A review is a positive step when its purpose is accountability or candor, and a negative one when its purpose is to justify mistakes or defend them. Herein lies the vast difference between a partial shortcoming and a strategic failure; and the choice of one or the other goes beyond the present, with all its complications, to bear on the future of an armed party, an ideological group, a religious sect, or an independent, sovereign country.
The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, Hajj Mohammad Raad, did not surprise the Lebanese in his interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Modon about the in-depth review Hezbollah has conducted, nor in his adherence to the party's narrative since October 8, 2023 and its justifications of it. But he astonished many with the review's conclusions.
Raad describes what happened as "a partial tactical flaw," which amounts to affirming the soundness of the strategic decision without bearing its consequences. But a serious review is not complete with the mere admission that a flaw existed, nor does it end with a reaffirmation that the decision taken was correct. A real review begins with the hardest question: what was the decision? Who took it? On what assessment was it based? What were the results? And who bears responsibility for it before those who paid its price?
In practice, Hezbollah confined the review to military gaps and did not acknowledge the enormous technological gap with the Israeli enemy, but it avoided reviewing the political decision. What Raad said is therefore no more than a review of performance, not a review of the decision and its results. On the contrary, Hezbollah evaded responsibility and threw it onto the state, which it described as an authority it does not trust to receive its weapons, nor to agree with on a defense strategy.
And if Raad doubts the state-authority and does not trust it to receive the weapons or to reach agreement with it on a defense strategy, why does Hezbollah insist on remaining in the government that represents this authority? How can the state be unworthy of trust when it comes to weapons, and then become worthy of partnership when it comes to government, power, and political decision-making?
In practice, Hezbollah approaches the question on the premise that the weapons it wants to keep are what determine the shape of the strategy, when the truth is that it is the strategy of states that determines the function of weapons. What Hezbollah wants, even after failing the test of the weapons, is for its weapons to remain outside the state, and for any discussion of their fate to be deferred until agreement is reached on a defense strategy that suits it. Here we are in a vicious circle: the weapons stay first, and the strategy comes later to justify their existence or to regulate it.
More dangerous still is that these weapons, which did not achieve the deterrence presented to the Lebanese as their principal function, remain outside the national decision. Who holds the decision to use them? And is their point of reference the state, or abroad?
But the most dangerous thing absent from Raad's talk of a review is accountability- neither internal, that is, organizational, nor national in all its branches. The question that arises is: who said the resistance is above accountability, especially when it is confined to a party, a group, a sect, or an axis? And who said that whoever holds weapons on the pretext of resistance automatically holds the right to decide on war and peace on behalf of the Lebanese?
Accountability is not the abolition of the resistance, nor a denial of the sacrifices of the people of the south. It is the right of those who paid the price to ask: who decided? Why did they decide? What did the decision achieve? And who bears its consequences? For the south was not merely an arena for the decision; it was also the first victim of its cost.
Here the matter is no longer one of Hezbollah alone, but of Lebanon's Shiites as well. The Lebanese Shiite is not Hezbollah, the southerner is not a political organization, and the resistance is not an open mandate to manage war and peace. The southern Shiite, outside the party and within it, has the right to ask, to hold to account, and to disagree, without being accused of abandoning the south or the resistance.
A review that does not reach accountability turns into justification; and a tactical shortcoming used to absolve the strategic decision of responsibility does not make a review. It protects the narrative from its consequences.
And so the question remains, one that MP Mohammad Raad and Hezbollah must answer: what did you review? Whom did you hold to account? And who gave you the right to take the decision?
