In light of the widespread devastation inflicted on southern Lebanon, Shiite voices are rising publicly criticizing Hezbollah, not only based on ideological and political debates, but also from daily and direct questions about the war and its cost: Who made the decision? Who will return the residents to their villages? Who will bear the rebuilding of the homes?
According to an article by the researcher in Lebanon and Hezbollah affairs, Dr. Noa Rivin, in the newspaper “Israel Hayom”, what is appearing today through Israeli social media and media may suggest that a broad transformation is taking place within the Shiite community, with residents from the south angry at the extent of the destruction, activists demanding that the state bear responsibility for their security, and clerics objecting to subordination to Iran.
But Raven considers that these sounds are not new. The Shiite community was never a single bloc, and since the early 1990s, clerics, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, traditional families, and tribal figures have emerged who opposed Hezbollah for various reasons, including religious and political subordination to Iran, weapons outside the framework of the state, and the struggle over representation of the sect and centers of influence within it.
She points out that Hezbollah’s first Secretary-General, Subhi al-Tufaili, later became one of its most prominent critics, while Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din proposed a vision that focuses on the Lebanese state and the integration of Shiites into it, in contrast to the concept of guardianship of the jurist. Figures such as Hani Fahs, Ali Al-Amin, and Luqman Slim also pushed towards the discourse of citizenship and shared life, and criticized the party’s political and social hegemony from within the Shiite environment.
The author believes that the October 2019 protests did not create this objection, but they made it more visible, after slogans were raised for the first time against Hezbollah and the Amal Movement in Shiite areas, and criticism came from narrow intellectual and political circles.
However, what is new, according to Raven, is the movement of criticism from the ideological level to the personal and living level. Instead of focusing solely on Lebanon’s relationship with Iran or the legality of weapons, questions now revolve around the party’s responsibility for the war decision, the fate of the destroyed villages, and its right to make decisions in the name of the entire sect.
But on the other hand, it warns of an “optical illusion,” as Israel has long viewed the Shiites in Lebanon through the lens of Hezbollah alone, while today it is actively searching for its opponents. Social networks also provided quick access to recordings and publications by Shiite families and activists that had not previously reached the Israeli public.
Therefore, the multiplicity of critical voices does not constitute sufficient evidence in itself of the expansion of the opposition, as what may have increased is the ability to see it. The question remains, according to the author, whether the cost of the war paid by the Shiite environment is capable of transforming scattered criticism that has existed for decades into an actual social and political force that competes with Hezbollah’s influence.
