Bessma Momani is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo.
After more than two years without a president, Lebanon’s parliament is finally expected to elect a new person to the role on Jan. 9. Due to political deadlock, Lebanon has had no president since the end of Michel Aoun’s tenure in October, 2022. It is a position that is the technical head of state, and must be a Maronite Christian by convention, but holds mostly symbolic power compared to the prime minister.
Hezbollah, the Shia militia group which is also a political party in Lebanon, has been a key player in the political stalemate, contributing to 12 failed attempts to get the majority required to select a president. However there are signs that Hezbollah, weakened after the devastating attacks from Israel, may be more open now to electing a president. If this happens, it will be a small sign of progress for Lebanon, which has faced political paralysis as multiple crises have unfolded in recent years.
Created as a response to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah was the main non-state armed actor that, for almost 20 years, countered Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon, waging a guerrilla war to liberate Lebanese territory. Hezbollah was designated a terrorist entity by Canada and other Western allies after its 1983 attacks on American and French troops deployed as part of a multinational force, its hijacking of commercial planes in the 1980s, and its targeting of Israeli interests across the world.
At the end of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990), Hezbollah entered the 1992 elections as a political party and was the only group permitted to hold on to its arms. Using its vast social-services network, mainly in poorer Shiite Muslim communities often neglected by the state, it built its support base. Hezbollah also built alliances with other political parties to assert its power and influence while militarily fighting Israel until the latter withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah’s well-armed militia force, supported and funded by Iran, has also taken advantage of Lebanon’s feudal sectarian system and weak central governance to create what is sometimes referred to as “a state within a non-state.” Meanwhile, Hezbollah officials have enriched themselves by building global money laundering networks, taking advantage of criminal rings that have further empowered the group at the expense of the Lebanese state.
Closely allied with Iran, a Shiite-majority state, Hezbollah proudly proclaims to be part of Iran’s wider “axis of resistance” to both Israel and the United States. After the Oct. 7 terror attack waged by Hamas, Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel, “in solidarity of the Palestinians of Gaza.” Many in Lebanon did not support this because they feared being entangled in another devastating war.
While its core support likely stands at only a third of the Lebanese population, Hezbollah exerts its influence in state institutions to play a powerful spoiler role in Lebanese politics. To choose a new president, for example, parliament requires the support of two-thirds of parliamentarians on the first round of elections. After the last president finished his term in 2022, Hezbollah blocked subsequent efforts to form a quorum in parliament to elect a president because its preferred candidate did not get support from others.
Israel’s brazen killing of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in September, and targeting of Hezbollah infrastructure, has significantly weakened the organization’s military capabilities and political influence. The decapitation of Hezbollah leadership by Israel has also brought significant destruction to south Lebanon, the Bekaa region, and to its capital city, Beirut, displacing more than 1.5 million people, killing thousands, and further hurting the already embattled economy. Negotiated by the Americans and the French in late November, the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah has now provided a possible opening to resolve the parliamentary impasse over choosing a new president. This is a silver lining, but may be a tenuous one.
Today, Lebanon has the rare opportunity to strengthen its national institutions, primarily by boosting the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), one of the few reputable institutions in the country. The LAF reflects Lebanon’s unique and diverse population and it enjoys broad support among Lebanese of different political groups. With 10,000 troops deployed to southern Lebanon as a condition of the ceasefire agreement, the LAF have the arduous if not impossible task of ensuring Hezbollah’s weapons-production facilities are dismantled, and unauthorized weapons are confiscated.
The West, including Canada, has actively invested in supporting and helping the LAF, but fatigue in bailing out Lebanon from its economic turmoil and internal corruption has set in. Abandoning support of the LAF would be a mistake. Investing in the LAF is crucial, not just for Lebanon’s political future but also for thwarting unwelcome Iranian influence in Arab countries. For the LAF to effectively play the role of an army serving Lebanon’s national defence, it must be given the tools to achieve its mandate, rather than allow Hezbollah to use the LAF’s weakness to perpetuate its mantra of resistance against Israeli occupation. And the signs on the horizon suggest this will prove to be a challenge.
Indeed, the ceasefire agreement includes the conditions that, within two months of its signing, Israel must stop its attacks on Lebanon and withdraw its forces back behind the border. However, more than halfway through the two-month deadline, Israel continues to push deeper into Lebanese territory. The 10,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in the border region has also expressed alarm at continued Israeli destruction of “residential areas, agricultural lands, and road networks.” Hezbollah and its supporters, albeit embattled, are now growing increasingly louder as they warn their fellow Lebanese that without its “resistance forces,” Israel is setting its sights on expanding into and re-occupying southern Lebanon.
The problem is that in Israel, there are indeed growing calls among far-right nationalists, who form the support base of key ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, to both re-occupy Gaza and southern Lebanon. These voices may be a minority of Israelis, but they are loud, growing their political influence through controversial judicial reforms, and openly calling for the establishment of a “Greater Israel” that extends into occupying other Middle East countries.
The recent fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria has also motivated these same Israeli extremists to call for expanding Israel’s presence into Syrian territory beyond the already occupied Golan Heights and into a once demilitarized buffer zone. The Israeli air force has also bombed weapons depots in the heart of Syria, including Damascus, to disarm the new Syrian government as a so-called “proactive” measure. But to Hezbollah supporters, and to many Syrian nationalists, these Israeli moves, in combination with occupying new strategic territory in the Golan Heights, are indicative of Israel’s far-right ambitions of territorial expansion. Israel’s land grab also feeds Hezbollah’s narrative of the need for forces in the region to thwart Israeli expansionism.
Lebanon’s respected army chief Joseph Aoun, unrelated to the previous president, is being touted as an ideal consensus candidate and could get Hezbollah’s support, but the potential impact on the LAF’s image of neutrality in Lebanese sectarian politics is ironically working against his candidacy.
If a president is selected, it will be a bright spot for Lebanon. But with the incoming Trump government in the U.S. expected to indulge right-wing Israeli dreams of territorial expansion, and some Hezbollah supporters urging a return to combat, the clouds of political opportunism in the region are now darker than ever.