Hezbollah’s new political manifesto has taken a long time to materialize. As long ago as October 2002, Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, said the party was working on an update of their original “Open Letter” of February 1985, which documented Hezbollah’s ideology and ambitions.
“Much has happened and much has changed between 1985 and now [2002],” Qassem said. “Our basic principles remain the same because they are at the heart of our movement, but many other positions have changed due to the evolving circumstances around us.”
The update was put on hold for several years, however, before being recently revived. The outcome was the 32-page document that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, unveiled at a press conference in November.
The new political manifesto is the work of an organization that has profoundly altered the manner of its public discourse, even if its core ideological principles remain unchanged. If the tone of the Open Letter echoed the wild-eyed enthusiasm of a teenager, bursting with zeal and passion, and littered with the motifs of revolutionary fervor, the new document has the more measured balance and experience of an adult: confident, discreet and pragmatic. Where the Open Letter was strategic, the new manifesto is clearly tactical and tailored to suit the political environment in which Hezbollah finds itself. For Hezbollah watchers, the most interesting aspect of the document was less what was included and more what was left out. Where are the references to Islam and the wilayet al-faqih (the desire to live under an Islamic state)?
These were all spelled out in the original Open Letter, in which Hezbollah vowed to “abide by the orders” of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the “rightly guided imam” and said governance under Islamic Sharia should be adopted. It even invited Christians to convert to Islam.
The new document makes almost no mention of Islam. As for the preferred system of governance for Lebanon, Hezbollah echoes its February 2006 memorandum of understanding with Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement by calling for a “consensual democracy.”
This does not mean Hezbollah has abandoned the dream of living under Sharia; the ideal of an Islamic state remains one of Hezbollah’s ideological pillars, but the party long ago accepted that it is an unrealistic concept given Lebanon’s multi-confessional pluralistic society. Like the Open Letter, the new manifesto urges the abolition of political sectarianism, (a “consensual democracy” is only a temporary measure pending the eradication of the confessional system).
There is no mention of Iran as an ideological reference for Hezbollah through the wilayet al-faqih, the indissoluble thread that binds the Islamic Republic to Hezbollah. Instead, Iran is lauded as an upholder of Arab and Islamic causes and the spearhead of opposition to the American-Israeli agenda for the Middle East.
The rest of the document is broadly familiar. There is an exposition on Hezbollah’s security strategy in which the Resistance is regarded as an essential component of defense against the possibility of future Israeli aggression. Hezbollah uses the “defense strategy” debate to finesse attempts to dismantle the Islamic Resistance. In the 1990s, the assumption was that Hezbollah would have to disarm once Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory was at an end. What the party intended to do when Israel pulled out of south Lebanon became a standard question for journalists interviewing Hezbollah officials to ask. The equally standard answer was a noncommittal “wait-and-see.”
While the Shebaa Farms anomaly and Israel’s shortsighted refusal to release Lebanese detainees were temporarily sufficient to justify Hezbollah’s armed status after Israel’s troop withdrawal in May 2000, it was evident that the party required a more substantive rationale to deflect domestic and external demands that it disarm. By arguing that its weapons are required “as long as Israeli threats and ambitions to seize our lands and waters continue, in the absence of a capable strong state and the strategic imbalance between the state and the enemy,” Hezbollah is declaring that the fate of the resistance is open-ended and not subject to a quid pro quo settlement with Israel. In other words, it does not matter whether Israel abandons the Shebaa Farms, returns Northern Ghajar, ceases its overflights, hands over any remaining detainees and bodies of resistance fighters or forswears all ambitions to harness Lebanese territory or waters. The Resistance will remain as long as Israel remains a threat, a nebulous condition that presumably would only end with a comprehensive regional peace agreement.
The new manifesto is a carefully phrased blend of strategic intent and ideological ambition, combined with short-term tactical interests. Hezbollah has built an array of delicate cross-confessional alliances in Lebanon and abroad, which it needs to sustain to defend its interests, and which could be upset by an ill-chosen phrase.
Given that the new political manifesto, like the Open Letter, is a product of its time, it is unlikely that this latest disquisition will be the last.
Nicholas Blanford is the Beirut-based correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The Times of London
