CRITERIOS DE EVALUACION - ESTÁNDARES DE APRENDIZAJE - HERRAMIENTAS

Hezbollah emerged as a military organization in 1982 designed to curtail the Israeli aggressions against both Lebanon and Palestine and in parallel, to create an Islamic state in Lebanon. Therefore, it refused to participate in domestic politics considering the Lebanese government corrupt and despairing of any attempts to reform it (Augustus Norton, 2007, p.38). In the 1990s, along with the rising to power of the more moderate Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, a dispute arose between the hard- and soft- liners within Hezbollah. This disagreement culminated in a divergent point of views towards the participation in the 1992 parliamentary elections as the hard-liners refused to participate in a system they had long rejected. Therefore, a committee of 12 high-ranked figures was selected for a vote. The soft-liners prevailed by 10 to 2 and Hezbollah ran for elections.

According to Richard Augustus Norton (2007), this move was endorsed by Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who was then Hezbollah’s mentor and the first to argue that due to Lebanon’s multisectarian society, creating an Islamic State is unlikely (p.99).

This transition was dubbed “infitah policy” through which Hezbollah opened up, and according to Norton (2007), participated along cross-ideological and cross-sectarian electoral alliances (p.99-100). Hezbollah was able to secure 8 Shi‘a seats (Shoghig Mikaelian and Bassel Salloukh 2016, p.29), and formed a block of 12 members along with its allies. This was Hezbollah’s finest moment. More to the point, 10 years of military struggles culminated in a political victory increasing its clout among the Shi‘a. And in the ensuing decades, pursuing an increasingly assertive policy, Hezbollah continued to rise unabated on the military and political levels. This rise was coupled with further openness and acceptance of the status quo.

Naim Qassem (2005) contended that the organization’s decision to run for elections was blurry, and therefore a choice was taken to establish a twelve-member committee that includes major Hezbollah representatives who will vote on the decision (p.187). Opposing the system, according to Qasem (2005), wouldn’t give Hezbollah any political leverage, but on the contrary, outsiders lack the knowledge, and the organization’s involvement would be a tool for achieving change (p.189). Qassem (2005) referred that 10 out of 12 members voted with the participation in the parliamentary elections, both as a necessity but also because it was in Hezbollah’s best interest (p.194). The electoral platform did not include any religious themes, rather it called for battling economic shortcomings, discrimination, unemployment, and securing the country’s frontlines (Joseph Alagha, 2011, p.64). So its new strategy was mainly focused on the deprivation of poor rural areas, namely the Shi‘a areas such as al-Dahiyah, Beirut’s southern suburb, a predominantly Shi‘a inhabited area, by the government, and on the shortages in social services in these areas (Norton, 2007, p.107). However, after almost

three decades of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Lebanese system and its eagerness for change, it has failed to accomplish any remarkable improvement and Lebanon and the Shi‘a are still running short from economic prosperity.

That said, Hezbollah started establishing a chain of institutions responsible for providing social services in the Shi‘a areas: al-Dahiyah, southern Lebanon and Beqaa. However, prior to its involvement in domestic politics in the 1990s, Hezbollah has been offering health services since 1983 (Judith Palmer Harik, 2005, p.83). In 1988, Harik (2005) argued, two institutions functioning under an Islamic umbrella were launched: al-

Rassoul al-A‘zam Hospital and mosque complex. Another foundation is the Martyrs

Foundation “which pays all of the medical expenses for Hezbollah’s wounded fighters and 70% of the wounded for civilians injured in fighting”. These hospitals, located in the south and the Beqaa Valley, contain professional and well experienced employees. Jihad al-

Bina’, a construction company created by Hezbollah, is responsible for infrastructural

projects, and undertook the “installation of drinking fountains and decent toilets at public schools in the Dahiyah”. Through Jihad al-Bina’, Iran funded an emergency water delivery that has been a permanent problem. Moreover, families of the martyrs have always been taken care of by providing education for their children and distributing books every year with discounted prices (p.83-86).

In fact, Lebanon is a failed state that was not only wrecked by the 15 years’ civil war, but also by a clientelestic system that presses the population to ask for basic services or jobs from politicians who have access to state institutions. This system had long existed, and many casual observers and even researchers blame Hezbollah for state failure. However, this is not only a void argument, but false and falsifying either on

purpose or by lack of knowledge. The point to make here is that this clientelistic system and state failure pre-dated the civil war and Hezbollah, but the latter adapted to this status quo and became one among many actors who exploited it rather than seeking a total change. Salloukh and Mikaelian (2013) stressed that Hezbollah created a network of institutions ranging “from the reconstruction of houses destroyed by Israel, the provision of financial support and social services to the families of the injured and martyred Hezbollah fighters, and the provision of health services to the public, to the production of nonmaterial symbolic capital targeted at the party’s constituency” (p.523). These institutions were supported by Tehran hoping to help Hezbollah embed itself within the Shi‘a community. Aurelie Daher (2019) disagreed on this matter saying that “contrary to the widely held theory, the Hezbollah social apparatus lay claim to having constructed a clientilized community network around the party that could guarantee continuity of its mobilization” (p.121). Indeed, this is paramount for Hezbollah and without these institutions and the support it offers to the Shi‘a community, its popularity would be at risk. Nevertheless, this network, which was launched in parallel to the military confrontations against Israel, represents one layer of a multilayered mobilization, at its core lay the sectarian mobilization policy which Hezbollah had, and will always adopt.

By establishing these institutions, Hezbollah filled the gaps where the Lebanese government was absent. To compensate Hezbollah for the services it had been offering, voters pledged their votes to the candidates on its electoral lists. It was at that moment, that Hezbollah marked its first transition from a rejectionist Islamist military group to a more lenient Islamist party participating in the Lebanese confessional system. Adham Saloui (2019) argued that Hezbollah changed from “a narrow, revolutionary, ideological,

violent and Islamist movement in the 1980s to become a moderate and pragmatic political actor in the 1990s” (p.4). It was important to mention this stage in Hezbollah’s history so that one can understand the first step that it took towards opening-up to other Lebanese and to the world. When this transition happened in the post-civil war Lebanon, Syria had already gained the upper-hand in Lebanon. As explained in chapter 3, the Iran-Syria agreement had provided Hezbollah with more room to maneuver and allowed it to keep its arsenal and operate outside the control of the state, despite that all other armed groups gave up on their weapons. For more than a decade, Hezbollah’s political engagement was confined to the parliament but this situation has changed in the post-Syria withdrawal in 2005.