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The perfect storm that has broken over the Middle East since the back-to-back kidnappings by Hamas and Hezbollah was fed by converging developments, developments that might have been manageable individually but which proved disastrous in combination. A look at the conditions that merged to fuel the typhoon offers a sense of just what it will take to get through the situation.
Aging revolutionary movements feel compelled to prove their continuing relevance and vitality, especially as they begin to fade into a quotidian political landscape. Call it the last fling of a mid-life crisis. The current tempest resulted in part from four such movements going through this phase simultaneously.
In Palestine, elections Hamas had long disdained saddled it with unwelcome demands, like the need to accommodate Israel, while trading the thrill of armed struggle for the delivery of mundane public services. Some of the party’s pragmatists seemed prepared to accept the passing of youth, but others both inside Gaza and out, like Khaled Meshal, were repulsed by the new dispensation and set out to wreck it.
To the north, the halting transformation of Hezbollah into a relatively normal political party, complete with parliamentary representation and responsibility for civilian ministries, spurred the same sort of split. Unable to settle down as ordinary Lebanese concerned with local Lebanese interests, the party leadership opted for its more glamorous role as vanguard of Muslim anti-Zionism. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, certified by the United Nations, evidently encumbered Hezbollah with an identity crisis the party couldn’t quite overcome.
