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Syria Won’t Fail Anti-Israel Resistance: Hizbullah
IslamOnline.net: Syria will not bargain with the United States over Hizbollah in view of the latest bellicose threats against Syria after Saddam Hussein’s regime had passed into history, Hizbullah’s Spokesman Hassan Ezzudin told IslamOnline.net. “Anti-U.S. occupation powers are, in fact, rallying behind Syria and in harmony with its stances and Syria will never fail such powers,” Ezzudin said. That is why “Hizbullah has no worries that Syria might be armtwisted by the US pressures and fail anti-Israeli resistance movement like Hizbollah,” he said, noting that such movements were serving as the stronghold against occupation.

The Hizbullah media official ruled out that some countries, which forged strategic and diplomatic relations with Hizbullah such as Iran and some Arab countries, would pressure Syria into toeing the American line. Ezzudin said Israel may be behind the latest string of U.S. threats against Syria, pointing out that Israel was fishing in troubled waters to provoke the U.S. into taking military action against Syria or Lebanon. Hizbullah resistance movement was able to drove the Israeli occupation army out of the Lebanese south, except fro the Shaba farms, in May 2000. He, however, said such pressures would prove futile given the high-profile diplomatic performance of Syria and its open dialogue with the U.S. as well as its commitment to the international legitimacy.

Qassim Quseer, a Lebanese political researcher, said Hizbullah is a close ally to Syria and Lebanon, noting that the movement’s role was not only confined to resistance against the Israeli occupation, but it also had “political and social dimensions that would enfeeble speculations that Syria would yield to the U.S. threats or marginalize Hizbullah.

Syria's got a pretty large problem in Hezbollah. They're protectors, but Hezbollah doesn't belong to them — it's an Iranian creature. It's deeply involved in internal Lebanon politics, even while acting with near autonomy in southern Lebanon — a stateless army that would give Syria grave problems if it ever turned on her. Bashar can't just drop Hezbollah — or any of the other major groups it gives shelter to. But at the same time, the U.S. is going to continue building diplomatic pressure to do just that, and now we've got a military force that's just demonstrated that it's essentially unstoppable by a Third World rathole like Syria. If either the rock or the hard place moves an inch, Bashar gets squeezed.

Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-04-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=13259