Protection, Projection, and Paralysis: Mapping Two Decades of Hizballah’s Parliamentary Practice

Abstract

Hizballah’s relationship to the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies has been marked by three distinct orientations since the party’s inception, each showing a significant tactical realignment and entailing a new set of relationships with rival parties and parliamentary blocs. This paper traces these shifts, arguing that these realignments have principally been responsive attempts to maintain the autonomy of its militia, the Islamic Resistance. During the first phase, Hizballah MPs used parliament as a reasonably straightforward platform for publicizing the successes and protecting the status of the Resistance. In the second phase, the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 required a recalibration of party practice, as the party positioned itself as the champion of the Palestinian cause in Lebanon and regionally. Without Syria to help defend this controversial practice, the third phase has increasingly entailed the use of parliament as an instrument of negation, as Hizballah MPs have focused less on affirmative policymaking and more on preventing their rivals from achieving gains, particularly related to the autonomy of the Resistance and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, convened to investigate the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Based on fieldwork conducted in Lebanon between 2004 and 2008, this paper weaves together interviews, media analysis, and archival records from Lebanon’s Chamber of Deputies to map the consistency of strategy and variation in tactics across Hizballah’s first two decades.