This is from the New York Times 10 years ago: ""Hezbollah is shining now because no one else is fighting Israel," said Arda Ekmekji, a member of the board of directors of the Armenian Evangelical College, a private coeducational high school in Beirut. "But when a political solution is found, Hezbollah will fade away." (April 21, 1996.) And in 2000, NYT correspondent John Burns wrote this: "So Hezbollah could could end up isolated, its 1,500 guerrilla fighters too weak to maintain dominance in areas it now controls, and in effect consigned to the diminished role of a political party competing in Lebanon's sectarian politics." (February 28, 2000).