I ask the reader to pardon me for recalling an image I had used years ago to characterize the relationship between Lebanon and Hezbollah:
For decades, the Iranian and Assad Syrian regimes fed and stuffed a beast inside a small room, Lebanon. And the beast grew indeed, so much so that it hardly fit in the entire room anymore, and getting rid of it risked bringing the entire room down.
Though the names vary, this state of affairs is not unlike several others seen in countries across the Arab world where, for one reason or another, beasts were similarly fattened and led a foreign actor whose movements, aims, and intentions are difficult to control or predict to step in to do the job.
This is, in a sense, what happened in the Iraq that the Baath ruled from 1968 to 2003 and in the Libya that Gaddafi ruled from 1969 to 2011. An abundance of experiences from our modern history demonstrates how pursuits described as religious, nationalist, or tribal are far more powerful than impulses for change stemming from issues tied to the political system and social relations.
It is this reality that allowed rulers who did not flinch as they committed genocides on their peoples to go on ruling for decades, and that allowed a party like Hezbollah to do to Lebanon and the Lebanese (and to Syrians, Iraqis, and Yemenis) what it has done while continuing to be regarded as the glorious resistance.
It is true that many Lebanese, like the counterparts of theirs just mentioned above, resisted this and endured violence and its repercussions, and it would be dishonest to belittle their repeated attempts to stand up to two vicious regimes that had conspired to empower the "resistance party" and shaped the “regime” alongside it.
Nonetheless, it would be excessive to speak of a broad sense of responsibility. Coexistence with this "regime," its nourishment and justification, went very far indeed, and a reckoning with the country’s share of the blame for the catastrophes that Hezbollah has precipitated - let alone learning from these mistakes - continues to be deferred.
Among the Lebanese, many in the country’s milieu of spineless notables, minor and major - figures who are, by definition, not without representation or influence - did their part. In these circles, competition to lavish praise on "the party" and its victory-promising leader dripping in charisma had become a tribute paid for favors and services.
A milieu of ideologues also played its part, seeing "the party" as an engine of the "sacred cause." And because this milieu is more concerned with ideas and meaning, it developed the notion that the party’s existence had been inevitable because occupation brings resistance. Occupation, however, had not been inevitable. It was the Palestinian resistance at the time that had introduced it. Instead of a national effort to avoid repeating this tragedy, the remedy amounted to re-administering the initial disease: Hezbollah's resistance, which surpassed its predecessor in its strength, hubris, and capacity to summon occupation.
Later on, the occupation forces withdrew in 2000, but the resistance stayed, and it became clear that resistance was an end in itself - not a means to remove occupation - and that it was the resistance that had led to occupation, not the other way around. When there seemed to be a domestic and regional need to harden the grip that the March 14 movement and the Syrian forces’ withdrawal from Lebanon had undermined, "the party" kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and the ensuing war was labeled an "assault on Lebanon"; everyone was complicit in drawing from this evasive lexicon. There was more of the same during the "support war" that "the party" had initiated, earning us another "assault on Lebanon".
If we add the third milieu, which is mechanically bound to "the party" and is by very far the broadest of the three, we put our finger on the failure to do justice to the country and to fulfill the duties undertaken by peoples that produce elites who think and take the initiative to avert defeat and calamity.
Historians and students of ideas often point to a classic case offered by Germany after the First World War. Instead of an effort to dig up the intellectual, political, and military roots of this defeat, the myth of a "stab in the back" that the German nation had supposedly suffered prevailed. The nation had not been defeated in the war, but by a cabal of politicians, socialists, and Jews who had stabbed it in the back, and that is why what happened happened. This myth paralyzed debate around the nation's conditions by shifting the blame onto others, and this played a role in the rise of the Nazi beast and eventually the outbreak of the Second World War.
However, evading collective responsibility could manifest differently this time, in reliance on Israel to get the job done. Instead of simply accepting, broken and grieving as we are, this fait accompli we have no alternative for - holding on to our countless reasons for fear, apprehension, and doubt - there prevails naive celebration of the "Magnificent Seven," with the Israel’s seen as Yul Brynner’s heroes, coming to liberate us just as the seven had liberated the hapless people of the Mexican village from the bandits.
"The party's" destructive acts may explain this inclination among some, but it does not hinder the repetition of tragedies nor teach the Lebanese the lesson - or demand self-transformation - that would allow them, for the first time, to seize control of their history and steer its course, if, that is, there is any space left in the room that the beast occupies after it had been allowed to grow as large as it has.
