Saad Hariri stated recently that he was the “father of the
Sunnis” in Lebanon. Through such a statement, he was countering moves by
Hezbollah to meddle in the affairs of other sects and use them as an excuse to
impose its vision of how they should be represented in Lebanese institutions.
Hezbollah does not accept to be a political player with
limited turf. Since its inception, the party declared that its goal was to
change all of Lebanon -- not just the Shia community -- and make it subservient
to Iran’s interests.
The party had first to complete its dominance of the Shia
community in Lebanon and subdue its competitor, the Amal Movement, through
ideological, political, financial and even military means. It had done that in
the 1980s.
Next, the party had to get inside the other sects in
Lebanon. It did that by appealing to the slogan of backing the Lebanese
resistance. It also encroached on the Christian turf through its “Memo of
Understanding” with Michel Aoun and that gave Hezbollah greater space of
“legitimacy” in Lebanon than just the mere space of the Shias and their weight
in Lebanese society.
The late Rafik Hariri was an exceptional phenomenon in
Lebanon in that his rise gave the Lebanese Sunnis a leader. The Sunni
leadership in Lebanon had disintegrated during the 1975-90 civil war because of
the dominance of Palestinian factions allied with various leftist and
nationalist forces.
Even before the war, the Sunni leadership was dispersed
geographically. There wasn’t one Sunni leader in Lebanon. Sunni loyalties at
that time went to external forces, such as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser or Riyadh.
The Lebanese Sunnis had seen in Rafik Hariri a leader who
came to save them from a political humiliation imposed by the Syrian tutelage
over Lebanon. They were being persecuted. In 1989, Lebanon’s grand mufti,
Sheikh Hasan Khaled, was assassinated. Saeb Salam went into self-exile in
Switzerland and the security machine of the regime went after the Sunni
leadership.
However, with Rafik Hariri, the Sunnis were aware that he
had arrived in Lebanon through Damascus but they needed a strong man to
represent them and defend their standing in the Lebanese social fabric.
The Syrian regime only tolerated Rafik Hariri. It placed
many shackles on him and imposed many red lines inside Lebanon and the Sunni
community. The Syrian regime was trying to dam the social and economic flow of
Lebanese interests towards Syria.
Lebanese authorities, for example, had forbidden Hariri from
travelling to the Bekaa Valley or to northern Lebanon. Damascus considered the
Sunnis of those places as spoils of war, living in what it considered its vital
space and no one had the right to cross into it. When Rafik Hariri was prime
minister, leaders of the other sects did not tolerate him in areas under their
control.
He formed the Future Movement Party as a cross-sectarian
political current. It was not easy to market it among some segments of the
Sunni community in Lebanon because it was a novel concept. They had not
expected that the Hariri political doctrine would appeal to the concept of a
national space, which was supra-sectarian.
The other major political parties in Lebanon were proudly
engaged in defending their respective turfs and the rights of the Christian
community or promoting the untouchability of the Shias in Lebanon.
Saad Hariri had inherited his father’s political doctrine
and did his best to rid it of Sunni sectarian suspicion, even at the height of
the regional tension between Sunnis and Shias. In a recent news conference, he
reminded of the many cross-sectarian leadership figures inside the Future
Movement but ended up by saying that he was the “father of the Sunnis."
Politicians in Lebanon know that Hezbollah Secretary-General
Hassan Nasrallah's anger and his mentioning of previous forces that had worked
against the Lebanese people are inconsistent with his claims of Hezbollah
victories in Syria and of Iranian victories in the region.
They are aware that Hezbollah is under great pressure, the
least of which from US sanctions (including placing Nasrallah's son on a
terrorist list). Indeed, the real painful pressure is from within the party’s
own Shia community, which is demanding to join the rest of the country in
finding solutions to the many problems plaguing Lebanon and improve living
conditions.
Nasrallah is trying to let whoever is concerned know he is
the father of the Shias in Lebanon. It seems that his trans-Lebanese roles are
drying up and he wants to compensate that loss by emphasizing his
trans-sectarian roles in Lebanon.
To this end, Hezbollah strongly supported the new election
law so it could break into the Sunni community by imposing Sunni figures loyal
to it. It considers its success in forcing the Lebanese to elect Aoun president
as the ultimate feat of breaking through the Christian community and their top
constitutional position in the country.
Nasrallah uses facts and processes internal to Lebanon to
complete his seizure of power in Lebanon. The issue of allotting a ministerial
portfolio to Hezbollah’s Sunnis is one more step to force everybody in Lebanon,
including Aoun and Hariri, to surrender to Hezbollah.
Hariri, on the other hand, proceeds from different facts and
calculations and perhaps needs to revise his strategy. He disavowed some of his
previous choices, which perhaps did not receive adequate regional support, such
as when he supported Suleiman Frangieh, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s
“friend,” and then Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, for the presidency.
Hariri admitted that those decisions were unpopular in his
own community. He says that "sacrificing for the sake of the
homeland" has limits and that the political concessions have reached a red
line, both internally at the level of balance of power and regionally at the
level of the shift in the international mood towards Iran and its proxies.