An end to the charade of resistance?
An excellent article from Lebanese writer Elias Harfouche published in yesterday's Asharq al Awsat, happily appeared on the paper's English website today. Harfouche notes the stunning volte face performed by Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s veteran head of parliament, leader of the Amal movement and close ally of Israel’s arch enemy Hizbullah, in announcing last week a framework for talks with Israel – albeit mediated through US officials. Harfouche observes that Berri would have been quick to denounce any other such Arab “normalisation” with Israel. But he now wants to convince his compatriots that talking to Israelis has switched from being an act of betrayal into a patriotic duty.
After the Emirati and Bahraini peace agreement with Israel last month, many predicted Riyadh, Rabat or Khartoum could be the next Arab capital to “normalise” with Tel Aviv, but not Beirut. Some think this sudden willingness to talk to Israel by one of Lebanon's most long-standing rejectionist za'ims comes as a result of US pressure. After all, Washington slapped sanctions last month on Berri’s close aide and former minister Ali Hassan Khalil for links to Hizbullah – a warning shot to the powerful Shiite leader himself. But perhaps Lebanon’s tentative opening to Israel has wider significance.
While the UAE-Bahrain-Israel agreement was met with accusations of betrayal from the usual suspects - Qatar and Turkey, notwithstanding these countries’ own relations with Tel Aviv, there was comparatively little criticism from the beating heart of Arabism in Baathist Damascus. Is the Asad regime itself gearing up to at last end its pretence of being the vanguard of the “resistance front” to Israel? Could Iran itself, the power behind Hizbullah and a past master at exploiting the Palestinian cause for its own political PR, be preparing a deal with Tel Aviv to escape increasingly crippling US sanctions? Given the bewildering speed with which longstanding taboos and threadbare slogans of "resistance" to Israel are collapsing across the region, suddenly anything seems possible.