After the editor-in-chief of a newspaper affiliated with Hezbollah, a publication licensed by Lebanon’s Ministry of Information, accused the presidents of the republic and the government of fraud, and neither president appeared to take notice, it was said that Lebanon was still doing fine and that the constitutional authorities had paid no heed to the insults. When the Lebanese learned of the prime minister’s position, in which he described the contents of a shipment of explosives belonging to Hezbollah as materials previously used in bombings and assassinations, and the president subsequently instructed the security and judicial authorities to pursue the investigation to its conclusion, in response to Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah’s warning from the parliamentary chamber that the official authorities must return the explosives to his party, the Lebanese agreed that the state had found its way back to shouldering its responsibilities.
When word spread among observers of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s response to a request from Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh, an envoy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who had been acting at Hezbollah’s urging to narrow the scope of differences with the party, observers agreed that Berri’s reply, “The party must act rationally, because we can no longer bear any more adventures”, amounted to an appeal to Lebanese patriotism by a side that had once again begun to reclaim the authority to speak on behalf of the esteemed Shiite community. This increasingly expanding dominance, which had once decisively worked in Hezbollah’s favor, can no longer be maintained against the state and its security authorities by motorcycle squads roaming the streets.
The explosives belonging to Hezbollah and their associated materials, now in the custody of the security agencies and referred, along with those transporting them, to the competent judiciary to establish their affiliations, are more representative of Hezbollah’s weapons than most of its other arms. This shipment brought back memories of Lebanon’s darkest and most intimidating period, which began in early 2005, when an Iranian-Syrian decision was made to eliminate opposition leaders and dissenting voices in Lebanon. The threat persisted until mid-2007, when congratulations on the achievement were exchanged in Damascus between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, who, a year later, heralded the storming of Beirut as a “glorious day.”
There could hardly be a more understated illustration of the role played by Hezbollah’s explosives, which tested two forces at once: the party’s inability to do what it had once considered easy, and the state’s demonstration of its ability to do what it had previously been incapable of doing.
The sharp, polarizing debate over Hezbollah’s weapons was not the only issue at the heart of Lebanon’s political battle following the explosives’ sudden rise to prominence. One could argue that this modest test of the security agencies offered a more measured reading of the end of the era of weapons. What the media largely failed to notice was that the party’s military and security capabilities, regardless of how much remains of them, are now impaired in terms of their psychological impact.
On May 7, 2008, and in its aftermath, everyone surrendered to the party’s weapons. Their psychological and morale-boosting effect proved decisive, which is why the political consequences of that surrender lasted for a decade and a half.
It was neither easy nor instinctive for all Lebanese parties, or for the state itself, to pursue weapons that had liberated the South in 2000 with such determination, had the party not itself fostered a widespread Lebanese public sentiment opposed to those weapons. The liberation project thus became a milestone after which there was nothing left but to undermine it and strip it of its value in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Between the inability to confront the occupation under the banner of resistance, the state’s successive measures to refuse to authorize military and security coordination with Hezbollah, and the discovery of weapons being transported, as is happening now, this accumulation of developments is pushing those weapons out of the equation and turning them into scrap in search of a purpose.
The military operations that the region is bracing for once again hinge on Hezbollah’s conduct and its constrained and limited capabilities. This time, the warning does not come from hotheads, but from empty heads that have failed to understand what has happened and what could happen in Lebanon and the region.
The first thing that understanding requires is recognizing that Lebanon before negotiations with Israel is not the same as Lebanon after them, regardless of their immediate or eventual outcomes. The bet on the Houthis defeating the Yemenis was preceded by a bet on Hezbollah defeating the Lebanese and the Syrians.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar
