Beirut: In the volatile environment that is Lebanon, each declaration made by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah carries a special weight, often adding to intractable conditions that now pit Shiites and Sunnis against each other throughout the Muslim World. A few days ago, Nasrallah claimed that Saudi Arabia was chiefly responsible for extremist ideologies—takfiris in his terminology—that beset the region, led by Daesh.
“Nowadays, the prime responsibility in the Islamic world for stopping the proliferation of this ideology falls on Saudi Arabia,” Nasrallah pounded in a televised speech, and “it is not enough to create an international coalition and bring the armies of the world to fight Daesh.” Rather, he hammered, “my remarks are addressed to everyone [in Saudi Arabia]: close the schools that are educating the followers of this Daesh ideology and stop labeling people as polytheists for the most trivial reasons.”
No matter how unpalatable, Nasrallah’s perceptions touched a raw nerve in Riyadh, when Prince Mit‘ab Bin Abdullah, the country’s Minister of the National Guard and the ruler’s eldest son, responded. The kingdom was “among the first states that fought terrorism and suffered its attacks,” confirmed Prince Mit‘ab, adding: “I believe that the parties embracing and supporting terrorism have become well-known,” which was a direct reference to Hezbollah.
Irrespective of Hezbollah’s accusations, which most Lebanese concluded were highly questionable on account of imposed conflicts that served Iranian and Syrian interests, the overwhelming majority looked up to the Kingdom as a true supporter. In fact, an estimated 450,000 Lebanese citizens toiled in Saudi Arabia at any given time that, in turn, financially support at least 2 million others at home. Over the years, Riyadh generously backed successive Lebanese governments, best illustrated with its latest grants to the Lebanese Army. No other country disbursed $4 billion in aid to help the army.
Interestingly, while Nasrallah lambasted Riyadh, which answered in kind, most Lebanese, including most Lebanese-Shiites rejected the clash of civilization notion that Hezbollah professed. From Imam Musa Sadr to Sayyed Hani Fahs, from Imam Mohammad Mahdi Shams Al Din to Shaikh Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah, and from Sayyed Ali Al Amin, the former Mufti of South Lebanon and a prominent anti-Hezbollah Shiite cleric who was forcibly removed from his position in May 2008, to Shaikh Subhi Al Tufayli, a former Hezbollah Secretary-General (1989 until 1991) who once backed the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, all rejected the party’s anti-Arab and anti-Sunni positions.
Al Tufayli opposed the party’s deployment in Syria and probably articulated the majority’s position best when he declared: “Hezbollah should not be defending the criminal regime that kills its own people and that has never fired a shot in defense of the Palestinians.” In a February 26, 2013 interview, he added: “those Hezbollah fighters who are killing children and terrorizing people and destroying houses in Syria will go to hell.” Even if these were harsh words, the tone reflected intrinsic tensions that became even more complicated in late 2014, after Hassan Nasrallah opted to launch direct attacks on Saudi Arabia.
