On August 4 of this year, the fourth anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion, we should pause before resuming our critique of Hezbollah’s role in obstructing the investigation into the blast, and we must delay our suspicions that it was Hezbollah who owned the nitrate that destroyed about a quarter of the capital, killed hundreds, and injured thousands.

We were called upon, and we heeded the call, to delay our criticism of Hezbollah’s role as long as the party is engaged in the “primary contradiction” war in South Lebanon. In this scenario, the “secondary contradiction” must wait.

But the “primary contradiction” we were invited to participate in might be what required the import of nitrate to the Beirut port. In this case, those advocating for postponing the discussion of Hezbollah’s role in the state’s collapse in Lebanon should provide an explanation, or perhaps a necessary margin for us who shared the belief that Hezbollah is at the heart of the Lebanese tragedy.

On August 4, this schizophrenia is present. What should we do, comrades? The issue goes beyond passing the anniversary of the massive explosion without reminding ourselves that the Secretary-General of Hezbollah personally, through his speeches, silenced the investigation.

The investigation’s results, if Judge Tarek Bitar had been allowed to complete it, might have affected the mission Hezbollah assigned to itself, which we are currently prohibited from attacking, namely resistance.

We might delay our suspicions of the party’s role in the August 4 Blast, and Syrians might delay discussing its role in fighting alongside the regime, but this would weaken the explanation that the “primary contradiction” takes precedence over any other secondary contradictions. The “secondary contradiction” has been incorporated into the “primary contradiction”. Then assuming that the nitrate was imported for the benefit of the Syrian regime, this means it is for the benefit of the regime that the “primary contradiction” dictates its protection in the context of the conflict with Israel.

We must then find a way out of this theoretical impasse. There is a solution that can help those of us who found ourselves in the heart of this maelstrom. The traditional resistance narrative around the explosion and the war in Syria is more coherent and consistent. The port explosion was a technical error, and the war in Syria is part of a Western conspiracy aimed at toppling a regime that supports resistance movements. Today’s fighting required not pursuing the investigation to its end, and the resistance would not have the capacity to fight if the West, which supports Israel, had succeeded in toppling the regime in Syria.

This mental gymnastics doesn’t provide an alternative to what Hezbollah presented at the moment of the war fronts igniting. But this game is not a debate with Hezbollah; it is with those we found ourselves with in front of the August 4 situation. What do we say after ten months of distancing from our critical position? Can the call to be with him in the south and against him internally represent a way out? The party has always built a bridge between the two missions, being more consistent with itself and braver in presenting this “logical” explanation of its position.

So, a little play on the edges of the August 4 tragedy is okay, especially as we are on the verge of a parallel war of unknown boundaries.

Will the war happen? Where will it take place? How? We are waiting for the planes and missiles to strike somewhere, sometime. We substitute fear with play, confusion, and questioning. There is some comfort in that, filling a long void left by the war, but behind it also stand failure, a collapse, and an explosion.

Where will the war occur? No one knows. Or most likely, we toss the probabilities around. The war will likely happen at night. So, to work then. But an Israeli raid hit the village on the border, where a friend’s house has been empty for more than nine months. It is the house of Wassif Hussein in the town of Houla. Israel deliberately destroyed it without it being a military target.

We can add it to the scene of destruction caused by the port explosion as long as we are playing. Do you remember the narrative that said an Israeli raid was behind the port explosion? Do you remember that Hezbollah denied the narrative?

It is closer to delirium, a symptom of the theoretical impasse we found ourselves in on August 4, 2024.