These days, the residents of South Lebanon see Hezbollah as a shattered shield. After the shadow of the liberation narrative that had been imposed on everyone and embellished by Hezbollah loomed large for over two decades, 2000, the year Israel withdrew from the country, now seems like a long, long time ago.
This climate, and faith in a “grand achievement” (“the liberation of southern Lebanon from the Israeli occupation”), which had prevailed since the turn of the millennium, is nowhere to be seen today. At the time, debates about the various complex reasons for the withdrawal were swept under the rug.
There was no discussion about the fact that the withdrawal was the result of Israeli policy and not purely an outcome of resistance. Everyone was complicit in accepting Hezbollah's narrative, celebrating Israel’s withdrawal as a major victory for Hezbollah that reinforced the convergence of all Lebanese citizens around its resistance. It also allowed the party to help balance the influence of regional actors like Iran and Syria in the Lebanese arena.
Moreover, residents of South Lebanon became more convinced that Hezbollah was their most effective bulwark against Israel. They went about building homes along the border with Israel and opening small and medium-sized businesses facing the fence separating the two countries. “Inspecting the enemy” at “Fatima Gate” and other points of friction became a flourishing tourist attraction. Throughout, Hezbollah made use of its expertise in propaganda to further underpin its narrative of victory and convince the Lebanese that it could deter Israel and protect the country.
Two decades on, its luster has all but disappeared. Hezbollah’s narrative of liberation, changing equations, and rewriting history and the rules of engagement (and other terms Hassan Nasrallah added to the lexicons of the Southerners) has been undercut.
Even the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, with its mass destruction and horrific casualty figures, did not do as much to undermine Hezbollah's reputation and prestige. At the end of that war, Nasrallah managed to declare a “divine victory” and pretend a role in reconstruction efforts as he strove to restore his image as a defender of the Lebanese people and protector of the South.
While the 2006 war - coupled with the party's entry into the assassination and intimidation game within Lebanon as the evidence directly linking it to the assassination of Rafik Hariri began to mount, as well as its attempts to consolidate its control over the country after Syria pulled out - marked the beginning of the gradual shift in how the Lebanese saw Hezbollah, it had managed to keep its narrative of resistance ingrained in the consciousness of the Southerners; indeed it managed to convince them that everything it had done was in defense of this resistance.
Today, the broad destruction in the villages along the border and the mass displacement of their inhabitants have negated the entire discourse Hezbollah had been promoting about the resilience of the Southerners and its ability to deter the enemy, and its claims that the time when Israel would attack these villages was behind us now ring hollow!
The picture becomes even more bleak once we consider that the four months of displacement and destruction have coincided with Lebanon’s economic collapse, a decisive factor in weakening Hezbollah's narrative of liberation, strength, and dignity. The South and the Bekaa have provided a rural refuge for citizens, mostly public sector employees or retirees, whose incomes had been decimated.
Now, they find themselves having to contend with the high cost of living in Beirut or its suburbs, where they have to rent apartments and pay for alternatives to collapsed basic services, or are deprived of the income they used to derive from renting out their property in Beirut and had depended on to make ends meet in their villages.
At a time when Lebanon is suffering from hyperinflation, capital controls, a collapse of public services, and is on the brink of bankruptcy, Hezbollah can do almost nothing to meet the needs of its base and maintain its image as the protector of their interests and those of the Lebanese more broadly.
Furthermore, supporters and observers would struggle to point to “glorious” moments in Lebanon since Hezbollah declared its war in support of Gaza on October 8th, like the moment it struck Israel’s Saar warship off the Lebanese coast in 2006. At the time, Nasrallah personally phoned in as the images were broadcast on a television station, in the midst of the war, telling the audience to “Watch as it burns at sea!”
On the contrary, the current war highlights many of Hezbollah’s many weaknesses. Several of its field commanders and key military commanders were taken out in close proximity. Israel has clearly come out on top as it pursues a strategy focused on weakening Hezbollah's operational capabilities by targeting its infrastructure and military top brass. Hezbollah's restrained retaliations present a sharp contrast to these painful blows, and, for that matter, to its performance in 2006 as well.
Aggravating the difficult position it finds itself in as it retaliates with only limited strikes, Hezbollah has intervened in regional conflicts without a second thought, first in Syria and now in Yemen. These interventions have depleted its resources and distorted its mission in the minds of its support base, as well as undermining its overall standing in Lebanon and beyond.
The role Hezbollah will play and the future it will exert in Lebanon and the region remain uncertain. What is certain is that nothing remains of the era of liberation and the myths around it that had granted Hezbollah legitimacy and allowed it to play that role.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the so-called “liberation of the South,” Hezbollah is grappling with a series of military setbacks, a terrible economic crisis, and shifts in how people feel about the party. All of these factors have converged to totally dissipate the reputation it had built for itself at that moment in 2000.
