As calls in the US, Israel and within Lebanese society mount for Hezbollah to disarm, the reactions of Lebanese Shiites tell a story of both fear and possibly fear-mongering. Many Lebanese Shiites worry that if Hezbollah disarms, they would not only lose their accumulated power and status, but they could be forcibly expelled to Iraq or—even worse—massacred.
And Hezbollah spokespeople are quick to fear-monger. They point to the massacres of Alawites along the Syrian coast at the hands of Syria's new government forces and the threats facing the Druze community in Sweida, and claim that Lebanese Shiites could face a similar fate should they lay down their arms.
Despite a string of setbacks that Hezbollah suffered during Israel's latest war on the group, it had the added effect of rallying Lebanese Shiites behind the Hezbollah flag. As such, weapons have now taken on an aura of sacredness in the face of "a US-Israeli-Arab conspiracy to erase Shiites from Lebanon's map", according to the narrative Hezbollah is pushing.
These fears—whether grounded in reality or pieced together from fragments of statements and positions—have been deliberately amplified to exploit fear for political purposes. This explains the emotional and frenzied reaction of many Shiites when the subject of disarmament is brought up.
Naive insistence
At the same time, those who insist on exerting maximum pressure on the group to surrender their weapons appear to be naive about the complex dynamics of Lebanese society.
