https://arab.news/murpw
Raising the Arab appetite for greater political and economic support for Lebanon is no easy task. Indeed, their list of disappointments is long: Lebanon’s chronically tenuous assertion of its sovereignty, the clientelist politics of many Lebanese elites, and its history of exploiting Arab aid to score domestic points…
None of that negates this essential fact: If the Arab states do not raise the level of their engagement with Lebanon now, as a new political equation takes shape, the ensuing vacuum would inevitably be filled by Iran, Israel or chaos itself.
We should be in agreement that there is nothing on the Lebanese scene to suggest that tomorrow, with a single decisive blow, Hezbollah’s arms and its waning influence could be wiped out, as happened to the Assad regime in Syria.
The road ahead is far more winding. Hezbollah is slowly withering away. It is not the only one on a slow trajectory of decline; the other transnational projects in the Levant are also dying slowly. The age of its absolute hegemony has certainly ended, though, and after having once seemed untouchable, the foundations of Hezbollah’s grip over Lebanon have shattered following the military defeats that the party and its backers have suffered.
