Hizbullah Finds Politics 'Spiteful'
Hizbullah may be able to stomach the foreign scorn that goes with mass murder, political assassinations, torture, and war crimes but its leaders are vexed not to have won accolades at home.
Criticism from the March-14 opposition parties focused on Hizbullah's refusal to disarm and disband its terror militias in favor honest politics have caused repeated caustic tirades and a tide of veiled threats from parliamentarians who do the terror faction's bidding.
MP Mohammad Raad, head of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, accused rivals on Monday of what he called a “spiteful opposition” against Prime Minister Najib Mikati's Hizbullah-backed government.
“We have to refer to those who are objecting and working in a project to topple the resistance," Raad said. “They are today outside the government, exercising a spiteful opposition in the face of this government and obstructing what this government can achieve with its slim majority."
Since the government of Saad Hariri was topped by the Hizbullah March-8 Alliance, Hariri's future movement and its March-14 allies have repeatedly accused Hizbullah of using its military might to undercut the sovereignty and will of the Lebanese people - and to control the nations politics through violence.
Hariri's father, Rafiq Hariri, was slain in a political assassination that shocked the international community and resulted in a Hague-backed investigation that has set the death squarely at Hizbullah's feet. The indictment of four Hizbullah terrorists in the assassination is at the heart of the struggle for power in Beirut.
But Raad and his bloc have declined to answer such charges and focused on March-14 opposition to a controversial $1.2 billion electricity plan, still being debated in joint parliamentary committees, in an effort to whip the masses into a frenzy by painting opposition leaders as obstructionists harming the people's well-being.
“They are obstructing the electricity plan, water dams, reconciliation among political parties and are seeking to thwart a legal quorum of the joint committees," Raad told a Hezbollah rally in the southern village of Houmin al-Fawqa.
"These are their democratic practices which are an example of their democracy.”
Hizbullah, backed by regional bully-boys Iran and Syria, has repeatedly rejected local and international calls to disarm, saying its militias and weapons, which outstrip Lebanon's army, are needed to defend from Israeli attack.
But opposition leaders say that without Hizbullah there would be little cause for Israel to attack Lebanon and that the drums of resistance may well be what draws Lebanon into another war.
Hizbullah, much like Hamas, is learning politics is bad for terrorism.