Hezbollah’s War of Position: The Arab–Islamic Revolutionary Praxis

The May 2000 victory of Hezbollah over Israel, and the liberation of southern Lebanon, proposed and advanced a new and hitherto successful grand Arab liberation strategy. Inspired by this victory, and seemingly accepting Hezbollah’s new liberation strategy, the Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) began four months later, and in January 2006 Hamas’s electoral victory in Palestine further signalled the hegemony of the new discourse. Hezbollah’s triumphs signified and significantly contributed to the formation of a new age in the Middle East, characterized mainly by the rise of a new Arab national consciousness that was most eloquently captured by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s memorable phrase “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.” The Arabs were reinventing themselves—and, by implication, reinventing Israel. This article investigates the rise of Hezbollah and the new Arab revolutionary discourse, focusing primarily on analyzing selected speeches and statements by Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyad Hassan Na...