- 15:00
Hezbollah is thumbing its nose at President Joseph Aoun. In response to the Lebanese President saying that he was in talks with the militia over surrendering its arms, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said, “We will confront whoever assaults the resistance and tries to disarm it the same way we faced Israel.” Now what?
While Aoun remained silent, America’s witty Deputy Envoy to the Middle East trolled Qassem, quote-tweeting his statement with one word: Yawn.
Since his election in January, Aoun has made his policy to disarm Hezbollah clear. However, the Lebanese president has also been sensitive to the terminology he uses in this regard. Aoun has avoided words like “disarmament” and used instead “state monopoly of arms”. The president has gone out of his way to show as much deference and respect to Hezbollah as possible, avoiding spite and provocation while hanging tight to the end goal: transforming Hezbollah from a militia into a political party.
Qassem’s response, however, has proven what many Lebanese have been saying for a long time: the problem with disarming Hezbollah is not one of style but of content. The militia will never voluntarily surrender its arsenal. And judging by Qassem’s comments, Hezbollah has no problem warring with the national army, a war that Aoun has gone out of his way to say that the state wants to avoid.
The clash between Lebanon and Hezbollah is not one of style, but of wills. The majority of the Lebanese want to see the Hezbollah militia disarmed and disbanded. Hezbollah’s reaction? Over our dead bodies. The Iran-backed militia refuses to go down without a fight. And if war is what Hezbollah wants, then Aoun and the state will have to either concede Lebanese sovereignty or fight for it.
Like all normal states, there must be one military power in Lebanon, and it must be the state. If Hezbollah wants to defy the Lebanese state and military, it can try, but it must know first that the majority of the Lebanese and the world will stand behind the government against the militia.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s propaganda machine has launched a campaign threatening the dire consequences of any attempts to force it to disarm. Senior officials Wafiq Safa and Mahmoud Qomati insisted that Hezbollah’s arms were not on the negotiation table. The militia’s TV channel designed posters with offensive language against the Lebanese who demand its disarmament.
Hezbollah seems to have changed tactics. When the militia was being crushed by Israel, it signed a ceasefire agreement under which it agreed to disarm everywhere in Lebanon. Armament was to be restricted to six government agencies.
Once the war stopped, reports surfaced that Safa asked Aoun, then still army commander, to pretend as if he had disarmed the militia by confiscating two or three arms depots live on camera and call it a day. Aoun refused.
Hezbollah then started pretending as if its arms had vanished and ceased being an issue anymore.
But the world never let go. Wealthy Gulf donors withheld reconstruction money until the militia was verifiably disarmed. Aoun's and Prime Minister Salam’s statements promising Hezbollah’s disarmament left no place for the militia to hide; hence, the rebound in Hezbollah rhetoric, defying Aoun and promising to fight the state like it fought Israel.
Now, Hezbollah has shown its true face: when it signed on to disarm, it lied. It intends to keep its militia and revamp it for future rounds of war.
Lebanon has a golden opportunity to disarm the militia. The window of opportunity is small and closing fast, making it a now-or-never situation. Aoun, Salam, the Lebanese army, should give Hezbollah a deadline to surrender its arms. If the militia does not, then the military will have to defend the sovereignty of the state and restore it.
No one wants to see Lebanon plunge into civil war. No one wants to see the Lebanese army fighting Lebanese militiamen. But every Lebanese, especially the Shia, wants to see a sovereign Lebanon living under the rule of law.
Hezbollah must understand that its “resistance state” model has brought death and devastation to the Lebanese and that it is high time that Lebanon tries something else: a sovereign state without militias. If Hezbollah is willing to enter the new era, it will be most welcome. If not, it will have to be forced to.
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