There is something in Nabih Berri’s conduct that suggests he is genuinely concerned for the people of southern Lebanon, a charitable assumption on our part. But that assumption is quickly overshadowed by a less generous one. It is as though Berri refuses to see Hezbollah as anything other than a party of fighters. In his view, Hezbollah is a movement that deliberately abstains from pursuing power, and that very abstinence only reinforces the Speaker of Parliament’s and the Amal Movement leader’s own appetite for political authority.
The prospect of Hezbollah shedding its wartime identity and fully embracing politics has long been a source of anxiety for the political pillar of the Amal-Hezbollah alliance. That anxiety is as old as the alliance itself. In Lebanon’s sectarian system, where political gains are distributed along confessional lines, Berri understands that a politically engaged Hezbollah would inevitably lay claim to positions of power that he has effectively overseen for more than three decades. It is equally plausible that Berri, who has remained the one constant in Lebanon’s ruling establishment throughout those years, finds it difficult to imagine himself stripped of much of that authority.
Berri has often been portrayed-particularly by his opponents-as the exceptional figure tasked with “Lebanizing” Hezbollah. Yet he is also the one who repeatedly undermines that very mission, seemingly driven by an enduring fear of its consequences.
For the past two decades, Hezbollah, the fighting force, has been one of Lebanon’s defining political anxieties. Over those same two decades, Berri has assumed what could be described as a thankless role. Whenever Hezbollah beats the drums of war, or enters one, Berri has stood as one of its earliest and most steadfast political cheerleaders, and today, perhaps its only one.
Every war Hezbollah wages grants Berri two political advantages. First, the party’s wars deepen its disengagement from politics. Second, they hand Berri a political mandate, one bestowed by Hezbollah itself. In that sense, the more Hezbollah goes to war, the more indispensable Berri becomes to politics. Together, the party and its wars reinforce his political centrality.
Yes, if the goal is to restore the state and its sovereignty, do not place your hopes in Nabih Berri, who has become captive to innuendo. A man who delights in the most elegant turns of phrase often seems equally fond of the most deceptive ones. We are, then, confronted with a political heavyweight who habitually cloaks politics in poetic language, and at times in aphorisms. Yet in Berri’s hands, both rhetorical devices ultimately invite ambiguity and multiple interpretations.
Now, in the wake of the framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel, Berri has found an opportunity in the controversy surrounding the deal to invoke a saying attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib. True to his habit of speaking in innuendo, he left it to the Lebanese public to interpret the metaphor as they pleased before later hinting at whom he meant by those “stirring sedition.”
Many, most likely, particularly Hezbollah’s opponents, fell into the trap of that carefully chosen quote as it emerged from Berri’s seat of power in Ain al-Tineh. Once again, they projected their own hopes onto the Speaker, interpreting his warning about “sedition” as a rebuke of the Hezbollah supporters who took to Beirut’s streets after the agreement, riding motorcycles along Airport Road and gathering outside the Grand Serail. These demonstrations quickly became defined by a familiar image: convoys of motorcyclists sweeping through the capital, leaving little doubt about their political affiliation. What ambiguity could remain when the chant “Shia, Shia, Shia” had become their unmistakable slogan?
It did not take long, however, for Berri to disappoint his opponents yet again. When he spoke of those “creating sedition,” he was not referring to Hezbollah’s supporters at all, but to the authorities who signed the agreement, the state leadership headed by Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam.
It is true that, in condemning what he described as the authorities’ role in provoking discord, Berri appeared to be urging his own constituency to avoid being drawn into it. But he also knows he is addressing a community already deeply resentful of that authority. Whatever reluctance he may express toward sectarian strife is easily overshadowed by a far more incendiary discourse, one promoted daily by an ally who never stops stoking the flames.
The Lebanon-Israel framework agreement is deeply flawed, marked by imbalance, dysfunction, and, perhaps, humiliation. But Berri knows better than anyone that an agreement of this kind reflects the realities of war: victory and defeat. That remains true even if Hezbollah disavows the latter three times over before the rooster crows, or if Berri himself succumbs to the illusion of victory.
Berri condemned Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam as instigators of sedition, delivering what sounded like a final verdict against them. Yet no sooner does he assume the role of judge than he sheds it for that of an ascetic warning against the dangers of discord. In both roles, however, he seeks the authority to condemn without accepting responsibility for the consequences of his own words.
Having laid the groundwork for the maritime border negotiations, and having presided, alongside his ally, over the disasters that have befallen Lebanon, Berri would have done better to remain silent. At the same time, others attempt to stem a cycle of death whose trajectory he knows all too well. However limited their ability may be, Aoun and Salam are at least trying to contain it through an agreement whose defects are evident to all of us, defects born not by diplomacy, but by war and those who called for it.
Berri may also wish to note that the maritime border agreement, despite all its shortcomings, remained intact throughout the last two wars. The area it governed was left untouched by the fighting, a reflection of how deeply both Berri and Hezbollah ultimately respected an agreement many viewed as a concession. Yet they have withheld that same restraint from another agreement they consider unfavorable, simply because it was crafted by the Lebanese authorities rather than by themselves or by Iran.
Berri remained largely silent during the war, and about the war, a silence often interpreted, rather unconvincingly, as a sign of disapproval. But when he does speak, he speaks as though he can guarantee the conduct of an ally whose actions repeatedly render those guarantees meaningless. He claims authority over matters beyond his control. Most recently, he offered the sweeping assurance that Hezbollah’s weapons would be removed from south of the Litani River in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. In all likelihood, however, Berri cannot even guarantee that he is consulted on the speeches of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General or its senior officials, speeches that routinely undermine assurances which both he and the party know are decided elsewhere.
How many times must one be expected to place faith in Berri’s “wisdom,” when what so often passes for wisdom is little more than a reflection of the illusions projected onto him by his admirers?
Nabih Berri’s enduring pursuit has always been power. The people of southern Lebanon, meanwhile, are searching for something far more basic: security.
Berri’s rhetoric reinforces the logic of war; most people in southern Lebanon are trying to avoid it. He did not see the joy on the faces of those returning to their villages, patching up their homes however they could simply to make them livable again. Berri sees, but what he sees are the faces that fill his palace: ambassadors, ministers, MPs seeking to consolidate their power, and wealthy patrons in pursuit of influence. Had he looked instead at the faces of southern Lebanese as they navigated their latest ordeal, and recognized that they were victims of a war imposed on them against their will, he might not have greeted them first with the silence of a graveyard before speaking of “sedition.” Whenever the prospect of sparing the South another war begins to emerge, Berri reaches for yet another misplaced maxim, revealing a concern for Hezbollah that far outweighs any concern he shows for the people of the South.
When Joseph Aoun was elected president, Berri declared that he had “won the lottery.” For the following year and a half, Aoun’s handling of the Hezbollah file and its weapons, together with his approach to the power-sharing arrangements that Berri had long treated as political capital, seemed to validate Berri’s lottery metaphor.
Today, however, Aoun has become, in Berri’s words, an instigator of sedition. The accusation suggests that the winning lottery ticket did not deliver what Berri had hoped. It also reflects the mindset of a man who appears to believe that both Lebanon and politics can be managed like a game of chance.
Is Lebanon a lottery ticket? Perhaps, at least in the eyes of someone who sees the country as a political prize to which only he is entitled, and whose claim to that prize is strongest when Lebanon is reduced to a battlefield drained by Hezbollah and Iran. That person is Nabih Berri.
