Lebanon: As Syrians rejoiced over the fall of some of its top ministers, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned what he termed a targeted killing: “We are going to miss them and we offer our condolences to the Syrian leadership and the Syrian army.”
Nasrallah admitted how crucial the alliance with Damascus is in a speech on Wednesday night.
Nasrallah called the Syrian regime a “bridge” and a “critical support” for Hezbollah’s “resistance” against Israel. “The most important weapons with which we fought Israel in the July war came from Syria,” he said, in reference to Hezbollah’s month-long 2006 war with Israel.
In the face of the Syria crisis, Hezbollah is treading carefully to retain the power it has built up over the past 30 years in Lebanon, a deeply divided country where its strength is resented by Sunnis and some in the Christian community.
The group’s main strategy for doing so appears to be to lay low and avoid aggravating the volatile fault line between the Sunni and Shiite communities, which each make up about a third of Lebanon’s population of 4 million.
However, some Lebaense are capitalizing on Hezbollah’s weakness. Few in Lebanon have dared take on the Shiite militant group in such a public way, but Shaikh Ahmad Assir, a hardline Sunni cleric, senses weakness. He sees a chance to push back against Hezbollah’s domination of the country’s politics.
The growing popularity among some Sunnis of the previously little known local cleric is a sign of how vulnerable Hezbollah has become as it faces the possibility of the downfall of its crucial ally, President Bashar Assad in Syria.
Its reputation as a popular resistance movement has already taken a severe beating for siding with Syria against the anti-Assad uprising even after it supported Arab revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain.
“By God, Nasrallah, I will not let you sleep at night,” Shaikh Ahmad said in a recent speech. “This is the start of what will become Lebanon’s Tahrir Square,” Assir, wearing a long robe and white skullcap, told The Associated Press at his protest site, where some 150 Sunni conservative supporters have been camped out for some three weeks. “They have humiliated us for long enough. It’s about our dignity now. I can’t live like this, it’s enough.”
