A New Man for The Mideast?(Hassan Nasrallah)

Byline: Rami Khouri (Khouri is editor-at-large at the Daily Star in Beirut.)

He appears, almost mystically, every decade or so in the Arab world--a charismatic, militant figure who challenges Israel, defies the United States and rallies millions of Arabs to his cause, usually to disappear soon after in defeat or deflation. He is the Man who promises Arabs honor instead of shame, victory instead of defeat, empowerment instead of subjugation. And just about on schedule, he has emerged again today in the incarnation of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Many have walked this dangerous path: Gamal Abdel Nasser in the late '50s and '60s, Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian guerrillas in the '60s and '70s, Muammar Kad-dafi of Libya and Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran in the late '70s and early '80s, and Saddam Hussein in the '90s. All failed to alter history. Yet the Middle East seems to have a perpetual reservoir of contenders for this elusive and often fatal mantle. Nasrallah's rise says much about the Arab world's recurring, almost genetic need for a strong political personality who emerges to lead its quest to regain its honor. If he succeeds, he will be a truly historic figure, perhaps finally slaying the ghosts of Arab humiliations past. But if he fails, the monster of mass degradation will grow, fed by the unquenched Arab need for a dose--even a small dose--of political and military victory.

To be sure, some Lebanese and other Arabs see Nasrallah and his party as reckless fanatics, bringing ruin to Lebanon. Yet many more rally to him, waving Hizbullah's distinctive yellow-and-green flag across the Middle East. The reason is not ideology, but psychology--a basic human need for self-respect and affirmation. Three generations of Arabs have endured painful humiliation at the combined hand of Israel and the West. Five major wars, once each decade: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982--all ending in defeat. The false and cruel promise of peace talks emerges and withers just as regularly. Meanwhile, Arab political systems remain stubbornly unchanging--top-heavy security states riddled with favoritism, corruption and mismanagement, ruled in seeming perpetuity by the same autocrats and dictators and feudal families.

Today, this bizarre history leaves ordinary Arab men and women triply embittered. First by the cumulative ignominies of repeated defeat by Israel. Second by the West's chronic neocolonial disdain for Arabs and their world. And third--the cruelest cut because ...