A "Victory" the Size of Defeat
Elias Harfoush Al Hayat - 11/05/08//
How far seems May 2000 from May 2008. Hezbollah's victory over Israel during the former was a Lebanese victory that achieved the withdrawal of Israeli troops. It was accompanied by national consensus and near-unanimous rallying around the Resistance, as well as praise for the exceptional role it played in this liberation. Even those who opposed the Resistance, for their own political reasons and sectarian fears, could find no shortcomings in its behavior, whether during the battles for liberation or the celebrations of victory.
May 2008 is a "victory" of another kind for Hezbollah. One tainted with bitterness, because the districts taken over by Hezbollah in Beirut and elsewhere are inhabited by Lebanese citizens, and because the consensus of those who rallied around the party eight years ago is today being torn apart by sectarian and political strife, turning the resistant party into just another factions in the internal conflict.
It is well-known that Hezbollah was extremely hesitant to enter the internal political arena - or so its leaders claimed. Perhaps because it was aware that, in this arena, it would remove its unifying national cloak and replace it with a sectarian one, by virtue of the identity and affiliation of its members. Moreover, Hezbollah's entry into the internal arena with the weapons of the Resistance was bound to lead to implication, since the natural place of such weapons, one over which there can be consensus, is certainly not this arena. Furthermore, reservations still stood concerning the possibility of using these weapons to impose Hezbollah's project or point of view upon others, as has occurred in the last "victory".
What has been said to justify the use of weapons, considering that a war against "internal agents" is as a war against the enemy on the border, does not lessen, but increases, the impact of the "victory" defeat. If Hezbollah is indeed still aware of the importance of coexistence and internal balance, and of keeping Lebanon away from the sectarian conflict that looms over the region, then surely it is also aware that, at the end of the day, it will return from the battle to live side-by-side with those "agents" it defeated today. In this sense too, the latest "victory" is horribly different from the victories of 2000 and 2006. Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah will never have to live with Ehud Olmert or Ehud Barak under the same roof. His victory over them is a rightful cause for celebration, but "victory" over Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblatt and Samir Geagea has a different meaning, and different implications for Lebanon's ability to recover from such a bloody relapse.
Hence the fear that Hezbollah's leaders may have crossed the last line to the final rupture, a fear prompted by the recent words of Hezbollah's Secretary-General. When other political leaders are accused of "treason" and "collaboration with Israel" because of a mere divergence of opinion on a governmental decision, it is only natural to wonder if there is a still a margin for dialogue or for reaching a solution in the minds of Hezbollah leaders. It appears that Nasrallah has severed the last thread leading to a solution. He has gone further than this, and, from his religious position, has cut off the road to heaven to those who oppose him, by assuring us that he would not meet them in the afterlife!
Israel remains the great absent from all this, despite Hezbollah's assurance that it is at the top of its preoccupations and at the core of its objectives. "Victory" on the inside front constitutes certain defeat on the enemy's front. We must not forget that the Resistance's strong stance is not based only on its armament, but first and foremost on the country's internal cohesion, whose disintegration has always been a primary factor to facilitate infiltration. If only for this reason, Hezbollah's leaders should have been more careful than any other organization in Lebanon to preserve such cohesion, especially since they never ceased to claim that the public rallying around them during the July war was one of the most important factors that allowed victory.
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