The Hizballah War Museum

My what big rockets you have!

Ever wonder what it's like inside a Hizballah bunker but not so eager to get kidnapped just to find out? Well, for a short time and a short time only, anyone in Lebanon can do the next best thing and visit the new Hizballah museum in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where there is no admission charged and no blindfold required.

Imagine Britain's Imperial War museum with an Islamist militia makeover, and you've got the strangely-named ''Spider Web" museum, built to commemorate Hizballah's "Divine Victory" over Israel after their 34-day war last summer, which ended a year ago yesterday. Though just a temporary installation built on the rubble of a building destroyed during the war, the museum showcases the guerrilla organization's trademark attention to detail and its fearsomeness.

Designed like a sandbag fortress rising over a garden of inert land mines, armored vehicles and the occasional palm tree, the museum contains a display of Hizballah weapons and tactics, including the scale recreation of a front line bunker, complete with computer workstation, prayer rug and dish rack. Throw in a lava lamp and it could be a college dorm room.

Besides diagrams of the latest in Iranian and Russian anti-tank rocketry, and an ultra-violent Hizballah special forces video game, the display that I found most impressive was a plaque listing every single Israeli warplane that bombed Lebanon along with their squadron ID and home bases. Not only did Hizballah survive the bombardment, but its observers still had the presence of mind to keep score. Not bad for 3,000 regular fighters up against a regional superpower.

The Israelis portrayed in the museum are either dead (in mannequin form) war-crazed (photos of Israeli school children writing hate messages on artillery shells) or incompetent ("We will eradicate Hizballah within three days," trumpets former Israeli General Dan Halutz while next to him, former Defense Minister Amir Peretz looks through a pair of binoculars with the lens caps still on.)

But the "Death to Israel" stuff is of a piece with normal Hizballah propaganda. What's different about the museum as a whole is the bragging tone. Hizballah was once famous for being one of the few Arab organizations that let its actions speak louder than words. The new swagger shown since last summer is both a sign of newfound confidence, and of weakness. For though Hizballah may have won the war against Israel, it has not yet won the peace.

After the war, Hizballah launched a campaign to topple the current American-supported Lebanese government. Hizballah accuses the Lebanese government of collaborating in spirit with the so-called Zionist Entity by hoping that Israel would destroy Hizballah as a state-within the Lebanese state. But the Hizballah-led opposition campaign has been stalled for at least 8 months, in part because many Lebanese resent the fact that Hizballah unilaterally sparked a war that ended with almost 2,000 dead and billions of dollars in damage.

Plus, the cease-fire that took effect one year ago yesterday left Hizballah vulnerable. There are now some 13,000 United Nations soldiers enforcing the peace in southern Lebanon, making it difficult for the group to re-arm on its favorite turf. Moreover, a UN investigation into a series of political assassinations in Lebanon is closing in on Hizballah's patron-state, Syria, and there's talk of deploying UN troops along the border with Syria to prevent arms smuggling to Hizballah. To top it off, Israeli hawks say it's just a matter of time before their army returns to Lebanon to finish the job for good.

But the only thing more dangerous than a victorious Hizballah is a weakened Hizballah. If the UN soldiers in Lebanon ever started to seriously cramp Hizballah's style, the peacekeeping force would be toast. Lebanese history is littered with examples of foreign armies meeting their fate in this fractious hill country. Hizballah itself was born from the carnage of the disastrous 1982 Israeli invasion. A massive new invasion would only bring a phyrric victory at best. If Israel leveled half of Lebanon, some new danger would emerge from the rubble. And there will be no museums built after the next war, just lots of graves.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut