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Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah hails landslide win for Shia parties in Lebanon
But Shia rivals made gains in the election too, making a new government difficult to form
May 9, 2018 12:53
But Shia rivals made gains in the election too, making a new government difficult to form
May 9, 2018 12:53Hezbollah and Amal, the main Shia parties in Lebanese politics, were the main winners of the first general election to take place in the Land of Cedars in nine years.
But while the bloc enlarged its share of seats, there were gains for Shia rivals too and the pressure now only increases on Hezbollah to prevent a violent escalation with Israel.
The results are a blow for prime minister Saad Hariri, whose Future Movement remains the largest in the 128-seat parliament but is now down to around twenty seats.
As leader of the main Sunni party, he will remain prime minister, a position reserved for a Sunni politician.
But Hezbollah and its allies in parliament will be a powerful faction within the coalition government, holding over a third of cabinet positions and wielding a veto on major decisions.
The Shia bloc will almost certainly also have over a third of the seats in parliament, giving them a veto on legislation too.
It was not all good news for Hezbollah, though. Their main non-Shia ally, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of President Michel Aoun, also lost seats and the Christian-Shia alliance signed in 2006 may now be in jeopardy.
Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that opposes Hezbollah, has almost doubled its size in parliament and is now almost as large as FPM. Other parties militantly against Hezbollah have also added seats.
Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah seemed to be acknowledging deepening fault-lines in his victory speech. He hailed Beirut, where the Hezbollah-Amal alliance had much of its success, as “a capital of the resistance” but added: “Beirut is for all the Lebanese”.
The initial response from Israeli politicians was alarm, with Education Minister Naftali Bennett telling Reuters: “Israel will not differentiate between the sovereign state of Lebanon and Hezbollah, and will view Lebanon as responsible for any action from within its territory.”
But it may not be bad news for Israel. Hezbollah is spread thinly militarily, financially and politically.
With around 2,000 of its fighters killed in Syria over the last seven years and thousands more wounded, the movement has had to set up a pensions system, which is a major drain on its resources.
It has also lost a large number of its veteran commanders.
And with its political role expanding, the pressure on Hezbollah to ensure violence does not break out in its Beirut strongholds has increased.
The movement has not launched any overt attacks against Israel since the Second Lebanon War in 2005.
So far, Israel has also refrained, limiting its airstrikes against weapons convoys and depots to Syria. As one Israeli security official said recently: “right now Hezbollah has a lot to lose and the expansion of fighting with Israel to Lebanon will cause it major damage domestically.”
Hezbollah could find that with more political power come constraints as well.
