For more than a month Beirut has been transformed into a giant-size arena in which the political future not only of Lebanon but may be of the entire Middle East is in play. As always at moments of revolutionary tension, the debate is between advocates and opponents of change.
On one side we have those who, for different reasons, believe that the status quo is no longer sustainable, and that things must change. To them the key to change is an end to Syria’s military and political domination of Lebanon.
On the opposite side we have those who, again for different reasons, wish to save as much of the status quo as possible.
Having realized that it is no longer possible for Syria to keep an army in Lebanon, they are trying to preserve as much of the Syrian influence in other forms as possible. This is why President Emile Lahoud appears determined to cling to his recently extended mandate. This is also why Omar Karami is back as prime minister designate. The message of the anti-change camp is clear: The Syrian Army may be leaving, but the structures and policies that it sustained should remain.
Not surprisingly, the pro-change coalition rejects that.
So, where do we go from here?
The truth is that no one knows.
For five weeks both sides have been engaged in demonstrating their respective force, and sizing up one another. With the institutions of the state discredited or paralyzed, we are left with the politics of the street that means putting the crowd at the center of things. At first glance the two sides seem to be evenly matched as far as crowd power is concerned.
Since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the pro-change coalition has managed to bring in tens of thousands of people into the streets almost every day. Last Monday it managed to field almost a million demonstrators. The anti-change party, led by the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah however, has also fielded huge crowds of its own. In crowd politics, however, the side that advocates change often has an advantage over the party of the status quo.
In his seminal book “Crowds And Power”, Elias Canetti shows that while animals, for example ants, band together to preserve the way things are, humans form crowds when they want things to change.
A crowd consists of numerous small units accumulating into a single ensemble for action in a specific time and space. As an instrument of politics, a crowd is at its most efficient if it is given a clear goal.
In that context the pro-change coalition in Lebanon has an advantage.
It wants the Syrians out, a simple goal that everyone could easily understand.
The anti-change coalition, however, has so far failed to match that with an equally straightforward demand.
It couldn’t come up with a slogan demanding that Syria keep its army in Lebanon, especially when the Syrians had already begun to withdraw. Also, there is no evidence that the Hezbollah, the main component of the anti-change coalition, really wants Syria to remain the arbiter of Lebanese politics.
If anything there is evidence that the alliance between the Hezbollah and Syria’s Baathist elite has been one of convenience rather than conviction. The Hezbollah, which puts religion at the center of politics, cannot be a true ally of the Baath, a militantly secularist party. The Hezbollah also knows that Nabih Berri’s Amal, its main rival within the Shiite community, could not have survived without Syrian support. Then there is the proposed electoral reform bill, dictated by Syria, which, if implemented, would take three parliamentary seats away from the Hezbollah, giving them to the Christians in the south.
The Hezbollah has one more, perhaps the most important, reason not to appear as an instrument of Syrian domination. This is the party that made its reputation by posing as the most ardent defender of Lebanese territory against foreign occupiers. There is, to be sure, a big difference between the Syrian presence in Lebanon and the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, if only because the former came in the context of the Taif accords endorsed by most Lebanese political parties at the time.
Nevertheless, it is not easy for the Hezbollah, as a party of resistance to one foreign occupier, to transform itself into a fifth column for another.
The Hezbollah has been careful not to call for the Syrians to stay. The party did not send its “volunteers for martyrdom” to lie down on the roads to Syria to prevent the Syrian tanks and troop carriers to leave Lebanon. All it has done is to thank the Syrians for what they did in the past, implicitly endorsing the demand that it is time for them to leave.
Even then, the Hezbollah has taken enormous risks by spearheading the anti-change movement. Until a month ago this was a party that enjoyed almost universal admiration among the Lebanese. Even those who did not agree with its ideology and questioned its ties to Tehran, praised it for the “patriotic role” it had played in pressuring Israeli into withdrawing from southern Lebanon. Now, however, the Hezbollah has descended from its pedestal to become just another party.
This is clear from the composition of the crowds that Hezbollah has brought into the streets in recent weeks. More than 95 percent of these crowds are Shiites, almost all from the south and some neighborhoods of Beirut. The pro-change coalition, however, has drawn crowds from all over Lebanon, including the Shiite heartland in the south. Even the most cursory glance at the rival crowds would show that the pro-change coalition represents all Lebanese communities while the anti-change side consists almost exclusively of the Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah succeeded in becoming a major force in Lebanese politics for two reasons: It could mobilize larger crowds, and it had more guns than anyone else.
The first advantage is now gone as the pro-change coalition has shown that it can field even bigger, and more representative, crowds. The second advantage remains: The Hezbollah still has lots of guns.
This is why the United Nations’ Security Resolution 1559 demands an end to private armies in Lebanon. The next big issue in Lebanon could be the choice between bullets and ballots. Hezbollah leaders, and beyond them the leadership in Tehran, have much hard thinking to do.
