OPINION - Hezbollah’s sense and insensibility

By Makram Rabah

- The writer is a history lecturer at the American University of Beirut

BEIRUT (AA) - Legal practices, as well as common sense, assume the notion of consent to be a founding pillar for all parties entering into any form of contractual obligation, be it commercial or political.

This small yet vital provision, however, does not figure in the logic nor the rhetoric of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who has intentionally twisted and overstretched the trust of a large segment of the Lebanese, who had, for one reason or another, agreed to delegate the task of fighting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon to Nasrallah and his party.

Despite the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 and the liberation of its occupied lands, Hezbollah continued to assume its role as a supposed “resistance force” without recognizing any need to adjust to these drastic political transformations.

While Hezbollah persisted to ostensibly peddle that its legitimacy was ultimately drawn from the Lebanese at large, in reality its vast military arsenal and its alliance with the Syrian regime, which was in virtual occupation of Lebanon and its government, allowed it to operate parallel to the Lebanese state with total impunity.

However, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 and the expulsion of the Syrian army from Lebanon, Hezbollah felt obliged to reposition and seek reassurances from a post-Syria ruling establishment that perceived Hezbollah as a destabilizing factor and an infringement on state sovereignty.

Consequently, a “golden” formula -- the People, the Army, the Resistance -- was conjured up to comfort Hezbollah that none of the local rival political factions sought to disarm or exclude them from the political process.

This formula, however, was not adequate to preclude Hezbollah from instigating the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon, nor did it prevent it from using its arms in 2008 to topple the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

- Sectarian undertone

The onset of the Syrian crisis further complicated matters as Hezbollah soon deployed its militia in Syria to aid an ailing Assad regime, a move which placed the so-called golden formula under scrutiny.

To many, Hezbollah’s plunge into the Syrian war was simply a breach of the original contract that legitimized Hezbollah’s arms as long as they were used defensively against external aggression, be it from Israel or elsewhere.

In this respect, the Syrian crisis at its initial stages and before Hezbollah’s involvement posed no real threat to Lebanon or its strategic interests.

It was rather the sectarian undertone which Assad and his Iranian allies pursued that placed the Lebanese state right in the middle of a raging Sunni-Shia conflict.

Moreover, Hezbollah was no longer under any obligation to keep its involvement in other conflict areas a secret, as Nasrallah’s speeches soon boasted of his presence in Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain or wherever their duty called.

These continued contractual breaches were swept aside by Hezbollah as it insolently framed its involvement in these regional conflicts as merely a pre-emptive measure aimed at protecting the Lebanese from the threat of violent Sunni factions embodied by Daesh and its fellow travellers, and thus the tripartite formula still holds.

But these allegations and arguments, particularly the legitimacy of Hezbollah’s arms and actions were never publicly questioned within the Lebanese government as Hezbollah and its allies constantly avoided the matter, claiming that “the formula” clearly allowed it.

- Obligations to Lebanese

The recent development which came with the Lebanese Army’s (LAF) last charge against Daesh militants on the Lebanese Syria border was followed by Hezbollah’s insistence to add more parties to the tripartite formula.

According to Hassan Nasrallah, the LAF’s latest victory against Daesh was only made possible by the coordinated efforts of Hezbollah and Assad’s army, and therefore it was only fair to recast the formula to include “a diamond formula”: the People, the Army, the Resistance, and the Syrian Army.

By following this rationale, Nasrallah has not only shattered the myth of the golden formula he and his allies so bullishly tried to maintain over the last decade, but he also proved that they clearly do not care about the consent of the Lebanese, nor are they in the business of defending Lebanon from any threat.

On the contrary, Hezbollah was only thinking of its own interests and those of Assad when they struck a deal with the 300 Daesh militants facing the LAF, according to which they were carried to safety by buses under the watchful eyes of Hezbollah and its fighters.

Nasrallah tried to defend this Faustian deal with Daesh as a necessary evil that would spare the LAF more casualties, adding that Hezbollah’s ethics and god-fearing nature dictate that they see through this deal to the end, despite its unpopularity and the bad publicity it might generate.

Unfortunately, this moral code fails to cover Hezbollah’s contractual obligations with the Lebanese, which the former violated when it participated in the Syrian war, thus further proving that his organization’s only urgency is to endorse Iranian interests on the Mediterranean.

While Hezbollah sees itself fit to continue to amend this outdated contact and to add the Assad regime to the mix, the reality remains that the Lebanese have long forsaken any illusion that Hezbollah will stop its destructive pattern or agree to conform to Lebanon’s strategic interests.

Ultimately, one day not so far away, we might hear Nasrallah declare that North Korea and its defiant unhinged dictator, Kim Jong-un, have been added to Hezbollah’s platinum collection of formulas, something that can no longer be ruled out as unlikely or shocking.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency