28
July 2006
Desperately waiting for Nabih Berri
Hizbullah's secretary
general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, waited until the early
hours of Wednesday morning
to inform us that the phase of bombing "beyond Haifa" had begun, even
as he justified Hizbullah's
actions as part of a national Lebanese effort - unlike his earlier
claim to be fighting on behalf of the Arab
and Muslim umma. This came only hours after another
party official, Mahmoud Komati,
stated that Hizbullah had been surprised by Israel's reaction to the capture of two soldiers on July 12.
Komati's admission was troubling for four reasons. It was
probably untrue, since Hizbullah almost certainly factored in what the Israelis might
do when it planned the soldiers'
abduction; the admission was
designed to shift blame away from Hizbullah,
since if it had known about the Israeli response,
hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese would hold the
party accountable for their fate; and if Komati was telling
the truth and Hizbullah did
not know, then the party is guilty
of having provoked a
national catastrophe based on deficient
planning.
The fourth reason was
more prosaic: It was contradicted by what Nasrallah later said. In his statement on Al-Manar, the secretary
general declared that Hizbullah knew Israel intended
to launch a major military operation in October. In that case it was
surely aware that the Olmert
government might engage in harsh retaliation before that deadline. And if that wasn't
plain enough, the muscular Israeli response in May, after there was cross-border
rocket fire from Lebanon, should have made it clear.
From
Hizbullah's mood it is apparent that Nasrallah is pursuing
an indefinite war for political survival. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not reassure
him, nor was she expected
to, by laying down a series
of diktats during her visit to Beirut rather than flexible negotiating positions. The latter
will have to wait until her return to the region, when
real bargaining begins. And this will
last a long time.
But how long can
Nasrallah last? Much has
been made of the secretary general's celebrated steadfastness and the fact that
he has before him only two
choices - victory or defeat. If that's his narrow reading,
then he is
heading toward heartbreak, because sooner or later the weight
of the Lebanese sectarian system is likely to impose defeat on him if he refuses to make necessary concessions. The reason is
simple: No Lebanese leader - not Amin Gemayel in 1982,
Michel Aoun in 1989, or Emile Lahoud in 2004 - can indefinitely bend the country to the breaking point, or push it toward
communal destabilization, without
the old sectarian
ways kicking in to impose a
correction. And in the
absence of concessions by maximalist leaders, the system has usually collapsed into war.
It has
been obvious in the past year that
for all its military prowess, Hizbullah has had no inkling about the subtleties of domestic sectarian politics. Perhaps that is because the Shiites were never truly afforded
a way into the system before 1975, when the Civil War started. But it is also
because the party spent 15 of the post-war years pampered
by Syria - allowed to amass a huge military
arsenal and pursue a war option while being guaranteed a bloc of seats in Lebanon's Parliament. There was little
hard work involved and none of the Byzantine give and take
that sectarian groups must
engage in to build coalitions across
religious lines.
Nasrallah is all soaring ambition, which is precisely
why he never
took to the pettiness and symmetry
of sectarian haggling. And today, with
Hizbullah fighting a war on behalf of, variously, the Arabs, Islam, Lebanon, and the Shiites (who can forget
Nasrallah's initial cry after
the Israeli onslaught that Israel would never
defeat the children of Mohammad, Ali, Hassan, and
Hussein), it might be his own
domestic partners who have the final say in how Hizbullah behaves.
Nasrallah would now scoff
at this. But as the conflict drags on, the weight of the refugees,
the fact that their long dislocation will negatively affect Shiite
power as a whole, that most Lebanese oppose an open-ended conflict, and the rising
economic cost of the hostilities, will push the
secretary general's adversaries, but perhaps also, and more importantly, his own Shiite comrades - notably Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri - to question the wisdom of further obstinacy. Nasrallah cannot declare war on all of Lebanese society. It seems far more rewarding for him to take a step back now and see
what he can
yet salvage.
Berri will
play a pivotal role in the coming
weeks. As the senior Shiite
official in the country, he
finds himself awkwardly caught between his community
and the state. For the moment Nasrallah has only authorized the speaker to negotiate on his behalf in the
matter of a prisoner exchange and a cease-fire. However, Berri is unlikely to relish the idea
of permitting a Shiite Gotterdammerung,
and Nasrallah's dilemma offers him a way
back into the political game after years of erosion in his power. The parliamentary majority is hesitant
to demand anything of Nasrallah without a Shiite partner, and their
eye is firmly
on Berri.
That's one reason
why Berri's unfriendly
meeting with Rice on Monday
was a good thing. It enhanced
the speaker's credibility with his coreligionists, showing he was
no American patsy, even as the secretary
of state acknowledged by meeting Berri that any international peace plan for Lebanon required his approval.
However, it is still premature
for Berri to risk his
standing with Nasrallah, and with his
own electorate, by asking him to be
more malleable. If the
speaker does jump ship, it won't be before many
more weeks of fighting and a likely intensification of the violence. More cynically,
Berri might be waiting to see if Hizbullah loses ground militarily before making any
such move.
Nasrallah has declared a war beyond Haifa, while
the Israelis are now engaged in a ground war beyond
Bint Jbeil. But Hizbullah may soon
be fighting on two fronts - against Israel in the South
and, figuratively, inside Lebanon. Let us hope that Nasrallah
does not carry his battle beyond Bint
Jbeil as well, this time in the direction of Beirut and after
Beirut.
Michael Young is
opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Copyright (c) 2006 The
Daily Star