Analysis: As war rages, some in Lebanon see opportunity in a weakened Hezbollah
As Israel continues to bomb Beirut and proceeds with a ground incursion in Lebanon, politicians are already starting to imagine a future with without Hezbollah.
BEIRUT — The dust is still settling after Israel’s recent assassinations of senior Hezbollah officials in Lebanon, including its powerful secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah a week ago.
But as Israel continues to bomb central Beirut and proceeds with a ground incursion in southern Lebanon, politicians are already starting to imagine a new kind of country rising from the ashes — a nation with effective institutions, a single, powerful army and a dynamic democracy unfettered by sectarianism.
“This is a failed state. The state has been hijacked, hijacked for quite some time by Hezbollah. And behind it Iran,” Fouad Siniora, who was Lebanon’s prime minister during the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, told NBC News in a phone interview this week. “We have to get back to having a functioning government.”
Lebanese and American politicians are already making moves: Earlier this week a diverse group of Lebanese factions announced their intention to elect a “consensus president who will reassure everyone and dispel their concerns” and Axios reported Friday that the Biden administration hopes to use Hezbollah’s weakness to “push for an election of a new Lebanese president in the coming days.”
For the past two years, Nasrallah and Hezbollah have also blocked the election of a president who wasn’t allied with the group. So Lebanon has gone without one — a leadership vacuum that has hamstrung the passage of new legislation and much-needed economic reforms.
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