and large are not concerned whether Iran, Syria's
rulers, or Hezbollah are Shi'ites; they applaud
them for their steadfastness and willingness to
fight and even die."
The growing
Sunni-Shi'ite unity in support of Hezbollah defies
hopes by Bush administration officials and their
Israel-centered neo-conservative supporters in
Washington that fears of an Iranian-led Shi'ite
axis stretching from Lebanon across Syria to the
new Shi'ite-dominated government in Iraq would
provoke Sunni-led states to form a de facto
alliance with Israel.
Those hopes were
bolstered when, in a break with traditional Arab
solidarity over any confrontation with Israel,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt denounced Hezbollah
for "adventurism" in abducting two Israeli
soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border, the
incident that precipitated the current violence
and destruction.
Their statements, which
were welcomed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice as evidence of the emergence of a "new Middle
East", were also cited as evidence, particularly
by neo-conservatives, that Iran, believed to be
Hezbollah's most important source of arms and
external funding, had displaced Israel as the
Sunnis' greatest threat.
The theory was
most eloquently expressed by Michael Rubin, a
hardline neo-conservative at the American
Enterprise Institute. "Across Lebanon and the
region, Arab leaders see Hezbollah for what it is:
an arm of Iranian influence waging a sectarian
battle in the heart of the Middle East," he wrote
in a July 19 column in the Wall Street Journal
titled "Iran against the Arabs".
"An old
Arab proverb goes, 'Me against my brother; me and
my brother against our cousin; and me, my brother
and my cousin against the stranger,'" he went on.
"Forced to make a choice, Sunni Arabs are
deciding: the Jews are cousins; the Shi'ites,
strangers."
But most regional specialists
now dismiss this analysis, at least at the popular
level. If anything, they say, the impact of
Israel's military campaign in Lebanon has
confirmed its status as the "stranger", while
Hezbollah's resistance has elevated it and those
who support it to "cousin", if not "brother", to
Sunni Arabs.
"In fact ... there is more of
a rapprochement between the Sunni and Shi'ite,"
said Jean Francois Seznec, a specialist on the
Persian Gulf region at Columbia University, who
noted that Shi'ite Hezbollah and Iran both support
Sunni Hamas in the Palestinian territories and
that Sunnis in Syria could be expected to rally
behind the Alawi Assad regime if Damascus, which
also supports Hezbollah, is drawn into the current
conflict.
"The real split here is between
the Sunni autocrats and their very own citizens,"
wrote Fuller in an article for Global Viewpoint.
"These Sunni regimes are terrified that Iran,
Syria, Hezbollah and even Sunni Hamas are all
creating inspirational models of independent mass
resistance against reigning US and Israeli power
in the region."
That Sunni leaders now
feel compelled to follow public opinion was made
evident by several developments this past week,
beginning with Egypt's rejection of Washington's
proposal to hold Wednesday's emergency
international conference on Lebanon at Sharm
el-Sheikh. As a result, the conference, at which
Rice found herself completely isolated in
rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire, was
held in Rome instead.
Tuesday's angry and
unusually harsh denunciation by Saudi Arabia of
what it called "unremitting Israeli aggression",
which also warned Washington in particular of
unpredictable "repercussions befalling the region,
including wars and conflict that will spare no
one" if a ceasefire is not quickly achieved, was
also taken as a major reversal of its previous
views.
"The Saudis thought they could get
a ceasefire and be the heroes," said Marc Lynch, a
Middle East specialist at Williams College who
follows the Arab media closely. "When it became
clear that that wasn't going to happen and public
opinion was getting really mobilized, then they
did a 180-degree turn. That is very significant."
Finally, Thursday's appearance on
Al-Jazeera of a new video by al-Qaeda deputy
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he implicitly
called for unity between Sunnis and Shi'ites
against the "Zionist-Crusader alliance", suggested
that the most radical Sunni jihadis were not only
eager to identify themselves with Hezbollah's
resistance, but also see the current crisis as an
opportunity for broadening their base.
"Just as Iraq served al-Qaeda's strategy
by supplying an endless stream of images of
'heroic mujahideen' fighting against 'brutal
Americans' - and became less useful as images of
dead Iraqi civilians began to complicate the
picture - the Lebanon war offers an unending
supply of images and actions which powerfully
support al-Qaeda's narrative and world view ...
without the complications posed by [Abu Musab al-]
Zarqawi's controversial anti-Shi'ite strategy in
Iraq," wrote Lynch on his blog.
"In that
regard, al-Qaeda's open support for Hezbollah
might even help to heal the Sunni-Shi'ite breach
which Zarqawi worked hard to open [in Iraq]
against [Osama] bin Laden's and Zawahiri's
advice," he said.
Even before the current
Israel-Lebanon crisis, al-Qaeda had been trying to
undo the damage caused by Zarqawi's anti-Shi'ite
campaign. In his most recent audio message
released on July 1, several weeks after Zarqawi's
death, bin Laden referred to Shi'ites as "cousins"
and called for al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia, as
Zarqawi's group is known, to make US forces and
their collaborators - rather than the general
Shi'ite population - its primary target.
"The Sunni-Shi'ite divide is real, and
it's not just being invented by the neo-cons, but
if you look at mainstream public opinion, a lot of
the Sunni-Shi'ite stuff that the neo-cons and the
press are picking up on is the invention of the
[Sunni-led] regimes, especially in the Gulf, where
Sunni leaders really are afraid of Iran and their
Shi'ite populations inconveniently happen to live
on the oilfields," Lynch told Inter Press Service.
"For the Arab regimes, playing on
Sunni-Shi'ite differences is really a
divide-and-conquer [strategy] to prevent the rise
of a unified movement against them. But the fact
is you're now seeing even very Sunni movements
like the Muslim Brotherhood rallying to Hezbollah
as the fighter against Israel, while these
corrupt, impotent, pro-American governments aren't
doing a thing."
