Al-Sayyed Nasruallah at His Third Juncture: The Guardian of Civil Peace

By Nasser Kandil

Al-Sayyed Hassan Nasruallah, the symbol of Al-Mukawamah’s sacrifices and victories, traversed the first stage in Al-Mukawamah’s ascent as the power for liberation and deterrence in the face of the occupying entity’s threat. This stage began with the launch of Al-Mukawamah in its multiple factions and constituents, progressing through its principal power, Hizbullah, to liberation followed by deterrence.  Warnings about the Occupation’s threat was a subject of concurrence between Lebanese sages and protectors, both Christian and Muslim, and constituted the most prominent  legacy and contribution of Charles Malek, Michel Sheeha, and Maurice Al-Gemayel to the body of conceptual, intellectual, and ideological heritage. Yet it was

Al-Mukawamah, flamed by the able leadership of Al-Sayyed Nasrullah, which held at bay such danger, and continues to do so, and became an existential threat for the Occupation.

When Al-Mukawamah rushed to defend its historic bulwark of support, Syria, in the face of the region’s widest and most extensive war with aims reaching the highest ceilings, it was fully cognizant of awaiting sacrifices, hardships, and challenges. Over years, and under the leadership of Al-Sayyed Nasrullah, Al-Mukawamah, together with Syria and her President, Bashar

Al-Assad, lifted the sign of victory in a war which cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and the recruitment of tens of intelligence agencies, hundreds of press giants, and close to a quarter million takfiri from all corners of the earth forming an army far exceeding in capability and savagery all of the armies of NATO and the armies of its regional allies, both Arabs and non-Arabs.  Throughout that period, Al-Sayyed Nasrullah was traversing the second stage, ridding the region, with Lebanon at its heart, from the threat of terrorism, transfiguring

Al-Mukawamah into a regional power to be reckoned with in the region’s balances, and lifting Lebanon’s positon from the region’s Achilles heel to its most difficult number in the equation.

All these achievements and victories were eyed by Al-Mukawamah’s international and regional enemies, whose assessment was that Lebanon’s stability and the high state of immunity of its civil peace created the solid base for the launch of Al-Mukawamah and its maneuvering capabilities. This placed the civil peace at the head of the target list of those enemies controlled by Washington, whose needs to thwart and deplete Al-Mukawamah increased at the gates of her decision to withdraw from the region, and her need to precede such withdrawal by securing an insurance policy to safeguard the Occupation’s security.

Consequently over the last two years, American interest in Lebanese internal affairs escalated, investing in efforts to target Al-Mukawamah and detonate its supporting milieu through demonization, blaming it for the economic crisis, and tying the solution for the economic crisis with the disempowerment of Al-Mukawamah and her abandonment by the Lebanese.         The advent of the ships loaded with Iranian fuel and brought over by Al-Mukawma to Lebanon through Syria, broke the blockade, and had several ramifications. It revealed American responsibility for the economic crisis through its blockade on Lebanon.  It resulted in a rush to compete by showing a concern to help Lebanon by a partial lifting of the blockade and granting some exceptions to sanctions allowing Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity through Syria. It also speeded up the formation of the Lebanese Government by direct American request. Shattering the civil peace became the only bet left to thwart and drain Al-Mukawamah through embroiling it in civil disorder and strife.

For years, the Lebanese Forces was presenting its credentials as the horse ready for such race to the Americans and Gulf States desirous of targeting Hizbullah. The experiment of the detention of Saa’d Al-Hariri in Saudi Arabia revealed the Lebanese Forces’ readiness to burn its boats in order to be assigned such mission. The Americans convinced of the need to weaken Hizbullah, targeted its Christian ally, the Free Patriotic Movement, and simultaneously saw to utilize the Lebanese Forces to preoccupy Hizbullah and embroil it in a civil domestic war. Thus resulted the American partnership with the Forces in the handling and management of the Beirut Port explosion portfolio and its ensuing ramifications.

The first stage of this American maneuvering was a close follow up of the judicial inquiry into the port explosion and betting on the Lebanese Forces as a sectarian mobilization horse, with Gulf financing, to frame the judicial inquiry, the explosion itself, its victims, and losses within a sectarian box. This succeeded in creating a high level of sectarian tension ending in the Tayouneh massacre, described by the leader of the Lebanese Forces as a Christian mini

May 7th. The massacre was celebrated by Forces leaders as the achievement which created an anxious and frightened Christian milieu, presenting anew the Forces as the defender of the Christian presence, Hizbullah as the source of threat, and the Free Patriotic Movement as trading in Christian security for political power.

Nasruallah’s speech came to blow up the American and Lebanese Forces illusions about what they had accomplished in the preceding period, sending fragments flying left and right. He presented a historical and analytical account filled with facts and information, addressing  Christian thought and feeling, recalling the recent and bygone past, posing questions needing an answer from every responsible and educated citizen. He asked whether the Forces was not the Lebanese Civil War party; if Hizbullah was a source of threat to Christians; if the option of a civil war served Lebanese, and especially, Lebanese Christian interests; did the Forces ever win any war it entered; did Hizbullah ever enter a war it lost; did the Forces enter a war which did not end in the displacement of Christians; has Hizbullah entered a war in an area where Christians were present and allowed their displacement; is the tale told by the Forces about the opportunity to change the power equation realistic; can the Forces bet on how long it can stand in the event of a confrontation with Hizbullah, occur; and whether the Forces’ bet on its allies is well placed.

This seamless and sequential exposition by Al-Sayyed Hassan Nasruallah was filled with facts and arguments. He pointed out the he who wants to weaken the Christians is not the one who has been fighting for an election law that will do them justice; who holds on to the equal division of political power between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and refuses for it to be divided in three (between the major religious sects) and the one who brought their strongest leader to the Presidency. He asserted the he who wants security for Christians is not the one who forms an alliance with Al-Nusra and Daesh, and tells the residents of Achrafiyeh that those are our allies, and endorses their wars in Syria and the outskirts of the Bekaa’, but rather the one  who fought and drove them out and protected the Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims. His seamless and sequential discourse culminated in deterrence in the form of hold down the arm of the one who seeks to blow up the country, and tell him to sit quietly and behave.

Al-Sayyed Hassan Nasruallah passed his third juncture as the protector of civil peace, par  excellence.