The secretary general of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, succeeded in winning a round in what he called a “public opinion battle,” which he said was a major objective of the news conference he held on Monday. It remains for him to win the “judicial,” “legal” and “penal” battle in the pre-emptive campaign being waged by Hezbollah, with the likelihood of an indictment in the Hariri assassination case. There is news that members of Hezbollah will be charged in this crime. This is the challenge for the party, as it is for the international public prosecutor, magistrate Daniel Bellemare, with regard to his awaited indictment. In this “public opinion battle”, Nasrallah began by citing an achievement by the resistance in the 1990s, namely its interception of Israeli aerial reconnaissance transmissions from spy aircraft that have always hovered in the skies of Lebanon. Nasralalh used this amazing achievement by the party in its confrontation with Israel to offer a methodical presentation of likely aerial surveillance operations of roads used by the late prime minister, and the possibility that Israeli agents who have been arrested or fled took part in the planning, preparation, or implementation of the crime, as one hypothesis. The methodology of Nasrallah's presentation earned admiration, even if it did not win acceptance for the opinion and hypothesis he put forward, since it was carried out skillfully by the party's cadres. This was despite the statements by Lebanese politicians who said it brought nothing new, and had no evidence proving the hypothesis, which Nasrallah wanted to prompt the investigating committee into examining. Although Nasrallah acknowledged that he was not putting forward evidence, but rather arguments and data, and asked the government to study the information, the assigning of priority to the hypothesis of accusing Israel generated a number of results. For one thing, it did away with the ideas being floated by the party's allies, who see the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as politicized. At times, they would talk about the likely role of a fundamentalist group, known as Group of 13; some of the members of this group were said to have provided information about the role of fundamentalists in the crime, or the likely role of another Islamic group, those who flew to Australia and were suspected by the judiciary as soon as the crime took place. These suspicions were then doused, but have returned in recent years. Nasrallah also ignored the issue of tampering with the crime scene, which supporters of the STL consider a chief reason for the formation of the international investigating committee, prior to the STL. Nasrallah did away with the hypothesis that Hariri was killed because he was accused of being behind United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, with other politicians, who were met with threats and assassination attempts. However, the success that Nasrallah achieved in his arguments and presentation has empowered the party and its allies to accuse their allies, if they do not accept his hypothesis, that they are “with Israel” or are “deeming Israel innocent.” The accusation might even grow, as part of the party's “public opinion battle,” which is likely to lead to a coming political battle over a stance vis-à-vis the STL, if it does not indict the same party that Nasrallah favors. In fact, the Israeli accusations that Hezbollah was involved in the crime make it easier for the party to accuse the STL of being “an Israeli project,” and accuse his rivals who defend the tribunal of, thus, being in harmony with this project. Hezbollah earlier used this accusation when there was a dispute between the 14 March and 8 March camps, when the government requested the formation of the STL from the Security Council, on the pretext that the party had reservations about its by-laws, and no one has been supplied with these reservations as of yet. Hezbollah pulled out of the government in 2006 and the dispute grew, along with the accusations, until there was the famous sit-in in downtown Beirut, which ended with the 7 May 2008 events. The complications that surround the Lebanese situation, regionally and internationally, allow the two to be merged and permit the waging of battles with slogans that are distant from the essence of the actual matter at hand. In its essence, in the legal sense of the word, Nasrallah presented a reading of the climate surrounding the crime, one that differs from the reading of the international investigation of the climate surrounding the crime, as it appeared in the 2005 investigator's report. That document cited the sharp political differences between the late prime minister and Syria and his local rivals, which were led by Hezbollah. This reading was based on the facts and information from political leaders. The international investigation must prove this reading with evidence about the crime, since the climate surrounding the crime is one thing, while the crime itself is something else. The same challenge is facing Nasrallah's reading of the political climate surrounding the assassination, as he presented it. Logic would say that the crime had a single surrounding environment, and not many. As for the political essence, Bellemare's quick response to what Nasrallah put forward is evidence that he is comfortable with the facts he has, and that he had earlier checked into accusing Israel and obtained some results on this score. Thus, he has done everything he should to benefit from all hypotheses, before announcing his indictment. The international investigator's response might be a way out, to delay the indictment, so that Bellemare can take his time “checking” Nasrallah's data. It has been rumored that the Saudi-Syrian summit in Beirut sought such a delay, so that the repercussions of the indictment can be treated in the meantime.
