Some of Hezbollah's critics posit that the Nasrallah party has shifted its priorities from fighting Israel in the south, to confronting the Syrian people in the north, as it has become very clear in the past few days in light of the battles taking place in the Syrian town of Qusayr. But this estimate, regardless of the good intentions of its proponents, is wrong and misleading. Indeed, Hezbollah, when it fought Israel, was defending the alliance led by the Syrian and Iranian regimes. This was only a secret to those that did not want to see it, and did not want to see Hezbollah's services for that imperial and expansionist configuration in the Levant. Without this interpretation, it would be impossible to understand Hezbollah's move in the 1980s to liquidate other factions that wanted to fight Israel, but without deferring fully to the strategic dictates of Syria and Iran. At the time, Hezbollah undertook the task of bringing together the means and the ends, in a way that the former would not get ahead of the latter, and that the latter would not find itself helpless and powerless. In 2000, with the Israeli unilateral withdrawal, Hezbollah was not comfortable with the liberation, and went on to fabricate, along with the Syrian tutelage regime, the issue of the Shebaa farms as a sufficient justification for the resumption of the conflict and maintaining the country in the midst of deadly wars. Needless to say, the main reason for this stance was nothing more than the fear that the Israeli withdrawal may pave the way for demanding the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. Calls for this were indeed made in the Qornet Shahwan Gathering, and with the subsequent events leading up to Hariri's split with the Syrian regime. True, it was Hezbollah that undertook the task of liberation and paid the price for it. This, however, as it turned out with the liberation in 2000, was not governed by any national Lebanese goal, especially as the concept of unilateral withdrawal as proposed by Ehud Barak had not been on the table before that. When Barak advanced his proposal, this was an undesirable surprise made more impactful by the completion of the withdrawal on the ground. We recall those experiences today in light of the fierce battles in Qusayr, which powerfully demonstrate that the “main contradiction" in Hezbollah's worldview has to do with the integrity and survival of the Syrian regime, and of course the Iranian regime, and not with the conflict with Israel. Ultimately, this conflict is nothing more than the necessary condition for the operation of that regime against its people and the peoples of the region, and the functioning of its ideological and media machine by extension. If this estimate is correct, then taking part in the battles in Qusayr is only a technical development in a context that already stood before. To be sure, Hezbollah, before and after Qusayr, is fighting the wars of the Syrian regime and securing the foundations of its operation. In this sense, the view that bought into the claims about the priority of the conflict with Israel is abysmal and false. Indeed, that conflict was never a priority for any party at any stage. Furthermore, Hezbollah would not have been able to publicize this claim, and have broad segments, both Lebanese and Arab, believe it, were it not for the fact that the Syrian home front was disabled and postponed, and that the Syrian regime was comfortable with this situation. But when things changed because of the Syrian revolution, Hezbollah was forced to fight its real battles, without cover up or embellishment this time.
