The results of the Lebanese parliamentary elections are darkened if you read from the angle of their implications for the transfer of power, and the change of government by changing the majority in the parliament, as is the custom of reading any elections in any normal parliamentary democracy in the world.
It is true that the parliamentary majority has moved from one side to the other, but its importance lies in its referendum nature only, not in its nature that nominates a new party to rule and take charge of managing politics and the economy as the reality should be.
In the referendum results of the elections, what is crystal clear and its most prominent title is that a cross-sectarian Lebanese popular majority voted once morest Hezbollah’s weapons, led by the transfer of the Christian popular mandate, for the first time in this way since 2005, from the bank of Michel Aoun and his project of alliance with Hezbollah to the bank of the Lebanese Forces Publicly, persistently and persistently objecting to the continuation of the perverted reality represented by Hezbollah and its weapons.
However, this transition of the majority from elite to elite candidate the country to one of two possibilities, both of which are practically relevant when Hezbollah continues to dominate the national and political life in Lebanon.
Either the elections will be followed by a political settlement similar to the previous settlements, such as the Doha settlement of 2008, for example, or the settlement of electing Hezbollah candidate Michel Aoun as President of the Republic, and we will then be faced with a deliberate dissolution of all the referendum results we mentioned earlier, or the elections will be followed by a stage of political and institutional paralysis along the lines of The scene in Iraq, whereby the Lebanese are facing a political and popular victory, a kidnapped state and imprisoned institutions that prevent translating the victory into the constitutional institutions.
I think that a new episode of the series “Prolonged Paralysis” is the closest possibility that, paradoxically, intersects when both Hezbollah in Lebanon and personalities familiar with the details of the Lebanese file in Washington, such as the former American diplomat David Hale, are expected.
The truth of the matter is that neither paralysis is new nor is the referendum on Hezbollah’s weapons. Since 2005, the Lebanese state has known successive voids at the level of the main constitutional institutions such as the government, parliament and the presidency, in which years of disruption exceed years of work. The Lebanese also reported in the 2009 elections an electoral referendum on Hezbollah’s weapons, the results of which were in favor of opponents of arms, following Hezbollah set the title of the battle at the time, which is the re-establishment of power, and the Maronite Church, led by the historical Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, responded that the elections at that time were A struggle in the face of attempts to move Lebanon from one bank to the other.
The Lebanese also reported that Hezbollah achieved a parliamentary majority in the 2018 elections celebrated by Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, describing it as a moment to transform Lebanon from a country with resistance to a country of resistance and a government of resistance.
In all cases, i.e. in the event of victory over Hezbollah or in the event that Hezbollah itself wins the majority, we were not faced with obstruction, paralysis, faltering governance, the collapse of the state and the spread of corruption, because we are not simply in a conflict between political projects, but rather in a struggle between a kidnapped party and a kidnapped country. The kidnapper is not concerned with anything related to his conditions, but rather to the political, military and security rents provided by the kidnapper, in favor of another project that has nothing to do with Lebanon and the Lebanese. Hezbollah does not have a political or economic project in Lebanon. It is simply motivated by the need to subjugate the country and prevent its elites, sects and parties from disrupting its transformation into an advanced support room for Iran’s project in the region, nothing more, nothing less.
This relationship between the kidnapped kidnapper does not leave much room for mechanisms of change through normal institutional and constitutional action.
It is difficult for much to change in Lebanon unless Hezbollah changes the nature of what it wants from this country, and this last item will not, in turn, change unless there is a real or radical change at the level of Iran’s project in the region. The Lebanon crisis in its current form extending from Tehran’s decision to liquidate Prime Minister Rafik Hariri until today is a crisis generated by the crisis of the relationship between Iran and the region, and any solution in Lebanon will not be sustainable unless it is part of a radical solution to the crisis of the relationship between Iran and the region.
All the might of Hezbollah ends the moment a real change occurs in Iran, whether at the level of the nature of the regime itself which is surrounded by successive internal uprisings and successive Israeli insults, or at the level of the regime’s behavior if the political direction in this country changes, which suggests more than ever that it is on the The doors of a transitional phase beyond Ali Khamenei, especially in the absence of Qassem Soleimani as a future project that was being prepared and finished.
These elections presented an important picture of what would be the situation in the event of a real change in Iran, through the resounding repetition of all the pillars of Syria in Lebanon… All the heads of Syria’s parties failed in the elections, or failed to reach the parliamentary session, despite All the impressions regarding the rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad and the return of Syria to Lebanon and the like scenarios flourished during the past 12 months. The exit of Syria’s parties from Parliament is a practical translation of the emaciation of the center, i.e. Damascus, which gave them political impetus and moral weight. The same will happen with the emaciation of the Iranian center.
Iran is the key to real change in Lebanon. As for Lebanon, the Arab responsibility is to support the environments and groups that announced from Beirut their rejection of the hegemony of arms, and this requires a new Arab approach to the Lebanese situation, taking into account the popular and political variable revealed by the elections… The talk is relevant.
