Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Senior Fellow in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Linda and Tony Rubin Program on Arab Politics, where she focuses on Shia politics throughout the Levant. As a longtime journalist in Beirut, she has reported extensively on Hezbollah and Iranian influence in South Lebanon. In this interview with Moment’s Jacob Forman, Ghaddar talks about the ongoing war’s toll on civilians, the current state of Hezbollah and the future of Lebanon.
What’s the experience been for Lebanese civilians caught in the crossfire the past few weeks? Are people worried about Beirut becoming another Gaza?
Everybody’s worried. Although it’s not exactly like Gaza. For one, Beirut is not isolated like Gaza; the airport is still open. It’s not easy to leave, but there are ways from the borders and the airport. But people in Lebanon are worried it’s going to be another Gaza because of the magnitude of the bombs. And it’s not anymore focused only on Hezbollah and Shia neighborhoods such as Dahieh and the Beqaa [valley]. There have been a number of attacks on non-Shia neighborhoods. So they feel that nowhere is safe. It’s like the whole of Lebanon is under fire, and no one knows where the next airstrike might hit.
We know that the Israelis are not targeting Lebanon per se. They’re targeting Hezbollah in the sense that, if Hezbollah has been burying weapons under people’s houses, under hospitals and anywhere in Lebanon, they’re going to go after them. Israel is not going to stop if, say, Hezbollah is burying their weapons in Christian areas.
The innocent casualties are really the main pain here, because nobody minds if Israel takes out Hezbollah. Many people, actually, the majority of the Lebanese, would love to see Hezbollah go, but the price has been too high. Today they are seeing that this is a war between Iran and Israel. And they feel horrible that they have to be the ones paying the price for all this; They blame Hezbollah, they blame Iran. And of course, they don’t see Israel as a friend now because a lot of people are dying. But it’s not like 2006 and 2000, because they’re also blaming Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into this war.
Obviously we’re still in the fog of war and news is still coming in, but recent media reports suggest that Israel has significantly diminished Hezbollah’s capacity to wage war and indeed to govern parts of Lebanon. How true is this? What is the condition of Hezbollah relative to a year ago in terms of military might, in terms of leadership structure and in terms of political influence?
I think they’re already mitigated to a very large extent. Very few people are left in terms of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, its military leadership. For the supporters, the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah was the big crossroad. Nasrallah was not just the leader of Hezbollah, he was the father figure of the community. So with him dying, and with everyone around him dropping, and the extent of infiltration of the party, it’s not just that they’re losing the senior leadership and a lot of weapons—Hezbollah’s myth as the most powerful, most secure and strongest party has fallen. The father figure died, and with him, the whole myth of Hezbollah as unbeatable is completely gone.
Many Shia in Lebanon are still in the denial phase of, “No, Hassan Nasrallah did not die, we didn’t see his funeral. He’s going to come back.” Others have moved past this and say, “Even if he died, we are still going on. We’re not going to stop. He left thousands and thousands of fighters who are going to do this.”
Once they wake up to the fact that they are totally on their own, the only choice left for them is to go back to Lebanon, to become Lebanese instead of Shia. This is the only way forward, and they’re not there yet. It’s going to take some political messaging, but you can’t expect that kind of awareness in the middle of the war. We need to move beyond that in order to start working on the political and social culture level.
So, there’s a meaningfully different perception of the war in Shia communities versus Sunni, Christian and Druze communities?
Of course. The Shia are the main victims of this war. More than a million Shia have fled towns and cities. And there’s no space for everyone, so many of them are sleeping in the streets. So, there’s a lot of fear, a lot of humiliation, a lot of uncertainty—and a lot of arms. This is a perfect recipe for disaster if the Lebanese army doesn’t really go in, deploy and reinstate state institutions, doesn’t quell the chaos and organize to get people help.
As the main victims in this, the Shia are shocked that they’re not getting the same help they got in 2006 from Hezbollah. They are getting some help at the borders in terms of passage to Syria, in terms of helping them move around, but they’re not getting real help in terms of aid. With Nasrallah gone, this is not happening. They’re not aware of it, but subconsciously they feel that it’s over, that Hezbollah’s gone.
Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, said the other day that he’s open to positioning the Lebanese armed forces in the south and helping to realize UN Security Council Resolution 1701. How likely is this to actually happen? And what would it mean for Lebanon?
Of course he’s going to say that, because now they are losing. He was brought in under Hezbollah’s control. So he works with them and he coordinates with them. And today, what he’s trying to do, Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri, is to prevent the others from using this opportunity in order to create an actual sovereign state. So Mikati is focusing on 1701, and Berri, his partner in crime, is saying, “Let’s go for elections.” So finally, after years, they suddenly want to elect a president and open the Parliament? Suddenly they’re not talking about Hezbollah’s candidate Suleiman Franjieh anymore? Mikati and Berri are suggesting very weak people, people who are not up for this new moment in Lebanon’s history. They’re trying to make sure that no one else takes advantage of this moment.
It’s very interesting that Mikati wants the army to deploy in the south. How do you expect the army to do that without gaining people’s trust first? He needs to ask the army to deploy in the rest of Lebanon first. They have to pass through the streets of Lebanon, maintain security, make sure there’s no sectarian violence, gain the trust of the people, project power and authority as the state institution. And then from there, they can go to the south and deploy.
You need to deploy the army, project power as a state authority and elect a president and a government whose main aim is total sovereignty, not consensus. And then after the cease-fire, you’ll have at least solid ground in order to properly implement 1701.
Does Hezbollah feel abandoned by Iran?
In a way, yes. They were expecting more. Iran is still helping, of course, trying to send arms and money. They don’t want to be involved in the war. The Iranian foreign minister is in Beirut today [October 4]. The Iranians do not want to lose Hezbollah, obviously. But after bombing Dahieh and killing Nasrallah, they were not expecting Iran to directly hit Israel; they were expecting a lot more of a reaction from Iranian proxies such as the Houthis and the Iraqi militias, and more action from Syria. They were expecting the other fronts to open at the same time, and it didn’t happen.
Right now, further escalation almost seems inevitable. What are the ways that this could end?
It’s obvious that Israel is not going to stop until they are sure that Hezbollah is no longer a threat to the Israeli people, which means that they have to continue this operation on three levels. The first is to keep bombing Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, weapons, facilities, launchers, et cetera. Second is to continue assassinating what is left of Hezbollah’s leadership, which is not much. And third is the incursion into southern Lebanon. For the people of the north in Israel to feel safe, to come back to their homes, they need to make sure that Hezbollah has no presence south of the Litani [river]. Once this is accomplished, Israel can come to the United States and say, whether to the current administration or the next one, “Okay, we’re ready for a cease-fire agreement.”
How long it’s going to take, no one knows. But this seems to be the plan; a a diplomatic solution is not going to happen before Israel is done with its bank of targets.
Is there a point where Hezbollah unleashes its missile arsenal?
Everybody’s asking this question, and I have been asking it myself. I’m sure Hezbollah wants to start launching precision-guided missiles. They have a problem in that these missiles are huge, and they need trucks to move them in order to launch them at their targets. They cannot just launch them from underground like Katyushas. And because Israel is monitoring every move and every area, and they know where they are, the missiles can be destroyed before Hezbollah even gets a chance to launch them.
Once the war is over, who governs Southern Lebanon? Who’s the sovereign there?
It has to be the state. There’s no other choice. It needs to be the state through the army and local governance. And it has to be by a sovereign state. Otherwise, it will be ruled by whatever is left of Hezbollah, which is many, many fighters with a lot of guns. And while they might not be able to threaten Israel, they will definitely pose a real danger to Lebanon and the Lebanese people. They could also develop into something different from the old Hezbollah in the form of small militias and street gangs. And that’s going to be an invitation for all sorts of jihadis and all sorts of crazy people to come to Lebanon.
If this happens, in just a few years, something bigger is going to develop and organize and become, again, a threat to the international community. So we really need a sovereign state that can control the border, implement UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, because 1701 does not work without 1559. And the southern border cannot be safe if the other border is not demarcated, and solved, and closed. So it’s all linked. If you want to think long-term, it’s not just about the border, it’s about state sovereignty.
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Featured image: The Blue Line separating Israel and south Lebanon. Photo credit: Thomas Blomberg via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-2.5).