Hezbollah confronts French initiative with Haniyeh missiles and “open fronts”

Neither the United States of America nor Hezbollah want to hand over Lebanon’s strategic files to France. And if Washington has given Paris the opportunity to get some administrative and reform issues in Lebanon, waiting for the concessions it can get from Hezbollah, then the party is not ready to make concessions to France. His battle is not with her but with America, and his calculations are different from the French.

Oxygen to Hezbollah
Hezbollah believes that France’s interests compel it to preserve its relationship with him and with Iran behind him. This gives him a greater opportunity to maneuver, waiting to get to the moment of direct negotiation between the United States and Iran, so that he is a partner in it. Only then does he prefer to negotiate with the Americans, not the French.

But Hezbollah is taking advantage of the French initiative: it is replicating the political structure in Lebanon. The burden of the entire Lebanese collapse falls on both domestic and foreign powers. The whole world is drowning in the tricks of the government, its composition and its coverage, in parallel with the international moral support for it. In all this, he is buying more time and opportunity, looking for oxygen while waiting for the American elections and their results, and the negotiations that follow.

Thus, Hizbullah took the French initiative and gave it, together with the positions of former prime ministers, a positive boost that helped float. So he recovered the initiative with his proposals for the government formation process, kept the third blockage in it, which behaves as untouched, and held a meeting with the prime minister designated for that purpose. Thus, he reassured a government and moved in his battle elsewhere: responding to the neutrality proposals announced by the Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rahi. And the practical response to the dissociation proposal, by meeting with his general secretary Hassan Nasrallah with the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh. Then Haniyeh’s words came from and through Lebanon about the development of Hamas’s precision missiles and their ability to reach Tel Aviv.

Restoration of open fronts
The scenario of political and military integration between Hezbollah and Hamas had new dimensions in the ongoing battle in the region. It is his first political and strategic response to the French initiative, reestablishing the principle of “open fronts” that he raised years ago, when he spoke of linking fronts from Iran to Iraq, Syria, southern Lebanon, as well as Gaza.

In 2017, after the crisis of Saad Hariri’s resignation from Riyadh and his return in conditions of reconsideration of the principle of self-distancing and the proliferation of talks on the statement of Baabda, the leader of the Iraqi League of Just People, Qais Khazali, visited Lebanon, met Nasrallah and toured the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Khazali entered Lebanon through Syria and reached Iraq by land. These are some of Hezbollah’s constant indications of the convergence of fronts and the preservation of the open strategic line between Tehran and Beirut, passing through Baghdad and Damascus.

In response to the French initiative
The same message that Hezbollah wants to be repeated and transmitted in its dealings with Ismail Haniyeh’s visit: it used it in a double response to the neutrality proposal, and to the French initiative, on which the party does not act as if it were a status, especially on the subject of talking about his withdrawal from the external stages, and his commitment to the Lebanese borders and the internal political game. .

“The base that I have established in Lebanon remains the same.” This is what Hizbullah wanted to say in its conduct with Haniyeh’s visit and its words about the missiles. Implicitly or implicitly, he said that he is not willing to commit himself under the French initiative. Especially on strategic issues, its solution must be based on an agreement between the United States and Iran.

This equation, to which Hezbollah adheres, raises the ceiling of the demands of the Lebanese political forces that are receiving the French initiative calling for regime change, development and modification. It is true that Samir Geagea highlighted, in memory of the martyrs of the forces, his adherence to the Taif Agreement and the need to implement it. But he also said that his battle will be for greater decentralization if political forces want to go for a change in the Lebanese system. The word decentralization has its dimensions in the political and social reality and in the state structure of Lebanon. Many in this case will seek to improve their positions and capabilities with regional sponsors, similar to Hezbollah.