HEZBOLLAH SURRENDER?

According to this article, Hezbollah representatives in the Lebanese governments have agreed, as part of a cease-fire proposal, to disarm their military wing.

The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour Cabinet meeting — was the first time that Hezbollah has signed onto a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces. The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions.

But officials said Friday the proposals form a basis for an agreement, increasing the pressure on the United States to call for a cease-fire. Tony Blair said Friday they too want an international force dispatched quickly to the Mideast but said any plan to end the fighting — to have a lasting effect — must address long-running regional disputes. "This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East," Bush said after his meeting with Blair in Washington. "Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region." By signing onto the peace proposals, Hezbollah gave Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora a boost in future negotiations. Going into Thursday night's Cabinet session, Hezbollah's two ministers expressed deep reservations about the force and its mandate, fearing it could turn against their guerrillas. "Will the international force be a deterrent one and used against who?" officials who attended the Cabinet meeting said in summing up Hezbollah cabinet ministers concerns. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the debate. But afterward, Information Minister Ghazi Aridi announced that the package had been agreed on by consensus in a rare show of unity by a divided administration. While all sides seemed to be looking for a way to stop the fighting, details of plans taking shape on all sides were still fuzzy. And it was not at all certain Hezbollah would really follow through on the Lebanese government plan that would effectively abolish the militants' military wing. It may have signed on to the deal convinced that Israel would reject it.

I cannot understand why Hezbollah would fold at this stage, when it appears that they are standing up to the mighty IDF and their popularity is growing in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

There are, of course, several possibilities. First and foremost, they may have been told by their Iranian and Syrian sponsors that now is the time to run up the white flag, as the Iranians and Syrians may be unwilling to take any further steps to re-supply them. It could also be, as written in the above article, that Hezbollah is counting on the Israelis to reject the plan, thus putting the Israelis even more into the role of the bad guys in the court of world public opinion. Or, the could be counting on their ability to evade the peace conditions by making sure that the final agreement contains a weak U.N. force, which would be unable to disarm them, and by allowing the Lebanese Army to re-occupy southern Lebanon, but as a force that would not be willing to disarm them. That last possibility is my best guess.