Every time there are some people who think that Hezbollah might have become ready to renounce the sin, nay the crime, of participating in the war in Syria alongside the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, which yesterday alone killed more than a thousand civilians, most of them children, with chemical weapons, Hezbollah surprises them with verbal and military escalation that asserts that it is moving forward with its involvement there and not turning back, like a gambler sinking deeper into his losses every day in hopes that the miraculous day will come when he makes up all that he has lost. But Hezbollah is gambling here with what it does not own: its own country and its own sect. Thus, instead of taking heed of the repeated calls directed at it, before the Ruweis bombing as well as after it, to get out of Syria and let its people make their own choices, its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is asserting his willingness to go fight there in person, and threatening to double the number of his men engaged in killing Syrians. And instead of Hezbollah realizing that the policy of security perimeters had proven a failure because such perimeters are not impervious to breaches, and listening to the advice of politicians who had called on it to restore the standing of state services and institutions, because a state that would embrace all Lebanese would represent the best protection against being targeted, the party is turning Beirut's Southern Suburb (Dahieh) and some areas in the South and in the Beqaa Valley into military fortresses with security checkpoints deployed at their "borders", in the most extreme demonstration of the kind of autonomous and sectarian security it has applied itself to establishing since it was founded, repeating experiences that had failed throughout the Civil War. Hezbollah did not stop there, but in fact tried to blind its public to the truth by attempting to portray the whole issue as a security problem, purposely ignoring the fact that it is essentially a political one, and that the solution to it resides in announcing the withdrawal of its fighters from Syria. Hezbollah in fact purposely reversed the roles being played by spreading panic on the basis that the Syrian opposition is threatening it, when it was in reality the party that went to meet it on its own soil, in clear incitement of its own "nurturing environment", as if making it and making the rest of the Lebanese choose to either accept its unjustified war and stifling security measures, or face additional bombings. No one ever thought they would hear Nasrallah declare Israel innocent of the Dahieh attacks, even if he accused the bombers of serving its interests, while everyone knows that Israel stands alongside him in defending the Assad regime, in the interest of its own security of course. It would have been more appropriate for him to maintain suspicions on Israel, so as not to contradict himself, having insisted on such suspicions when it came to denying accusations of his party and the Syrian regime backing it being responsible for the assassination of Rafic Hariri. All of this was not enough for Hezbollah, as it blew its trumpets in a campaign that did not spare anyone, neither on the domestic scene nor across the border, implicitly aimed at shedding doubt on Lebanon's Arab identity and that of its people, and at doing away with those who are truly concerned for the country's security and stability. Faced with such behavior, many in Lebanon wonder how far Hezbollah will go in its gamble. How can it bear the weight of the atrocities committed by the Assad regime and justify them to its own public? And how can the harm caused by its weapons and its policies to both Syrians and Lebanese, including the Shiites themselves, be stopped? The only answer is that while waiting for the Syrian people to achieve their victory and begin holding to account all those who took part in slaughtering them, the Lebanese have no choice but to continue to have the boldness to speak against Hezbollah's weapons and to cling to their state in the face of extraordinary force.
