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Abdallah Bou Habib might be the victim of a series of circumstances that reduced him to puppet status at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what is certain is that he does not even play puppet well.
Bou Habib is a reactionary man, one who speaks on impulse and then goes on to retract his words. Unlike the chewing gum he spat out at the recent Arab Summit, the Lebanese minister could afford to withdraw the last statement he made on the pretext of having gotten overzealous for a moment.
Indeed, Bou Habib did admit that his talk in Antalya about Lebanon being ready for war with Israel was a slip of the tongue, a mistake forced by the circumstances surrounding the interview he had.
A Member of Parliament — or a person who does not hold a position of responsibility — could afford such statements, but in this case, Bou Habib expressed his own views as if they were representative of the government in any way. The Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs is the person responsible for the state’s foreign policy, even if no one took his opinion into account when the war against Israel began, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Imagine the late Fouad Boutros or the late Charles Malek in Bou Habib’s position, expressing aberrations and then withdrawing them. Back then, state officials were competent enough to represent Lebanon properly and preserve its diplomatic role despite all crises. Thanks to such people, the country had become an independent decision-making body.
Bou Habib, who previously issued warnings about impending conflict, now believes that Lebanon is unlikely to engage in war, instead of pushing for the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1701 and the withdrawal of Hezbollah behind the Litani River.
As if all this was not enough, Abdallah Bou Habib was forced to admit that Hezbollah did not need the government’s permission to enter war. The admission from a government minister that decisions are not actually taken by the Council of Ministers itself leaves no room for optimism and makes it impossible for anyone to seriously listen to anything that Bou Habib, a representative of a failed government, says.
The Caretaker Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs went so far as to state that it was by reading the newspaper that he learned about the visit of Wafic Safa, Hezbollah’s chief of the liaison and coordination unit, to the UAE. A good piece of advice one can give to Bou Habib is to keep reading the news, alongside the Lebanese people, and become a normal citizen again because, unfortunately, he is nothing more for the time being.
