Hezbollah: A Short History by Augustus Richard Norton

Review by: Jrgen Jensehaugen

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 46, No. 4 (july 2009), p. 605
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Book Notes 605
Norton,
Augustus
Richard,
2007. Hezbollah:
A Short
History.
Princeton,
NJ:
Princeton
University
Press. 187
pp.
ISBN 9780691131245.
Hezbollah,
as an
organization,
has a
reputation
that has reached almost
mythical proportions.
It
is loved
by many
throughout
much of the Arab
world,
for its stance
against
Israel,
and
equally
passionately
vilified
by
much of the western
world for the
very
same reason. Born in civil war,
the
party
of God
was founded in
violence,
by
infamously scaring
the USA out of its involve
ment in Lebanon.
Slightly
less than two decades
later,
the
group
made Israel retreat from southern
Lebanon and then a few
years
later defeated
Israel in the war of 2006. This same
organization
runs
hospitals
and
schools,
is an active
political
actor in the Lebanese
parliament
and has mas
sive
popular support among
certain
groups
of the
Lebanese
population.
Yet,
the
very
same
group
that claims to defend Lebanon from
occupation
and to
fight injustice
also has
a
brutal
history
of
turning
its
guns
on its own
people,
most
recently
in
May
2008. Norton is no
apologist.
He makes
no
attempt
to
explain
away
what Hezbollah
does,
he
merely explains.
At
times,
these
expla
nations
might anger
those who wish to
vilify
the
organization;
in other cases,
they
would
anger
those who venerate it. Unlike most researchers
who
analyze
Hezbollah,
Norton has not taken
sides. His
presentation
takes us from the streets
of
poorer
Shia towns in southern
Lebanon,
through popular religious
ceremonies and to the
greater politics
of the Hezbollah-Iran connection.
This variation of the micro/macro levels enables
the reader to obtain a
deeper
level of
insight
into
an
organization
that is far too often
presented
in
a Manichean
light.
Norton has done an
impres
sive
job by managing,
in such a short
book,
to
give
a
down-to-earth
presentation
of a
complex
organization.
Jorgen Jensehaugen
Nusseibeh, Sari,
with
Anthony
David, 2007.
Once
Upon
a
Country:
A Palestinian
Life.
London:
Halban. vi +
562
pp.
ISBN 9781905559053.
There is much to be
gleaned
from Sari Nusseibeh's
lucid and rational
memoirs,
which weave a
rich
tap
estry
of
a life lived with the
backdrop
of
upheaval,
academia,
peace processes,
Intifadas and
religious
fanaticism
(his
bete
noire)
-
all
underpinned by
the
tragedy
of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict,
while all the time coloured
by
his
good-natured
optimism.
A
deliberately languid
pace
is matched
only by
the
sharpness
of his
observations,
though
a sense of
foreboding begins
to cast a shadow
over later
chapters.
These
are the
thoughts
of
a man who views this conflict with
clarity,
but
whose own
journey
to
gain
such understand
ing
has taken
a
lengthy, complex
and above all
privileged
route,
only
to realize he
sadly
will not
see it resolved in his lifetime. In
many respects,
Nusseibeh is a mercurial
character,
who
by
his
own
admission,
by
virtue of his mixed
lineage,
is
confused about his
identity, yet buoyed up by
a
strong
sense of attachment and love for a
place,
namely
East
Jerusalem's
Old
City. Passages
that
recollect his 1950s childhood there evoke
a
heart
felt
nostalgia
that
might help explain
his
(and
his
peers') purposeful
and
lifelong journey
thereafter
as adults. This is a
particularly rewarding
read,
then,
for those interested in the minutiae of
Palestinian fractional
politics
and
one man's
phil
osophical
reflections
upon
it
during
a
historically
important period
of its
development;
one which
over time saw
young
idealists become
aging
revo
lutionaries,
Yasser Arafat and Sheikh Yassin
being
cited as
examples.
Yet
strangely, despite
his asso
ciations
(for
a time he was the PLO's
Jerusalem
representative),
this is a
fate that seems to
have
escaped
the urbane
Nusseibeh,
hostage perhaps
to his own
balanced
temperament
and
enduring
intellectual
curiosity.
Farrid Shamsuddin
Shlaim, Avi, 2007. Lion
of Jordan:
The
Life
of King
Hussein in War and Peace. London: Pen
guin,
xxii +
698
pp.
ISBN 9780141017280.
Biographies
can
usually say only
so much about
a
political
situation,
because in essence
they
must
place
the
person
centre
stage
-
and
poli
tics is
rarely
about individuals. This book is an
exception
because,
by
and
large, King
Hussein
was
Jordan
for about 40
years.
His devotion to
regional politics placed Jordan
centre
stage
in the
Israeli?Arab conflict. As Avi Shlaim
illustrates,
the
stubby
little
king
became the Lion of
Jordan
who,
despite
the
odds,
pulled Jordan
through
the
stormy
seas of Middle East
diplomacy
and made
it one of the
leading
countries in this
diplomacy
-
a
place
out of
proportion
with the
powers
vested
in the
kingdom.
From his ascent to the throne to
his death in
1999,
Hussein worked
unrelentingly
for a
solution to the conflict. He made clear errors
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