Is Hezbollah weakened as Lebanon shifts towards new governance? | Politics News | Al Jazeera

Lebanon has a new president and prime minister – but can they challenge groups like Hezbollah for political and military dominance?
Beirut, Lebanon – A new president. A new prime minister. And the sense that Hezbollah, arguably the most powerful group in the country, has been weakened.
It has been a potentially transformative few weeks in Lebanon, particularly when taken in the context of a political system that often appears frozen.
The developments have been a cause for celebration among many Lebanese, but they also could lead to questions for the entire political class, including Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, a Shia political group and militia, has dominated Lebanon for the better part of the past two decades. But in the past few months, it has suffered numerous setbacks, including the loss of most of its senior members, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah, in its war with Israel and subsequently the fall of its staunch ally, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
“Hezbollah still has legitimacy,” Ziad Majed, a Lebanese political researcher, told Al Jazeera. “It will have to accept to be a strong – and it will be strong – Lebanese party like all the others but without the ownership of the decision of war and peace.”
Hezbollah helped Joseph Aoun get the required number of votes to become president by backing him in the second round of voting on January 9. But the group, which had planned to support incumbent Najib Mikati in the vote for prime minister on January 13, abstained after it became clear Nawaf Salam, the former president of the International Court of Justice, would win.
Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad said the group had extended a hand to the nation by voting for Aoun but Salam’s nomination saw that “hand cut off”.
The Iranian-backed group feels that many of its opponents in government are taking advantage of the losses it suffered in Israel’s war on Lebanon.
In his first speech as prime minister-designate, however, Salam promised to unite the Lebanese people and spoke to issues that impact the Shia community deeply after Israel’s war on the country. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon focused predominantly on areas with high Shia populations, even in areas where many locals said Hezbollah military infrastructure or fighters were not present, including southern Lebanon, much of the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s suburbs widely referred to as Dahiyeh.
Much like Aoun’s speech a few days earlier, Salam said he would work to make sure Israel’s military withdraws “from the last occupied inch of [Lebanese] land” and the areas impacted by Israel’s devastating attacks would be rebuilt.
“Reconstruction is not just a promise but a commitment,” he said.
“He is smart enough to find the appropriate ways to try to be inclusive,” Karim Emile Bitar, an international relations professor at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “I do not think he will try to exclude the Shia constituency from participating in government and state building, but this is a decision the Shia parties have to make.”
Hezbollah is, however, in a precarious position. For years, Hezbollah and its allies were politically and militarily influential enough to block decisions they opposed, such as government formations that didn’t satisfy their needs. In one of the most well-known examples of the group’s power, Hezbollah deployed fighters to the streets of Beirut in May 2008 after the Lebanese government ordered the dismantling of the group’s private telecommunications network, forcing the state authorities to backtrack.
But the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria has made receiving weapons more difficult and removed a key regional ally for the group.
Under the terms of the ceasefire with Israel, Hezbollah is supposed to move north of the Litani River, which runs across southern Lebanon from north of Tyre in the west to just south of Marjayoun in the east, and the Lebanese army is to deploy in southern Lebanon after the Israelis withdraw from the territory.
Hezbollah has said its military infrastructure must only be removed from the south, but Israel has recently attacked targets north of the Litani that it said are associated with Hezbollah. However, some officials in Israel and the United States – and even Lebanon – have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure should be targeted anywhere in Lebanon. This leaves questions over whether all parties have the same understanding of the ceasefire.
Aoun and Salam have both spoken about the state having a monopoly on weapons and deploying to southern Lebanon, a clear message to Hezbollah that its military supremacy may be over.
Whether Hezbollah will accept that is a different matter. On Saturday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem warned that Hezbollah must be included in any incoming government.
“[No one can] exclude us from effective and influential political participation in Lebanon as we are a fundamental component of the country’s makeup and its renaissance,” Qassem said before adding that no force was able to “take domestic advantage of the results of the [Israeli] aggression, for the political path is separate from the situation of the resistance [Hezbollah]”.
Lebanon’s new leaders have promised to ensure Israel withdraws from every centimetre of southern Lebanon and to rebuild its destroyed homes and villages in what analysts believe is an effort at extending a hand to the Shia community.
Hezbollah is under pressure from its constituencies in the south, the Bekaa Valley and Dahiyeh to rebuild their homes and lives. For that, analysts said, Lebanon will need international aid. This could lead Hezbollah to accept the new political direction for Lebanon for the time being.
“Either [Hezbollah] allows the rebuilding to happen in a way that is state-led and has sufficient legitimacy from [Arab] Gulf donors who are willing to put their money in, or it’s not going to happen,” Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, said.
And there are indications that, despite the