hizbullah background

Lara Deeb of UC-Irvine has an excellent basic primer on Hizbullah up at MERIP; particularly useful for its emphasis on Hizbullah-within-Lebanese-politics (as opposed to Hizbullah as merely a puppet of Iran/Syria):

“Hizballah supporter” is itself a vague phrase. There are official members of the party and/or the Islamic Resistance; there are volunteers in party-affiliated social welfare organizations; there are those who voted for the party in the last election; there are those who support the Resistance in the current conflict, whether or not they agree with its ideology. To claim ridding south Lebanon of Hizballah as a goal risks aiming for the complete depopulation of the south, tantamount to ethnic cleansing of the area.

In terms of the current conflict, while Lebanese public opinion seems to be divided as to whether blame should be placed on Hizballah or Israel for the devastation befalling the country, this division does not necessarily fall along sectarian lines. More importantly, there are many Lebanese who disagree with Hizballah’s Islamist ideologies or political platforms, and who believe that their July 12 operation was a mistake, but who are supportive of the Islamic Resistance and view Israel as their enemy. These are not mutually exclusive positions. One of the effects of the Israeli attacks on selected areas of Beirut has been to widen the class divides in the Lebanon, which may serve to further increase Hizballah’s popularity among those who already felt alienated from Hariri-style reconstruction and development.

The rest is available here. Also recommended for background on Hizbullah--various things by James Piscatori--there's some stuff in Muslim Politics, but he also has some articles focusing on Hizbullah, though I haven't got cites on hand (I heard it mostly via lectures. Once he brought to class a Hizbullah T-shirt featuring the familiar logo--with a 'made in america' tag on the inside label.) And I am rereading Fisk's Pity the Nation--seem to remember quite a bit there on the movement's origins and early activities, but I haven't gotten to that part yet.