Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Hizbullah and the Lebanese election

I can report this: many in the Lebanese opposition are grumbling about Hizbullah and its stance in the upcoming parliamentary election. There is a suspicion (among the allies of Hizbullah, or some of them) that a strong trend in Hizbullah calls for...losing the election. Apparently, some in Hizbullah don't want to win the election. (There is some evidence of that in the last speech by Hasan Nasrallah in which he said that it is not a big deal if the opposition loses the election). The logic is that Hizbullah feels that winning is too burdensome: that economically, the Hariri family has left a mess with a massive public debt, and politically, Lebanon may be forced into Arab-Israeli negotiations. Hizbullah does not want to be in a position to be pressured to "deliver" on both counts. Hizbullah argues, according to those allies who talked to me, that it would be better for it to stay in the opposition because they keep their weapons and they can block whatever they don't like. Hizbullah didn't interfer in the feud between Murr and `Awn and is giving Birri a room to negotiate with Jumblat, which upsets allies of Hizbullah in the opposition.