Why the "Resistance" has lost much of its Palestinian support.
A much greater threat to Hezbollah's future and to Iran's goals in the region is the fact that it's claimed raison d'etre of resisting Israel's occupation of Lebanon and championing the Palestinian cause are increasingly ridiculed even in the Shia community as well as across sectarian lines as being irrelevant and viewed with growing disdain. Moreover, Israel's occupation of Lebanon ended 17 years ago and it's increasingly claimed, even in Shia neighborhoods, that Hezbollah's arms should be turned over to the Lebanese army.
To Hezbollah's credit,, its 22 years of confrontations with Israel and the 2006 thirty-four day war added credence to its claim to be the "Resistance." But its "Resistance brand" began to fray even before Tehran ordered Hezbollah into Syria.
Decades of Palestinian Popular Committee and other camp pleas to Hezbollah officials that the "Resistance" should begin in Lebanon's camps and please help us" are claimed to have fallen on deaf ears.
As Hezbollah is well aware, most health indexes among Lebanon's Palestinian have plummeted. Communicable diseases, respiratory problems, drug use, and poor nutrition have risen due partly to polluted water in the camps, intermittent electricity and scarcity of potable water. These and many more camp problems, result from Palestinians being barred from most jobs, condemning the majority of camp residents to poverty.
Palestinians in Lebanon, 37 years after the Nakba and 35 years after Hezbollah was organized, so the Party of God claims, to advance the Palestinian cause, Lebanon's 12 Palestinian camps and 42 "gatherings" have sunk ever more deeply into squalor, poverty and despair. This according to camp leaders and residents while the self-anointed "Resistance" watches and refuses to assist with much needed infrastructure improvements or to help lessen the sharp deterioration of health, security and economic conditions of Lebanon's camps.
Despite being regularly updated and petitioned on these and other quality of life problems in Palestinian camps, Hezbollah has not responded as many Palestinians think a true "Resistance" surely would. A common observation by camp leaders and residents is that "True Resistance begins in the camps not in Syria as Hassan Nasrallah claims!" Hezbollah continues to avert its attention from the camps but it does maintain, according to camp residents and popular committees, spy networks as well as giving protection for certain Bekaa Valley "business interests" that operated in every one of the 12 camps.
Another common criticism of Hezbollah's posturing as the leader of the Palestinian "Resistance" resulted from actions taken by Hezbollah during the August 2010 Lebanese Parliamentary debate seeking civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon including the right to work and to own a home. Hezbollah withheld its support for the Palestinians right to work initiative, thus blocking Lebanon's Parliament from granting the only refugees on earth thus denied the elementary civil rights to work and to achieve home ownership. In the intervening seven years, Hezbollah has annually refused to promote these civil rights.
For its part, Lebanon's Parliament continues to ignore the subject.
When pressed over the past seven years on this fundamental "Resistance" issue by the Beirut and Washington DC Palestine Civil Rights Campaign (PCRC) two Hezbollah's politburo members finally candidly admitted to this observer and two Palestinian faculty member at the American University of Beirut, that granting the right to work and home ownership to Palestinians in Lebanon was not a Hezbollah political priority nor is it with Iran.
For years Iran has also been petitioned to encourage Hezbollah to use its votes in Parliament to grant these elementary civil rights, but both former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Bint Jbeil Lebanon and current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a 2015 appearance at Mohammad Hussein Behesthi University in Tehran personally promised this observer to look into the matter. But neither has acted to date.
Nor is there any indication that Hezbollah plans to support civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon including the right to work or to own a home. Not without specific instructions from Tehran.
Today Hezbollah is in deep flux. Once a champion of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, the group's popularity in the Middle East currently hovers at a new low, partly due to its nearly seven years of fighting in Syria. In a 2015 Zogby poll 96 percentof Egyptians agreed that Hezbollah has contributed to growing regional extremism. This, while other Arab countries have also expressed their disapproval with 86 percentof polled Jordanians expressing a strong negative view of Hezbollah.
Some Palestinian in Lebanon and elsewhere also condemn Hezbollah for killing more Palestinians from Yarmouk and Syria's other ten camps during its six years of fighting in Syria than Israel has killed during the 67 years since the Nakba. Consequently some are speaking publicly about their beliefs that Iran and Hezbollah, while pushing the "Resistance" brand are no longer interested in the Palestinian cause other than to gain some credibility among the Arab masses that do tend to support the Full Right to Return to Palestine. Hezbollah is widely believed, like so many others in this region, to "play the Palestinian card" for its own political objectives.
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