Hezbollah succeeded in asserting its dominance by projecting images of its leaders onto the rocky façade of Raouche even after Prime Minister Nawaf Salam issued a decision banning the use of public spaces for partisan purposes.
It wasn’t just an image; it was a booby-trapped message about who owns public space and who sets the rules for civic and political presence in Lebanon.
The scenes accompanying the commemoration of the first anniversary of the Israeli war and the assassination of the party’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, at times looked like a display of political thuggery. Senior Hezbollah figures used crude language. This was epitomized by the showy presence of Wafiq Safa, head of the Liaison and Coordination Unit, who made the media rounds with a grin, repeating a phrase his supporters amplified—“al-seeki laḥ laḥ”—a coarse boast referring to Hezbollah’s weaponry. There was also a light projection of Nasrallah’s raised finger, the same gesture with which he once threatened domestic rivals, among other motifs. Notably, Safa publicly thanked the security services for their “facilitation” of the event. The spectacle forces us to confront a crisis of enforcement more than a symbolic dispute: does a “deep state” that Hezbollah controls still exist?
The nadir of tastelessness was the party’s attempt to give the event a national veneer by projecting the image of Rafik Hariri, even though official bodies have accused Hezbollah members of his assassination. The Raouche tableau was not an isolated incident; it was a symbolic translation of a wider struggle: Who owns the right to appear in public? Who holds representational legitimacy? And who has the final say over arms in a country where state authority has eroded?
The prime minister’s order prohibiting partisan uses of public spaces collided with an on-the-ground operation that looked like an internal show of force—a display the party sought to recast as a statement of domestic resolve. Instead of becoming an occasion to affirm state authority, the spectacle made something else plain: the party, having accepted the ceasefire agreement with all that it entails, is now mobilizing its media and political machinery to cast Prime Minister Nawaf Salam as an existential foe—simply because he stands for the principle that arms must be monopolized by legitimate state institutions.
Yes, there is American and international pressure, but that does not negate the fact that the demand to place weapons exclusively under state control enjoys broad popular support. And so a basic requirement of any state—monopolizing the decision over war and peace—is turned into an accusation. Nawaf Salam is presented as an enemy of the Shiite community, instead of seizing this as a chance to re-stitch the relationship between the state and society.
A year ago, Hezbollah engaged in a confrontation that left destruction and human and strategic losses: painful strikes hit leadership and command centers, and intelligence breaches exposed fragility in capabilities. Israel responded with an all-out war that killed civilians, destroyed villages, and set Lebanon’s clock back decades. Yet to this day those losses have not been followed by an open, candid internal review. Instead of extracting political and military lessons from a harsh year, we witnessed a turn toward policies that evade accountability by diverting attention to supposed internal enemies.
The Raouche spectacle was preceded by a media campaign from pro-resistance figures that intensified calls to cling to arms. One commentator went so far as to say: “This weapon is not for the party. It belongs to the people of the land, and the party returned it to them. Does the state have the capacity to go to houses and take weapons from them? Even Hezbollah children have learned to assemble and disassemble Kalashnikovs. They are martyrs-in-waiting.”
This rhetoric, which justifies the retention of weapons by tying them to the land or by portraying popular recruitment as preparation for heroic martyrdom, signals the transformation of arms into an internal political instrument that entrenches one group’s influence at the expense of the state and its institutions. Most dangerously, it turns everyone in the South into a potential target and erases their agency to refuse being dragged into another slaughter.
The real questions today concern security, reconstruction, and the future. There is no doubt Hezbollah benefits from a diminishing credibility of the U.S. “patron,” as reflected in remarks by Washington envoys such as Tom Barrack, Morgan Ortagus, and others. When the sense spreads that an external patron is losing its standing or becoming an adversary, institutional vacuums widen and local forces like Hezbollah gain additional pretexts to justify their positions. This external–internal mix makes reestablishing state authority both more urgent and more difficult.
On the discussion table now are practical, existential questions: How will residents of border villages return? How do we rebuild the South? How do we secure protection against the risk of possible Israeli escalation? Persisting with a discourse that blames the interior instead of confronting the real consequences of the war obstructs any meaningful, practical response to living and security crises.
What we need now is not another rhetorical display but a clear institutional plan to reconnect the state with its citizens, and courageous positions from all parties to hold past military choices to account and to reabsorb weapons into legitimate state mechanisms. Restoring the role of the state is no longer a secondary political option; it is existential for Lebanon’s survival.
The scene in Raouche was more a warning than a show—a warning that continued institutional vacuum will translate into symbolic and field conflicts that will further accelerate the country’s deterioration. What is required today is political courage no less than the courage to reassess: balancing the protection of citizens with dismantling the logic of arms as a tool of governance within society. Otherwise, we will be condemned to decide our future by images projected onto our rocks rather than by decisions made in the halls of legitimate institutions.
