Rami Khouri: Why Hamas and Hezbollah Will Be Hard to Defeat

BEIRUT -- Many analogies are being made between the ongoing Israeli attack against Hamas in Gaza and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Here are the most important ones, in my view.

The first is about provenance: Hamas and Hezbollah did not exist before around 1982. Their birth and strength must be understood largely as a response to Israel's occupation and colonization policies in Palestine and Lebanon, alongside other secondary reasons.... (more)