I can understand the plight of the shiites in Lebanon…

It seems throughout their history they have been relegated to second class by their fellow Christians and Sunnites…this is because whoever represented them politically was corrupt and cared less for catering for their needs than enriching himself…

So it is very natural for them to stick to HA and to their weapons, resisting any disarmament for it was the only party that ever looked after their needs, that made them move from second class citizens to first class ones… an area that no govt from independence to 1990 ever bothered to invest in seeing that the representatives of the Shiites never bothered to demand such adjustments.

In the years between 1990 and 2005, the govts that came under the Syrian tutelage played it very safe by handing the south and its liberation from the Israelis over to Hezbollah to divert their attention from the riches that were to be reaped from reconstructing Beirut… this lead HA to gain more popularity as it became the sole means for any Shiite in the South to get whatever he or she needed…be it education, hospitalization, employment… the party of God became the sole provider for the Shiites needs…instead of teaching their people how to fish, they kept buying fish for the people and feeding them…sad…but thats another story.

But the Shiites have to understand one thing…they may enjoy a semblance of power and respect today in Lebanon…but this is not a healthy situation as it is based on the arms in possession of HA as well as the material support that comes from Iran via Syria… this setup, although beneficiary to them, is causing a great disequilibrium in the Lebanese body… and it is also causing other sects in Lebanon to feel uneasy as there exists a dangerous power gap…

The Shiites should build more trust in the government…there should be a give and take relation between the two, and each side understanding the importance of the other.

It is my firm belief that as long as HA remains an armed faction that does not report to the Lebanese government, the gap between the Shiites and the government and between the Shiites and the other sects will remain as it is, if not grow bigger. The speeches made by HA officials during the war if compared with their latest declarations show how dangerous it is when their (HA’s) policy goes out of alignment with the government’s.

In conclusion, Hezbollah should disarm and embark on a more democratic way of representing the Shiites in Lebanon, of assisting them and catering for their needs, than through their weapons, that is if indeed they want to really help their people out…to return to my analogy, HA should concentrate on byuing the Shiites fishing rods and teaching them how to use them. This will lead to a stronger, more coherent Lebanon a deterring factor for external powers that try to use the current power vacuum in the country to fulfill their dirty deeds.