Quds Day in the Dahieh

Ever since it was started by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Quds Day, a holiday to oppose the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, has become an international event in those countries where opposition to Israel runs high. (Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem) In Lebanon, Hizballah -- the Shia militant group formed with Iranian support to oppose the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon -- has often celebrated Quds Day the way Labor Day was in the old Soviet Union, with a chest-thumping military parade. For photographers, journalists and presumably for Israeli spy satellites, the day has been one of the rare opportunities to catch a glimpse of Hizballah's shadowy fighting units, who spend the rest of the year hidden in their secret bunkers or camouflaged amid the general population.

But this year's celebrations were pretty low-key, reflecting perhaps the fact that Hizballah's fighters are still recovering from last summer's war with Israel, or hurriedly preparing for the next one. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who lives in hiding, appeared only via simulcast to a large crowd gathered last night in a convention hall in the Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut that are the center of the group's popular support.

Even beamed in from a bunker, Nasrallah's image was accorded rock star status by the Hizballah faithful. When he appeared, they shouted "Abu Hadi" -- father of Hadi -- a reference to the son, a Hizballah foot soldier, who was killed by the Israeli Defense Force in 1997. When the sheik coughed, the crowd murmured "Allah Akbar" -- God is great. And when he drank a cup of water, they chanted "prayers upon the Prophet, and the family of the Prophet." The speech itself moved back and forth between the Lebanon's current political crisis -- accusing Israel of masterminding the string of political assassinations that have terrorized the country since 2005 -- and the usual calls for Palestinians to the take inspiration from the Lebanese resistance, which drove Israel out of most of Lebanon in 2000.

I left the event early, wondering how much Nasrallah or anyone else actually believed that Lebanese or Palestinian resistance could recapture Jerusalem, and why anyone would want to try. The city is a poisoned chalice. How many times over the centuries has Jerusalem switched hands, and how much blood has been spilt in its name? Israel's conquest of Jerusalem's Old City (and the West Bank) in 1967 is slowly destroying the democratic Israeli state from within -- by fueling the expansionist aspirations of a fanatical religious minority, and forcing the moderate majority to accomodate themselves to a 40-year occupation. The stakes are even higher now: Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran is probably trying to build them, while Hizballah, Hamas and everyone else is loading up on rockets. Whoever tries to take -- or hold -- Jerusalem by force risks brining the temple down on all our heads. Happy Quds Day to you, too.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut