BEIRUT — Hezbol­lah secretary-general Has­san Nas­ral­lah has announced that Fri­day at 3 p.m. (con­ve­niently after Fri­day prayers) would be the “zero hour” that his sup­port­ers and polit­i­cal allies would take to the streets to force the res­ig­na­tion of the cur­rent Lebanese gov­ern­ment.
The so-called March 8 move­ment, which takes its name from the mas­sive March 8, 2005 demon­stra­tion that was to “thank” Syria for its 29-year occu­pa­tion of Lebanon, is dom­i­nated by Hezbol­lah, the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group that fought Israel to a stand­still the sum­mer. Because of its “divine vic­tory,” as Hezbol­lah called it, and what Nas­ral­lah says was insuf­fi­cient fealty to the group’s war on the part of Fuad Sin­iora and the Lebanese gov­ern­ment, Hezbol­lah, Amal and the largely Chris­t­ian Free Patri­otic Move­ment were demand­ing veto power in the cab­i­net. (It’s widely assumed that the March 8 move­ment, which is sup­port­ive of Syria, is try­ing to derail the U.N. tri­bunal set up to try sus­pects in the case of the mur­der of ex-premier Rafik Hariri, in which Syria is sus­pected. Veto power in the cab­i­net would grant them this power.)
They didn’t get the expanded num­ber of seats in the cab­i­net, as there’s already been an elec­tion and there won’t be another one for par­lia­ment until 2009, so now they’re tak­ing to the streets to top­ple the gov­ern­ment, which they say is exer­cis­ing their “demo­c­ra­tic rights.“
It seems March 8 has a funny idea of democracy.

In most par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies, if the gov­ern­ment doesn’t sur­vive a vote of no-confidence _in parliament_, it has to resign. Siniora’s gov­ern­ment is backed by the March 14 move­ment, named for an equally mas­sive protest on that date in 2005 that was in response to the March 8 protest. (Con­fused yet?)
Siniora’s gov­ern­ment would hand­ily sur­vive a no-confidence vote because March 14 won the elec­tions that year. The March 8 group is in the minor­ity and calls itself the oppo­si­tion.
Hezbol­lah & Co. are, instead, tak­ing to the streets, warn­ing gov­ern­ment work­ers not to go to work and gen­er­ally threat­en­ing to bring Lebanon’s gov­ern­ment and econ­omy to a crash­ing halt if they don’t get their way.
That’s not democ­racy. Most peo­ple would call that a _coup d’état_.
At the heart of the dis­pute are arcane pro­vi­sions in the Lebanese con­sti­tu­tion that call for rep­re­sen­ta­tion from all the 14 offi­cial sects in the coun­try to be rep­re­sented in par­lia­ment and in the cab­i­net. But Hezbol­lah _et al._ walked out! They weren’t excluded, which seems to be what the clauses in the char­ter are aimed at pre­vent­ing. What I find dif­fi­cult to swal­low is that March 8 is demand­ing an expan­sion of their rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cab­i­net to 1/3^rd plus one — which would give them the veto — even though they’ve already walked out and declared the cab­i­net out of quo­rum, and thus ille­git­i­mate. Doesn’t that mean they already _had_ the veto power, albeit one they could only exer­cise with their feet?
When I asked Hos­sein Naboulsi, for­mer Hezbol­lah spokesman but still loyal party mem­ber, about this, he said that they merely wanted the rep­re­sen­ta­tion that their num­bers war­ranted. This is a very dan­ger­ous atti­tude in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s gov­ern­ment is com­pli­cated and frag­ile, as you would expect in a coun­try where no one group is the major­ity. (Depend­ing on which study you refer to, Shi’a and Chris­tians make up about 1/3^rd each, while Sun­nis make up about 30 per­cent. Druze and other minori­ties, includ­ing a few thou­sand Kurds, make up the rest. No cen­sus has been taken since 1932, how­ever, so no one really knows.) Since 1990, when the Taef Accords ended the 15-year civil war, the polit­i­cal bal­ance of power was arti­fi­cially set at an even num­ber of Chris­tians and Mus­lims in par­lia­ment. (Before Taef, it was six Chris­tians to five Mus­lims, reflect­ing the 1932 cen­sus.) It also rein­forced the “National Pact,” which has never been set in stone, but which oblig­ates the Chris­tians to rec­og­nize Lebanon’s Arab nature and not seek pro­tec­tion from the French any­more, and the Mus­lims were to rec­og­nize Lebanon’s 1920 bor­ders and cease attempts to unite with Syria. Both sides are openly break­ing break­ing their side of the deal, with France mak­ing up the bulk of UNIFIL II and Hezbol­lah going steady with Syria.
