In 1983, a satirical play by Ziad Rahbani called Shi Fashel (A Total Failure) follows a director and actors who want to perform a play about Lebanon called ‘Mountains of Glory,’ set in the imagined calm of a harmonious Lebanese village. Written and performed in the middle of the Lebanese civil war, the calm is shattered when a “stranger” steals the village’s jar, one that symbolically holds its secrets.
The theft elicits a collective anxiety, as villagers take a defiant stand. Yet the actors are so enraged by the actions of this mysterious ‘other’ (in Lebanon, the ‘other’ is anyone outside the narrow sectarian fold) that they demand new costumes befitting the gravity of the theft. This costs a small fortune. The producer cannot understand why it is necessary. After all, he has no idea what was inside that jar to justify such costly indignation. In the end, the play is a failure because the actors in the play (who are supposed to be from the harmonious village) dislike each other so much.
The stranger
The American author Mark Twain once said: “Humour is the good-natured side of a truth.” Indeed, the reason so much comedy is funny is because it contains a grain of truth. In traditional Lebanese politics, the identity of the ‘stranger’ is ever shifting. It has, at various times, been Muslims, Palestinians, Syrians, Christians, right-wingers, and Western allies, and anyone else deviating from a nationalist-Baathist-Islamist-leftist narrative—a legacy steeped in antagonism towards Lebanese sovereignty, independence, and statehood.
Perhaps Hezbollah and its supporters failed to notice that by inciting their followers to obstruct UNIFIL patrols in southern Lebanon, they were re-enacting the villagers’ performance in Rahbani’s play, only at a far steeper cost than new theatrical costumes. These confrontations with UNIFIL escalated after the July 2006 war, when the UN Security Council expanded the force’s mandate and bolstered its presence, charging it with preventing Hezbollah’s military resurgence south of the Litani River.
Among Hezbollah loyalists, “villagers’ rage” became a near-weekly ritual, blocking international patrols whenever they approached villages without prior coordination with the Lebanese army (which would then notify Hezbollah). Some incidents turned violent. An Irish UNIFIL soldier was killed by a Hezbollah supporter.
The locals
Following the latest war at the end of last year, “locals” began obstructing UNIFIL patrols once again, engaging in confrontations—thus far without deadly outcomes. Yet in the absence of any intervention from the Lebanese state, the situation could easily spiral, especially given Hezbollah’s refusal to acknowledge the extent of its defeat.
