While Hezbollah perhaps unnecessarily brought on the Israeli July 2006 war on Lebanon, with all the death and destruction it wrought, the battle clearly revealed the failings of the Israeli war machine as much as Hezbollah’s ability to defend and attack and at times prevail against a much stronger opponent. However, the party’s leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s claim, that the war has left the US vision of a “new Middle East” in shambles, is not an assertion that should make Hezbollah necessarily proud. Hezbollah’s vaunted capacity to defend against an Israeli attack is of questionable use on the internal battlefield, where the opposition it leads and the pro-Western government has locked horns for the past eight months. After icebreaking talks at the senior representative level in France earlier this month, both sides await a renewed dialogue but neither side is backing down on its demands. The Israeli war on Lebanon formed a turning point in Lebanese politics, its aftermath throwing into relief the fragility of the coalition that had been patched together.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, catapulted itself into the executive branch after having, for the first time in its history, taken part in the Lebanese electoral process. But the party did not act like just another ordinary member of an ordinary Lebanese government. The power of the veto that Hezbollah sought in a national unity government has swept into a conflict without a cause beyond securing a grip on power. As Lebanon has lost the ability to act, competing powers in and out are using the country as a base to promote their interests. The longer this futile power game persists, the more the value system of Lebanese society will teeter, and the greater the risk that the Lebanese right to self-determination will be surrendered, impinging upon every facet of life. This leaves us with the question as to whether it is still possible to halt this internecine fighting and spare the nation the disasters that await it after serving as a pawn in international conflicts.
Signs of failures are clearer than signs of a peaceful settlement. Indeed, Lebanon today faces its most difficult moment since the signing of the Taif Agreement in 1989, which brought an end to civil hostilities. With so many difficult challenges facing it, the future of the country is hanging in the balance. Nobody wanting a genuine solution in Lebanon would argue with Nasrallah’s criticism of Israel and America who, he says, had wanted the Siniora government to expand its authority to the whole of Lebanon’s territory to the detriment of the resistance. Or to his other point that the war aimed at imposing a new Middle East broken up into confessional and ethnic mini-states, again serving the interests of the United States and Israel. Such a divisive Middle East with little regard for democracy would be unacceptable.
However, much the same way Hezbollah managed to force Israel to withdraw from most of south Lebanon seven years ago, the party should use its influence to rally the Lebanese around one goal — that of unity — around one flag.
