The response of the Lebanese Government to the outbreak of war 157

The Siniora-led government’s reaction to the outbreak of the war reflected divisions between the US allied 14 March alliance and the Iranian-Syrian allied March 8 alliance. Members of the March 14 alliance criticised Hizballah, and March 8 forces, many of whom were members of Hizballah. The government was torn between the majority in the government who, in common with the US-led alliance, wanted to disable Hizballah, and the need to protest against an external military attack on its country’s sovereignty. These divisions prevented the emergence of a single, coherent and pro-active foreign policy.

Hizballah’s kidnapping left the Lebanese government with two choices. It could join Hizballah and fight with it against Israel, or it could argue that it had nothing to do with the kidnapping and oppose Hizballah’s position. If it had chosen the first option it would have given Israel the freedom to attack the whole Lebanese state, rather than limit its strikes to mainly Hizballah areas. It was also unlikely that this would happen because the predominantly March 14 government did not support Hizballah’s position at the start of the war. The government chose the second option, but in either case, the actions of a sub-state group, supported by external actors, affected the foreign policy choices of the government.

Salem also argues that Israel interpreted the fact the government denounced the kidnapping and blamed Hizballah for the assault at the start of the war as support for them to continue their attacks (Salem, 2008a: 15). However, Traboulsi explains that, although the government ‘gave some legal caution to Hizballah, [… they] did not condemn Hizballah’, even though their earlier statements rejected any responsibility for the kidnapping (Traboulsi, 2009: 2). The failure to condemn Hizballah illustrates the weakness of the Lebanese government and its inability to criticise a sub-state group that had acted independently from the majority within the Lebanese government.

The official statement released by the Lebanese government at the start of the war had to tread a fine line by not deepening Lebanon’s internal identity divisions and not

158 provoking a more intensive Israeli attack. March 14 members of the government did not want to support Hizballah because, in this case, Israel would have been able to justify launching a full-scale attack against the Lebanese state. This would also have humiliated them by showing how little control they held over the government, despite being the majority. Supporting Hizballah would have meant supporting the position of a sub-state group that was pursuing a different agenda to that of the March 14 dominated government. In addition, some March 14 members privately hoped Israel would destroy Hizballah. On the other hand, they did not want the government to find itself in a position of direct conflict with the resistance and exacerbate internal divisions within Lebanon. Furthermore, some members of the government either supported or were members of Hizballah. It is also likely that the government did not want to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the Lebanese people if it was seen to be supporting Israel’s position as it bombed Lebanon.

The government was clearly divided over whether or not to support Hizballah, which weakened its ability to make decisions and underlined the regional alliances of each coalition. These divisions were visible on 12 July when the government prepared its official response to the outbreak of the war. Siniora proposed a statement that said ‘the government was not informed of the operation and does not approve of it’. However, this was opposed by Fneish who argued that saying the government did not approve of the operation was a political position that placed it in direct conflict with the Resistance. After further discussion, a weaker statement was issued which said, ‘The government is not responsible for what is happening and what has happened’ (Pakradouni: 412). Divisions were also seen later on in the same meeting when Fneish asked Siniora for clarification that if things deteriorated he would not ‘put all the blame on us when it is Israel alone that is responsible for what is happening, because it has refused to solve the problem of detainees through the UN or other mediators’ (Pakradouni: 414). Marwan Hamade, MP and a member of the March 14 coalition, also attacked President Lahoud saying ‘look at what your friends have done’, to which Lahoud replied that the Resistance would win the war30 (Pakradouni: 412).

159 Members of March 14 blamed Hizballah for the conflict and for giving Israel an excuse to launch another war on Lebanon. They were angry that the whole country had to pay for a decision Hizballah had taken by itself, which clearly challenged the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. On 12 July, at the Council of Ministers meeting, Jumblatt argued that Hizballah should not be able to make unilateral decisions about whether or not Lebanon goes to war. He was supported by other members of March 14 who argued that Israel would win the war and accused Hizballah of following and executing a Syrio-Iranian agenda (Pakradouni: 420). On 14 July, Amine Gemayel argued that, although Hizballah had carried out the attacks on its own, all the Lebanese people would have to pay for their actions (Al Jazeera, 2006).

Divisions were seen in the government in the following days when, for example, the foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, told Al-Hayat newspaper on 16 July, ‘by its daring, humanitarian and selfless public service, the resistance had saved the Arabs from their current state of affairs, liberated Lebanon and restored Arab pride and the spirit of Arabism’ (quoted in Ahmad, 2008: 243). President Lahoud also led a media campaign during the war promoting the idea that Israel would not be able to beat Hizballah and that Israel had been preparing to launch an operation against Hizballah before 12 July 2006 (Pakradouni: 415).

It has been argued that March 14 members of the government supported Israel’s military campaign and failed to call for a ceasefire at the start of the war because they wanted Hizballah to be destroyed or disarmed (Harel and Issacharoff, 2008: 76). They hoped that destroying Hizballah would alter the balance of power between different groups in Lebanon in their favour (Interview I, 2009). This was revealed by Elias Murr who, according to cables released by Wikileaks on 2 December 2010, told US Embassy Officials in Lebanon on 11 March 2010 that, ‘The Christians were supporting Israel in 2006 until they started bombing their bridges’ (Al-Akhbar, 2010). Khalidi argues that certain sectors in the Sunni community and the far right Christian community and Jumblatt, all members of the March 14 alliance at the time, were hoping, ‘not perhaps for a full Israeli victory […] but for a very hard slap on the

160 wrists of Hizballah’ (Khalidi, 2009: 4). The Israeli media reported that members of the Lebanese government had contacted Israeli officials to ask them to carry on the military campaign against Hizballah (Leenders, 2006: 44-45). However, as Traboulsi emphasises, although many in the ruling circles of March 14 and in the moderate Arab states were backing a ‘sweeping Israeli victory’ they were more interested in weakening the opposition party [Hizballah] than in supporting Israel (Traboulsi, 2009: 2). The fact that some members of the government would have supported a military strike by an external state against Lebanon to achieve their domestic agenda clearly illustrates the divisions and weaknesses of the Lebanese state.