Lebanon

War with Israel and Overview of National Politics

Israel invaded southern Lebanon in July 2006 and for 34 days carried out air, sea and land assaults before a truce was negotiated. But Hezbollah, by successfully shooting thousands of rockets into Israel while under attack and sounding defiant to the end, won a great deal of credit among Arabs across the region and used its prestige to grab a decisive role in the Lebanese government.

In late 2006, a deadlock developed over the choice of a new president that ground on for well over a year until an outbreak of street fighting in May 2008, in which Hezbollah gunmen routed their opponents across Beirut. A pact was reached that gave the Shiite militia more power, and Lebanon’s Parliament elected Gen. Michel Suleiman as president in May 2008. In a sign of confidence in the government the U.S. began a new wave of aid to the Lebanese military, the first since the 1980s.

In July 2008, as part of a long-awaited exchange with Hezbollah, Israel handed over a Lebanese prisoner who had been held nearly three decades after being convicted in a deadly and notorious attack, along with four other Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 199 combatants and infiltrators from Lebanon. In exchange, Israel brought home the bodies of the two captive soldiers, closing a final chapter of the 2006 war. The fiercest clash since then broke the calm of the southern border in August 2010; the United Nations seemed to support the Israeli narrative of the event, which placed the blame for starting it on Lebanese forces.

The American-backed alliance known as the March 14 coalition retained control of the Lebanese Parliament after a hotly contested legislative election in 2009, which was billed as a showdown between Tehran and Washington for influence in the Middle East. The March 14 coalition is led by the Sunni Muslim Future Movement of Saad Hariri, whose father's assassination in 2005 led to huge protests that forced Syria to withdraw its troops from the country. Mr. Hariri was named Lebanon’s prime minister.

In January 2011, Hezbollah and its allies forced the collapse of the government, deepening a crisis over the United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Eleven of the cabinet’s 30 ministers announced their resignations, a move that dissolved the government. They said they were prompted to act by the cabinet’s refusal to convene an emergency session to oppose the tribunal, which is expected to indict members of Hezbollah.

The country is almost evenly split in its attitudes toward the court. Hezbollah’s supporters believe it is hopelessly compromised, amounting to little more than an American-Israeli tool to bludgeon the movement. Mr. Hariri’s supporters believe the vehemence of Hezbollah’s reaction only underlines their guilt in the assassination.

To form a new government, one that would denounce the tribunal’s indictments and end Lebanon’s cooperation, Hezbollah needed at least 65 of the 128 parliament members. Mr. Hariri, who effectively leads the Sunni Muslim community, insisted he would not join the new government, meaning that a cabinet that is supposed to be built on consensus will lack representation of one of the country’s main communities.

The Obama administration was expected to urge the new government not to work against the tribunal, which Hezbollah contends is being used as an American tool to put pressure on it, along with its allies Iran and Syria. The United States has said the tribunal itself could serve as a way to end a long tradition of assassination serving as just another weapon in crises here.

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