Hezbollah and the Arab revolution

The group's leader keeps his ear close to the ground, bonding with the dispossessed and speaking their language.

Heralded by millions of fans as 'the mastermind of the resistance' - and demonised by the US and Israel as a 'terrorist', Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah's rhetoric towards Syria is equally divisive

Is there something amiss within Hezbollah?

It rose from the ignominy of oblivion, feudal exploitation, sectarian bias, and overall marginalisation to occupy political centre stage. In fewer than thirty years it converted Shia socio-political weightlessness into a counterbalancing political gravity.

It stood up against the Israeli Goliath. It survived the "incendiaries" dropped on it by Arab politicians arrayed against it from Amman to Cairo. It outclassed its enemies within and outside of Lebanon, with imaginative political guile and fine calculation against all odds.

But resisting the Goliath of Tel Aviv while embracing the lion of Damascus risks a decreasing commitment to Arab revolution within "the Party of God" - and to its own revolutionary standing.
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