Come January, when Lebanon will presumably elect a new president, the fate of a handful of words will determine where Lebanon is today, the relative strength of Hezbollah, and the mood within the country’s sectarian communities. The words are, as anyone who follows Lebanese affairs can guess, “The Army, the People, and the Resistance.”
For years, this formulation has appeared in cabinet policy statements as a compromise between those who support the idea that the Lebanese state alone should have a monopoly over the use of violence, and Hezbollah’s insistence that its arms, the arms of the resistance, must be legitimized by the state. In light of this, the party over the years has pushed away demands from its opponents that the Lebanese should reach some sort of a consensus over a national defense strategy—a term that has effectively been shorthand for the integration of Hezbollah’s weapons into the state.
With Hezbollah having suffered a devastating defeat in its conflict with Israel, and now having lost its strategic outpost in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime, the party’s ability to impose its will on the rest of Lebanese society has been crippled. Hezbollah still has weapons, but also little capacity anymore to threaten its environment as it did previously. None of the Lebanese communities, in their majority, are willing to bend to a party widely perceived as being on the defensive.
The effort to dispel all signs of weakness has been a mainstay of recent speeches by Hezbollah’s new secretary general, Na’im Qassem. He has stated that Hezbollah is recovering from the Israeli onslaught, that “the resistance continues,” and that “the enemy can only be stopped by the resistance.” The new secretary general seems oblivious to the fact that Hezbollah failed to stop the Israelis, who are now deployed inside Lebanon, let alone prevented them from destroying large swathes of Shiite-majority villages, towns, and neighborhoods. However, Qassem knows what is at stake. Unless Hezbollah can create an illusion of victory, in its relationship with the Lebanese state the rationale for the party’s retaining its weapons will collapse—even as it collapsed long ago among large segments of the population.
Once a president is elected, Lebanon will require a new government. As the different political forces craft a policy statement, one of the first obstacles they will face is whether to reproduce the “Army, People, Resistance” triptych. It seems a near certainty that a number of participants in the government will refuse to sign off on such a statement again. The Lebanese Forces will definitely not do so, and it’s hard to believe that any Sunni prime minister will agree to it, particularly in a communal climate that feels resurgent after Bashar al-Assad’s downfall. Why would Sunnis, who feel a new buoyancy after decades of domination by an Alawite-led regime in Damascus, supported by Shiite forces throughout the region, feel any impetus to forego an opportunity to limit Hezbollah’s margin of maneuver?
If that happens, what could Hezbollah do? The idea of deploying men in the streets to intimidate the party’s opponents seems to be out of the question, since no one hostile to Hezbollah in Lebanon is willing to accept such behavior anymore. This was already evident in a number of clashes that occurred in recent years—from Khaldeh, to Chouaya, to Tayyouneh, to Kahhaleh—where locals were willing to attack Hezbollah members rather than accept their efforts to coerce them.
Alternatively, Hezbollah may decide to boycott any government that does not adopt the “Army, People, Resistance” formula. However, what would the value of this be if the party’s ally, Nabih Berri, were to decide not to go along? Berri certainly realizes the Shiites are already on their own in Lebanon, and have largely been cut off from their brethren in Iraq and Iran, so that Hezbollah’s isolating the community further would be a terrible idea. Yet can the speaker afford not to show solidarity with Hezbollah in such a case? Perhaps not, but Berri’s position is not nearly as solid as it once was, as he faces domestic criticism and growing opposition from abroad, particularly from members of Congress in the United States, which will soon have Donald Trump as president. If Hezbollah seeks to impose a Shiite boycott of the government, all this would do is provoke an open-ended crisis that wouldn’t soon be resolved, when the Shiite community cannot afford to be blamed for provoking more deadlock in the state.
More likely, Berri, and perhaps any eventual president depending on who he or she is, might try to reach a compromise on the wording of the cabinet statement. But even that won’t be easy. Any new Sunni prime minister will not want to lose the support of his community by endorsing Hezbollah’s weapons, while it is highly unlikely the Lebanese Forces, the major Christian representative, will be more flexible. Moreover, in a time of Sunni revival any prime minister, even Najib Mikati if he returns, would not be able to take a position less pronounced than that of the Christians.
Then there is the international community, which will also have a say in what happens. The United States and most of the Gulf Arab countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, will be watching closely to see how a future government behaves. They will be also be waiting to see what happens to the “Army, People, Resistance” formulation to judge whether Lebanon’s politicians are willing to break free from Hezbollah’s control. The Lebanese reaction will be fundamental in terms of outcomes on two vital issues for the country: implementation of Resolution 1701 and the reconstruction of Shiite areas.
Qassem has gone out of his way several times to reaffirm that Resolution 1701 only applies south of the Litani River. Not quite. The text “[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.” Qassem is perfectly aware of this, which is why he is so keen to reaffirm the “Army, People, Resistance” triptych, so he can say the government has consented to Hezbollah’s weapons.
Then there is the matter of reconstruction. Hezbollah is not in a position today to embark on domestic political fights that reinforce stalemate. With hundreds of thousands of Shiites homeless and major reconstruction aid not forthcoming, it’s the state that will probably remain the main point of contact for future reconstruction. Therefore, what the party needs is a state that moves energetically to secure funding and begin rebuilding. Yet if Arab countries, specifically the Gulf states, see that a new president and government remain under Hezbollah’s thumb, they will have no incentive to help Lebanon rebuild. That is why the next president and government will have significant leverage over Hezbollah, and should use it to erode the party’s pillars of hegemony.
The question of Iran looms large in the discussion. While Qassem announced in a recent speech that Iran would provide funding to those who lost property in the conflict with Israel, the sums he promised were negligible when compared to the magnitude of the destruction and the anticipated cost of reconstruction. Moreover, there appears to be a highly divisive debate taking place within Iran itself over the money spent on the country’s regional strategy, particularly the vast sums wasted in Syria. Even supporters of the Iranian regime have joined in the chorus of recrimination. Among these is the cleric Mohammed Shariati Dehghan, who has described the Iranian scheme as being “built on weak foundations.” He was quoted by the New York Times as demanding a “new approach that prioritized building alliances with countries instead of propping up militant groups, and redirecting money and resources back to the people of Iran.”
In light of this, it appears increasingly improbable that the Iranians will intervene massively to rebuild Shiite areas of Lebanon, even less so now that Tehran has lost its crucial Syrian foothold. If this assessment is correct, it won’t be easy for Hezbollah to regain the level of popular support it enjoyed previously among Shiites, and nearly impossible for the Iranians and their allies to revive the failed policy of surrounding Israel with a ring of fire. If that is out of reach, what will be the value of the “Army, People, Resistance” formula? None that is remotely visible to the human eye.
Many people will look to the presidency to gauge Hezbollah’s strengths or weaknesses. That’s understandable, although in the last two years the party’s inability to bring to office its favored candidate, Suleiman Franjieh, already showed the limits of its capacities. However, it’s the outcome of the “Army, People, Resistance” formula that will be the more important battle, because it will determine whether the Lebanese political class is willing to continue giving its consent to an armed group above the state. If the politicians are, they will face pushback from the many more Lebanese who aren’t. But if they uncharacteristically take a stand, perhaps Lebanon will finally begin undercutting the foundations of the dysfunctional system in place since the Syrian withdrawal of 2005.
