AMMAN, Jordan, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The U.N. Security Council draft resolution for a Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire, if passed without meeting some Lebanese demands, is bound to mean continued fighting. And continued warfare means more unrest in the Arab world as the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah guerilla organization's popularity reaches unprecedented levels.
The draft resolution, which came after intensive negotiations between France and the United States, calls for a "full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations." A second resolution is expected to authorize an international force for southern Lebanon.
The text's failure to demand an immediate ceasefire, and with no mention of Israeli forces pulling out of areas they captured during the past 26 days of fighting, has put the Lebanese government in a tight spot.
While Beirut does not want to defy the international community, it is insisting that the resolution ensure no Israeli forces remain on its territory and to include a demand that they will not be allowed to cross the border in the future.
The government, with tacit approval from Hezbollah, which has two ministers in the Cabinet, is calling for dispatching the Lebanese army with the already existing U.N. force in southern Lebanon and is rightly nervous about the idea of creating yet another buffer zone in the area.
Lebanese officials fear the draft resolution, if passed without amendments that also secures the return of almost one million civilians displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon, means legitimizing another Israeli occupation of parts of southern Lebanon and creating an international buffer zone that would ensure continued resistance from Hezbollah guerillas.
Hezbollah was credited for pushing the Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon in May 2000, ending 22 years of occupation.
Lebanese analysts complain the draft resolution is providing a diplomatic and political victory for Israel after failing to accomplish its military objectives in breaking Hezbollah and stopping the group's firing of rockets at northern Israel. That's why the Israeli government is pleased with the resolution as it is, and the Lebanese are not.
Lebanese officials warn the draft will neither guarantee Israel's cessation of hostilities, nor Hezbollah's resistance in the short and long term.
And so long as it continues to resist, the popularity of Hezbollah and its chief, Seyyed Nasrallah, will continue to rise at home and in the Arab world.
Some describe him as the Ché Guevara of the Arab world. But in today's Arab world, where the masses are frustrated from what they see as their regimes being nothing more than client states of the growingly unpopular United States, the soft-spoken and often-calm Nasrallah represents more.
Arab commentators say that not since the late Arab nationalist Egyptian president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, has an Arab leader won the hearts and minds of the Arab people across the board.
Nasser, who ruled his country from 1954 until his death in 1970, was widely popular in the Arab world as he was known for his Arab nationalist stands and anti-colonialist policies. His pictures hung on the walls of many homes, his speeches, broadcast live across the region, were closely followed, raising the morale of the masses in days of defeat by Israel. He was the strongest symbol for Arab dignity and freedom in the aftermath of the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine in 1948.
The fact that Nasrallah is a Shiite cleric, unlike secular, socialist Nasser, is a matter that has hardly made a difference to the predominantly Sunni Arab street that includes Christians.
One secular American-Arab living in California recently told United Press International that not since Nasser has anyone "made me proud of being an Arab again as Seyed Nasrallah, who has retrieved our dignity as Arabs."
His popularity began to expand when the Islamic Resistance Movement, the armed wing of Hezbollah, systematically fought against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and ended it six years ago; becoming the first Arab party to liberate occupied territories through armed resistance.
With Hezbollah's fierce resistance against the strongest and best-equipped military force in the Middle East in a war unleashed after the capture of two Israeli soldiers and killing of eight others in a cross-border operation on July 12, it is safe to say that Nasrallah has become a national hero for the Arabs, as well as Muslims from the Philippines to California.
Thus, analysts say, the Israeli and U.S. administration's description of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization could effectively, by extension, put tens of millions of Arabs -- regardless of faith, age or gender -- under the label of terrorists as well.
But Nasrallah is no Osama bin Laden and his supporters resent any comparisons.
In the past three weeks, thousands of people have taken to the streets around the world carrying pictures of the Hezbollah leader, praising him to television cameras, cursing Arab regimes for their failure to support him, and getting beat up by the local authorities in the process.
Nasrallah's black turban, clerical robes and salt-and-pepper beard has not stopped women in skimpy clothes from praising him as an Arab hero who is retrieving Arab dignity, in terms of taking tough action against what is generally seen as Israeli and American insolence and colonialism of the region.
Youth and children have downloaded his picture on their cellular phones and computers, and millions glue their eyes to their television screens as they wait for his speeches broadcast on Hezbollah's al-Manar satellite channel and carried by other Arab networks.
Arab celebrities are demonstrating in the streets of Cairo in support of Hezbollah and its leader, and a famous Egyptian movie star, Hussein Fahmi, has resigned as a U.N. goodwill ambassador to protest what he said was the international organization's failure to stop Israel and its assault on Lebanon.
While sources close to Nasrallah say he did not expect or seek to be personally idolized in this manner, he sees the support as an Arab desire for freedom.
Analysts say he appears to have predicted such widespread sympathy for Hezbollah's resistance, noting what he recently said in an interview with the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news channel: While some Arab leaders were not happy with the resistance, "I'm sure their wives and children are sympathetic to the cause, because our victory is a victory for the entire nation."
