Agence France-Presse CAIRO: Israel s punishment of Lebanon because of Hizbullah has left Arabs torn between criticism for the Shiite movement s head Hassan Nasralah and praise for a man who many say is restoring Arab pride. Arab leaders, commentators and the man on the street alike appear to be in two minds as Israel continues to pummel Lebanon from land, sea and air, targeting the state s infrastructure as well as the Lebanese militant movement. Hizbullah is the master of resistance. It is the voice of Arab dignity, wrote Egypt s Mustafa Bakri in his Al-Osboa newspaper. Hizbullah is acting as regional protectors of the Palestinian people. Other newspapers in the Arab world have voiced similar opinions, idolizing the eloquent Nasrallah for daring to challenge Israel, six years after Hizbullah kicked out Israeli troops from south Lebanon. Demonstrations have been organized in Kuwait, Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Syria to sing the praises of Nasrallah, who has responded to Israel s offensive by raining rockets on Haifa and other Israeli towns. In Egypt, however, mobilization has fallen far short of the 140,000 people who demonstrated in support of Iraq before the 2003 invasion, when Saddam Hussein was seen by many as hero of the Arab world for defying Washington. Bashar, how long will you wait before putting up a fight? chanted a few dozen leftist demonstrators gathered in Cairo on Sunday, referring to President Bashar Al-Assad in neighboring Syria. Many of them carried posters of the late Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt s nationalist pan-Arabist leader. The next day, a handful of other demonstrators gathered in front of the lawyers syndicate, waving Hizbullah s rifle-emblazoned yellow flags as speakers blared Nasser-era military chants. We are disgusted by the Arab regimes. Our new hero now is this man, said an Egyptian journalist, brandishing a picture of the black-turbaned Sheikh Nasrallah. It s not peace our regimes give us, it s enslavement to the West and its irrational support for the Zionist state, she added. Fawzi Hossam, a 42-year-old government employee, watched the small protest from a distance. Nasrallah is a great fighter, but was it really worth all the suffering? he wondered. Some 230 Lebanese, all but two dozen of them civilians, have been killed since the June 12 launch of Israel s offensive after Hizbullah s capture of two soldiers, the largest operation since the Jewish state invaded Lebanon in 1982. Hizbullah can hit Haifa, Hizbullah can hit Tel Aviv. Then what? If there s a war, Israel will win it. Neither Nasrallah nor Syria nor anybody else can beat Israel and the Americans, everybody knows that, Hossam said. As they scrambled to contain the worst regional crisis in years, some Arab governments have also directed their criticism at Hizbullah as much as Israel, blaming the militia for dragging the entire region into war. Igniting the situation to achieve limited gains means losing sight of the main Palestinian goal of obtaining an independent state, President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published Tuesday. Saudi Arabia sparked indignant editorials in opposition newspapers for indirectly slamming the adventurism of Hizbullah, without naming the group, but state-owned dailies in Egypt continue to pile blame on the Shiite militia. Hizbullah is trying to survive as an armed movement by ... provoking a conflict with Israel. This state of affairs makes it a state within a state , Al-Ahram said. Similar comments were made of Palestinian militants before the 1982 invasion which drove the late leader Yasser Arafat out of Lebanon.
