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A gang is ruling Lebanon

January 13, 2025 at 11:16 am

Following the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, residents of the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh began returning to their homes on November 30, 2024. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency]

I first used this headline in a 2006 article I wrote for an Egyptian newspaper. Now, I am using it again after watching and following on television the Lebanese Parliament’s session to choose the president of the republic. The position has been vacant for almost two and a half years due to the inability of the Shia duo, i.e. Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, to bring their candidate Suleiman Frangieh, leader of the Marada Movement, to power. Meanwhile, the opposition group also failed to bring their candidate to power because they did not obtain the quorum of votes required from Parliament.

The situation remained unchanged, especially due to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s stubbornness and decision to close Parliament. Only after receiving orders from the US and Saudi Arabia following the ceasefire agreement between the Zionist entity and Hezbollah did Berri open Parliament to elect army commander Joseph Aoun as Lebanon’s president.

Berri announced the meeting would be scheduled for 9 January, and the Shia duo and some Christian forces refused to nominate Aoun as president because it violates the Constitution, which stipulates in Article 49 that it is: “Not possible to elect judges, Grade One civil servants, or their equivalents in all public institutions to the Presidency during their term or office or within two years following the date of their resignation and their effective cessation of service, or following retirement.”

Moreover, according to the Constitution, the current army commander cannot run for president, but they bypassed the Constitution, casting it aside and were forced to submit to the orders of the US and Saudi Arabia after they showed them the carrot and the stick. Of course, the carrot was in the hands of Saudi Arabia, and as rumoured, it passed out its dollars to the honourable MPs who have been frustrating us with their talk of sovereignty and preserving the Constitution while lecturing us on freedom and independence.

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The first session was attended by ambassadors from all over the world, and the voting was as follows: 71 votes in favour of Aoun, and the rest of the ballots were blank and belonged to the Shia duo. There were also some that were invalid. The session was adjourned and returned after two hours for the voting to take place again, in which Aoun won with 99 votes, more than the votes required to reach Baabda Palace. The question is: what happened during the two hours between the sessions, especially since Aoun met with two MPs from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement during that period? What guarantees or pledges did the Shia duo obtain that made them change their position and vote for him? The two MPs later stated that he promised them that Resolution 7010 would only be specific to the south of the Litani River and that the northern part would remain under Hezbollah’s control. However, this contradicts what he said in his inaugural address after his election before Parliament, where he pledged to limit weapons to the state only.

They also stated that he promised they could keep the finance portfolio in the ministry and that they made the condition that he reappoint Najib Mikati as prime minister. If what the two Shia MPs said is true, it means that Lebanon is still a farm where foxes and whales graze, not a state at all, and there is no hope of reforming it.

The farce that Berri directed with naivety and childishness sends two important messages that the Shia duo wanted to convey. The first was to Aoun and those who support him from abroad, which is that we cannot be ignored and excluded from the Lebanese equation, that the decision still lies in our hands and that we are the ones who lead candidates to the presidency.

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The second message was directed at Hezbollah supporters in the south, who felt defeated after losing their leader Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s secretary-general, to the Zionist enemy – with the ceasefire treaty seen as a surrender that did not match their sacrifices of thousands of their sons, their demolished homes and the obliteration of most of their villages. They wanted to raise their morale, strengthen their resolve and tell them, “We are still strong, even stronger than before,” as new party secretary Sheikh Naim Qassem told them.

All of this talk is for local consumption, as the party has indeed weakened after losing the war, losing its military and missile arsenal, losing its ally in Syria following the fall of tyrant Bashar Al-Assad and the expulsion of Iran from Syria, humiliated and devastated. This means it lost funding and weapons smuggling from Syria and became isolated within its region, withdrawn into its state.

Finally, for the first time in thirty years, a president for Lebanon has been chosen from outside the Syrian-Iranian factory, returning once again to the Saudi fold, as it was during the era of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.