Daniel Sobelman on Lebanon’s turmoil since Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel
December 13, 2007 11:43 am Lebanon's Maronites, Hezbollah (Hizb Allah)Several events converged to bring twenty-nine years of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon to a finale: the string of political assassinations, the withdrawal of the Syrian military from Lebanese soil, and of course the Second Lebanon War. The end of this Syrian hegemony also brought to a close what had been an era of domestic stability. Surrounded by regional crises, and with an ever-present threat of civil conflict looming, Lebanon is struggling to recover from the 2006 war and to stem further disintegration. The future status of Hizbollah, at least in the short term, and its political and military room for maneuver will be largely determined by the way in which Lebanon resolves the current crisis.
Internal Strife
In an inconspicuous column entitled “Secrets of the Gods” in late 2003, the Beirut newspaper al-Nahar – at the time the Lebanese newspaper most outspoken in its criticism of Hizbollah – published a one-line item that “one of the prominent organizations” was engaged in digging in towns along the border in order to lay the infrastructure for a private phone system. The report noted that “official and civil authorities” objected to the operations.[1] Four years later, Hizbollah’s operational telephone infrastructure is no longer a guarded secret but rather an openly debated topic on the agenda of the Lebanese government, which in recent months has been exposing and dismantling the Shiite organization’s telephone infrastructure in Beirut and other parts of the country.[2]