Nasrallah and the Tribunal
Sarah Lynch at Now Lebanon wrote up a Q&A about A Privilege to Die over the weekend. The freshest part of our conversation comes toward the end, when she asked about Hezbollah’s designs inside Lebanon. We talked about whether Hezbollah wants outright control over the whole country, and about how it might navigate its current dilemma between the role of resistance underdog and its reality as a well-armed, funded and politically-backed regional power.
With indictments against Hezbollah pending from the international tribunal investigating Rafik Hariri’s murder, Hezbollah’s focus is on internal Lebanese politics as much as it is on the conflict with Israel. Nasrallah this evening dedicated another entire speech to the tribunal, which he paints as an Israeli tool. His theory is clearly aimed at Hezbollah’s constituency. He’s not trying to convince outsiders that Israel killed Hariri; he’s trying to galvanize Hezbollah supporters, who probably already hold Israel responsible for every assassination in Lebanon. Nasrallah is carefully laying the groundwork for a confrontation with Hezbollah’s Lebanese critics. (You can read Al Manar’s summary of the speech here.)
Hezbollah’s leader admitted that Israel had fully infiltrated Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure. He claimed that many Lebanese who had been suspected of spying for Israel, including Hezbollah members, were in fact compromised by Israeli-penetrated cell phones. Still, the thrust of Sunday night’s remarks was political and confrontational, like all Nasrallah’s previous speeches about the Tribunal and the likelihood for another conflict, internal or regional:
“There are some who believe that this indictment is an opportunity to get rid of Hezbollah, the enemy or the rival in Lebanon. We regard the indictment and its repercussions as a threat to Lebanon’s security; eventually this will affect our performance and conduct. …We have never been at this level of self confidence, power, ability, vigor, and domestic and regional presence. The indictment will not affect us.
I remind you of the year 1996, when all the tyrants of the world met in Sharm el-Sheikh to save Israel from the martyrdom operations of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in occupied Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They met and declared Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations. They formed a panel of security ministers and intelligence chiefs who met in the US in a bid to find ways to crush these three organizations. They waged a tremendous psychological war, but they never met again. Israel used this international condemnation to attack Lebanon with the aim of destroying Hezbollah so that Shimon Peres would win another term as PM. What was the result? We chose to confront this psychological war and with the same spirit and determination we confronted Israel’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and the resistance won and Lebanon triumphed. Today I can tell those bargaining on the STL [Special Tribunal for Lebanon] being the introduction of a new Israeli war that the STL is not more grandiose than Sharm el-Sheikh, and back then we were as strong as we are today. No one can pressure us, not before the indictment and certainly not after it.
They say that time cannot run backwards, and I agree with them. The time when you were able to threaten us or target our existence and dignity is over.”
