Hanin Ghaddar

The Party of God is in a tight spot. Hezbollah’s message of the past 20 years is today losing its appeal. The rhetoric the party employed about the importance of the Resistance and the significance of its arms is being swallowed by the peaceful message of the Arab Spring, which calls for nonviolent protest to topple totalitarian regimes.

For the first time, the Arab people have realized that their main enemy is their own tyrants, not Israel, the long-time enemy of Hezbollah. For the first time, the Party of God and its “divine” victories and “divine” arms are less significant than obtaining freedom and dignity. A new vocabulary for these new-found values is being invented every day on Arab streets.

Instead of trying to learn the new language of the street or at least pretend to support the people’s aspirations, Hezbollah seems to be fighting back, mostly when it comes to the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Lebanese are being forced to follow the party’s lead and support the dictator in Damascus or otherwise stay silent.

As the Arab Spring spreads across the Middle East, with the words “freedom” and “dignity” gaining new meanings among the people, many Lebanese feel they have lost both freedom and dignity in the past few months. But this will have grave repercussions for Hezbollah, because for the first time, the party is on the defensive.
Despite several attacks on peaceful protesters in front of the Syrian Embassy in Beirut by pro-Assad thugs, there are still ongoing attempts to voice support for the Syrian uprising.

A lot of the Lebanese who support the Syrian uprising are not members of the March 14 coalition. They are leftists who are normally avid supporters of the Resistance. They worked hand-in-hand with those who attacked them during the 2006 July War between Hezbollah and Israel. They also joined forces to aid the Palestinian refugees who fled the Nahr al-Bared camp in 2007 during the army’s fight with the pro-Syrian militant group Fatah al-Islam, and they demonstrated together against the Israeli blockade on Gaza. They have come together on many occasions, but apparently for different reasons.

Today most of the leftist, independent and secular activists cannot stomach the rhetoric of Hezbollah and have taken a clear stand against the brutality of the Syrian regime.
Are they now against the Resistance? Certainly not. But they have come to the realization that a resistance movement or party cannot be credible if it supports dictatorships and stands against those demanding freedom, dignity and human rights, especially when they are non-violent.

Hezbollah had been for decades lecturing its supporters about the importance of scarifying one's life for the sake of freedom and dignity. And that’s exactly what the Syrian revolution is about. Its peaceful methods, however, threw Hezbollah and the Syrian regime off guard. Everyone knows there are no armed gangs roaming the streets and assaulting the Syrian security services. The conspiracy theory is not holding water anymore. But the non-violent methods of this new resistance do not translate in Hezbollah’s language.

Hezbollah has always portrayed itself to the Lebanese and the Arabs as a resistance movement that speaks on behalf of the underprivileged. It criticized unjust governments in Israel, the US and many countries in the Arab world. It has preached of liberty and dignity for decades, and in the name of these two, many of us have had to suffer wars, destruction and political unrest. Today, Hezbollah's mask has fallen completely, not only in Lebanon, but in the burgeoning Arab consciousness, where a dictator like Assad has no place.

It is very simple: Any ally of a dictator is an enemy of the Arab street.
It has become clear to many supporters of the Resistance that Hezbollah’s main priority today is its weapons. It is willing to support dictators and criminals as long as its weapons are protected.

This does not mean that Hezbollah has lost its support base completely. Many in Lebanon still buy the party’s line that Assad is the only Arab ally of the Resistance and that the uprising in Syria was started by Western powers. But a big part of the community in the South, mainly leftists and former Communists, have lost faith in the party, and this might lead to new street dynamics within the community.

The real problem is that Hezbollah is not only supporting a tyrant but is also acting like one. It has imposed tight control on people's daily lives in South Lebanon, from alcohol consumption to social and political activism.
A friend of mine from the South told me, "Before 2000, the Israeli army occupied my village. When Hezbollah liberated it, we celebrated and were very thankful. Today, I cannot buy a beer or criticize Assad publically in my village. I do not feel it is liberated. It is still occupied, but now by Iranian arms. Is there a real difference?"

Hezbollah liberated the land but has since been acting as if it owns it. Power and popular support made it forget that the people followed it because it promised them liberty, freedom and dignity. Today, power and control have more value to the Party of God than its loyal base. This will not end well. These supporters, who have been listening to the voice of the Arab street for months now, will find it difficult to tolerate an unsympathetic tyrant in Lebanon.

Hanin Ghaddar is the managing editor of NOW Lebanon