Every­one knows the seats in par­lia­ment aren’t allo­cated on who has the biggest group, but that’s actu­ally the point: Lebanon’s sys­tem, while imper­fect, allows for the voices of all groups to be heard, not just that of the largest and loud­est — which today would pre­sum­ably be that of the Shi’a. It pre­vents the tyranny of the major­ity. For most Lebanese, this is a bless­ing because the largest polit­i­cal party (Hezbol­lah) in the largest sect (the Shi’a) is com­mit­ted to form­ing an Islamic Repub­lic in Lebanon mod­eled on Iran’s.
Now, Hezbol­lah long ago for­mally renounced forc­ing an Islamic Repub­lic on Lebanon, say­ing instead that it would let the peo­ple decide. But Hezbol­lah is now say­ing they deserve more power not because they won it in elec­tions — which would be fine — but because they just “won” a war and, well, since Shi’a make up the biggest group (they say), hand over those reins of power, boys.
When I was down in Ait al-Chaab, on the Israel bor­der shortly after the war, I met a Hezbol­lah party mem­ber who declined to give his name, but he said, “Those who can defend Lebanon deserve to rule it.” It was chill­ing the way he said it.
So like I said, this is not democ­racy; this is a coup. No elec­tions, no debate on whether the Taef sys­tem should be scrapped, just “give us more seats or the down­town gets it.” The idea of con­sen­sual decision-making has been scrapped and the idea, which I saw in Iraq, that the biggest group calls the shots has taken hold. So much for minor­ity rights.
Who’s the blame? Now, this is already a long-winded post, but there’s a lot to say on this mat­ter. And a lot of blame to go around, too. But one party stands out as supremely stu­pid, and it’s the usual one: the United States. Siniora’s gov­ern­ment is backed by Amer­ica and France against Hezbol­lah and its Syr­ian and Iran­ian patrons. But by tak­ing such a hard-line against the mil­i­tant group, which Wash­ing­ton has labeled as ter­ror­ist, they have effec­tively pre­vented Sin­iora from reach­ing any kind of com­pro­mise, a sit­u­a­tion that now endan­gers the entire Lebanese expe­ri­ence — and the country’s posi­tion in the West­ern sphere of influ­ence. (Nas­ral­lah often refers to Siniora’s gov­ern­ment as the “Felt­man gov­ern­ment,” refer­ring to the U.S. ambas­sador here.)
Make no mis­take, Hezbol­lah will prob­a­bly suc­ceed in bring­ing down Sinora’s gov­ern­ment. There’s only so much pres­sure Lebanon can bear and most politi­cians here would accede to Hezbol­lah — and Syria’s — demands rather than risk another round of civil war. Should Sinora’s gov­ern­ment fall, there will be a care­taker gov­ern­ment and then a new round of elec­tions, in which Hezbol­lah and its pro-Syrian allies will prob­a­bly win a major­ity. This means the United States will be faced not with a gov­ern­ment that merely includes Hezbol­lah, but is run by it. Hezbol­lah will have gained much more than veto power; it will have gained con­trol. Syria will have a free hand in Lebanon, and Lebanon will come out the loser. (Say good­bye to most West­ern invest­ment and Saudi money, which Lebanon des­per­ately needs; hello, Lebanon Account­abil­ity Act.)
Also, Israel will have an even more hos­tile neigh­bor on its north­ern flank. If fight­ing breaks out again between Hezbol­lah and Israel, and the Shi’ite group has a par­lia­men­tary major­ity, does any­one really think Israel will hold back? This last summer’s war, while bru­tal, could have been much worse if Israel had more aggres­sively tar­geted gov­ern­ment and state insti­tu­tions.
So that’s where we stand and what the stakes are. This is a defin­ing moment in the Mid­dle East. The out­come of this show­down will help deter­mine the strength of Amer­i­can influ­ence and could fun­da­men­tally change the strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions of the Jew­ish state. Lebanon, cur­rently a Western-friendly nation, could be wrenched back into the Iranian-Syrian sphere of influ­ence with a pos­si­ble sea-change in its cul­ture in a few years to one more friendly to Islamic gov­er­nance.
No won­der the ten­sion in the air here is as tight as a garrote.