Horse-trading before violence in Beirut

Michael Young
The Daily Star (Beirut)
05 August '10

Nasrallah promised to prove next week that Israel assassinated the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. A pity he didn’t do so a few years ago, as this would have spared Lebanon, and his own party, many a headache.

We shouldn’t lose track of the fact, however, that Nasrallah’s speech, coming on the same day that Lebanese and Israeli units clashed on the southern border, was part of a broader horse-trading process that preceded the Lebanese-Saudi-Syrian summit last week in Beirut, but that was also heightened by it. This horse-trading involves several issues: the future of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon; Hizbullah’s arms; and Syria’s longing to revive its hegemony over Lebanon

There was much speculation that when Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Syria’s President Bashar Assad visited Beirut, they came with some sort of package deal in hand that would stabilize Lebanon. Even the theatrics of the summit seemed to suggest that stern messages were being disseminated: the king going off with Prime Minister Saad Hariri; Assad sitting down with Hizbullah parliamentarians. This was a misreading. Hizbullah showed few signs of wholeheartedly endorsing the reassuring bromides issued from the summit, let alone a specific deal, and Nasrallah made the point in his speech that Lebanon awaited the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the same spirit as it did those of the Arab leaders. In other words the party was really bound only by what Iran said.

It’s no secret what Hizbullah wants in the near future. The party insists that the Hariri government end its cooperation with the special tribunal, which it has described as an “Israeli project.” For Nasrallah the tribunal threatens to neutralize his party as an Iranian military extension. This is unacceptable to Hizbullah’s leader, whose contract with Iran requires that he be prepared to act on Tehran’s orders at all times.

What of Saad Hariri and the tribunal? From the moment the prime minister visited Damascus last December, it was plain that he would be willing to bargain over the institution. But Hariri wants something very substantial in return for doing so, which likely means a mechanism allowing the state to exert control over Hizbullah’s weapons – most desirably through the party’s integration into the army.

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