No Man's Land

By Scott Macleod/Beirut

For the rendezvous with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the turbaned leader of Hizballah, the time and place are kept secret. Eventually you are driven into a barricaded neighborhood protected by bearded militiamen and hustled into an apartment block with mirrored windows. Wallets, key chains, and even belts are removed from you and taken away for inspection. Finally you are seated in a room dominated by an acrylic painting of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the far end is Hizballah's yellow banner, the words "Islamic Revolution of Lebanon" written in Arabic beneath the silhouette of a holy warrior's rifle.

It may seem like a journey to the center of one of the world's deadliest terrorist organizations. But appearances never tell all. The Party of God has come a long way since its founding in 1982, when even most Lebanese considered it nothing more than the fanatical stalking horse of revolutionary Iran. Having since sacrificed 1,375 "martyrs" in the fight against Israel's 22-year-old occupation of southern Lebanon, Hizballah has seen its profile in Lebanon, even among many Christians, transformed into that of a heroic resistance army.

With Israel promising a final troop withdrawal by July, Hizballah is being hailed for doing what Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians have never done: driving Israeli soldiers off Arab land by force. Hizballah leaders can barely contain their eagerness for the day when their fighters, crying "God is great!," will march into the buffer strip along the southern Lebanese border that Israel calls the Security Zone. The Lebanese postal service is issuing stamps in honor of the jihad. And though still on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, accused in the suicide bombings of U.S. diplomats and military forces in Beirut and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon, Hizballah is reinventing itself as an increasingly respectable Lebanese political party. They've even relaxed their enforcement of Islamic codes on drinking and women's veils.

Israel's planned withdrawal is a pivotal event for Lebanon. Lebanese see it as a chance to rebuild their nation. The streets and cafes of Beirut are filled with ambitious, entrepreneurial Arabs from around the region, eager to transform the country. Visions abound: some see Lebanon as a kind of Singapore of the Middle East, a technology and business center for the entire region. Others dream of a more cosmopolitan nation that recalls Lebanon's days as one of the Mediterranean's most opulent jewels.

In southern Lebanon, where Hizballah is still grinding out a war against Israel, those visions can seem incredible. The area around the Israeli occupation zone is a no-man's-land of mines, barbed wire and abandoned villages. But it is in that desolate and hilly country that Hizballah has begun its transformation. Shunning outward extremism for the sake of attracting the broadest support among its mainly Shi'ite constituency, it now holds nine seats in the Lebanese parliament. It dominates scores of municipal councils. And, using millions of dollars given by Iran and donations collected from Lebanese, Hizballah has won support by opening hospitals, health clinics and dozens of private schools.

The group's accomplishments also dot much of the country, hinting at its nation-wide ambitions. Hizballah runs one of the country's finest schools, the Shahed (Witness) School--just a few minutes' walk from the Beirut barracks near the airport where a suicide bomber killed 241 U.S. servicemen in 1983. Children of Hizballah martyrs make up a quarter of the 1,000 students there, who are drilled in daily English classes. Another symbol of the new Hizballah is its al-Manara (Lighthouse) TV, which broadcasts news, soap operas, kiddie programs and with-the-guerrillas footage of attacks on Israeli fortifications in southern Lebanon. The station--managed by close-shorn Islamic revolutionaries--recently climbed to No. 3 in overall viewership in Lebanon, a sign that the group is as intent on fighting a ratings war as it is on continuing a guerrilla war.

The architect of the improbable makeover is the 40-year-old Nasrallah, who took over as secretary-general after Israeli planes killed his predecessor and mentor, Sheik Abbas Musawi, in 1992. In a 90-minute interview, Nasrallah strongly emphasizes Hizballah's commitment to working within the political system and avoiding any provocation, including Hizballah's preference for an Islamic state, that might trigger a return of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. "We are for partnership," he says, "so that the Christians do not ignore the Muslims and the Muslims do not ignore the Christians." When it comes to discussing Israel, however, Nasrallah is vehement. "Let us be clear," he says. "In our opinion, the Jewish state is an illegitimate and illegal state and will remain so in the eyes of the Arab and Muslim people, even if it is 50 years, 100 years, 200 years." Nasrallah lost his eldest son, Mohammed Hadi, then 18, in the resistance, and has another currently at the front.

The "Lebanonization of Hizballah," as the trend is dubbed, is evident in Hizballah's efforts to improve the lot of its grass-roots base, the country's more than 1.5 million mostly impoverished Shi'ites. Far from fixating on Islamic law, Hizballah's representatives in parliament have busied themselves winning funding for projects that will benefit their constituents. One recent morning, as Hizballah fighters were launching attacks on Israeli outposts in southern Lebanon, a Hizballah M.P. was walking Lebanese journalists around Beirut to highlight the more mundane problem of potholes. Says Mohammed Baydoun, an M.P. for Amal, a rival Shi'ite party: "They are pragmatic. They understand the political game."

Will Hizballah play the game as well, once the resistance shine wears off? Evolving beyond the battlefield will demand geopolitical finesse--a tough requirement for any political group, to say nothing of holy warriors. U.S. diplomats say they regard Nasrallah's protestations of moderation with a very wary eye, and if the slippery rapprochement between Washington and Tehran ever gets traction, Iran might start writing smaller checks to the group. Deprived of that largesse, Hizballah would find its intra-Shi'ite rivalry tougher going against Amal, whose support from Syria, with its 30,000 troops in Lebanon, has helped it seat twice as many M.P.s as Hizballah. If Syria and Lebanon ever wind up at peace with Israel, Hizballah will be under intense pressure to disarm--by force if necessary.

With no peace, Hizballah still faces a serious dilemma. If the impasse in negotiations with Israel persists, as indicated by President Clinton's failed talks in Geneva last week with Syrian President Hafez Assad, Syria may eventually sanction new Hizballah attacks to pressure Israel for concessions. Yet if Hizballah cooperates with such wishes, the Israeli reprisal bombings that would surely follow might alienate legions of Hizballah's hard-won Lebanese supporters. What is not in doubt is that Hizballah's well-trained and well-equipped fighters will fight on, if told to do so. "When the Israelis leave, we will celebrate by thanking God for our victory," says Said Kassem, 32, a Hizballah guerrilla since he was 18, as he sits by a waterfall near the Iklim al Toufah battle zone. "Then we will wait for our leaders to tell us the next step."