Lebanon’s Fragile Political Balance Endangered by Parliamentary Election Results

Losses by Hezbollah’s allies could potentially shift control in the Lebanese parliament toward a Saudi-backed party with leadership allegedly close to Israel, an incomplete tally of votes in the Sunday elections suggests.

Sunday’s election was the first since the mass demonstrations of 2019 against corruption and economic stagnation fractured the government, leading Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign.

With few vote tallies complete, the Lebanese Forces (LF), a far-right Christian party descended from the fascist Kataeb that’s backed by the Saudis, seems poised to expand its control over the Christian seats in the Lebanese Parliament.

According to the Associated Press, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), another Christian party led by President Michel Aoun that’s allied with the Shiite parties Hezbollah and Amal in the March 8 Alliance bloc, is likely to lose seats to LF. As a result, LF leader Samir Geagea is already declaring victory, saying it will form a new government without Hezbollah, Amal or the FPM.

Mohammad Raad, who leads the “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc,” Hezbollah’s political wing in parliament, warned LF against taking actions that could incite “a new civil war” like the one that raged from 1975 to 1990 and killed more than 120,000 people.

“If you don’t want to collaborate with us in parliament, then you want to be isolated again. And you want to lead Lebanon into dangerous times, that is what the Israelis and the Americans want,” Raad said to Geagea, according to The Cradle.

“Beware not to be the fuel that might ignite to a civil war. To our opponents that declared that they won without evidence I say, we welcome you as opponents in the parliament but we will not accept you as a shield for the Israelis,” he added.

Raad’s comment is no mere rhetoric, either: Israel’s Channel 12 published an op-ed earlier this year calling for intervention in the Lebanese elections against Hezbollah, arguing that “if [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah feels danger, it is his duty to look for ways to delay the election,” including using violence. “It will not add sympathy to him, but let's push him into that corner.”

The Taif Agreement that ended the civil war established a confessional system where the seats in parliament and the central offices of the state are designated for specific religious communities: Christian, Sunni and Shia. The prime minister must always be a Sunni Muslim, the president a Christian, and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim.

Thus, even if LF does secure a coalition majority, the speaker will have to be a Shiite, and all the Shiite seats are believed to be taken by Hezbollah and Amal. That makes Geagea’s plans to oust Amal leader Nabih Berri as speaker - a position he’s held since 1992 - unlikely to create anything but animosity.