Building Hezbollah’s safety net

“I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not [terrorist] by laying down arms and not threatening peace,” was a comment President Bush of the U.S. Made on the wake of the visit of Cardinal Sfeir to Washington. Sfeir is seen as a moderate and a unifying figure among the Lebanese Christians, and he's widely expected to defend Hezbollah at the whitehouse.

Bahia Hariri expressed a similar largesse: “We here also represent [..] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and all the patriot strugglers. They are here with us because they lie in our hearts and love and added brilliant white pages to our history”. Bahia Hariri, MP and the sister of the Slain Ex-PM Rafik Hariri, embraced Hezbollah in front of one million Lebanese who otherwise look at Hezbollah with suspicion

Walid Jumblat, another opposition leader, asks Hezbollah again and again to join the opposition and lay their arms,

Other opposition Mps (who are regularly villified in Hezbollah's rallies) said that they have defended Hezbollah in front of influential Europeans. Ahmad Fatfat, an opposition figure, even added that only the opposition now has the moral authority to do so abroad…

All that said, will Hezbollah make use of the safety net carefully being woven around it by all its opponents?

We can only wait and see whether realism or idealistic rethoric will prevail, but I trust Hassan Nassrallah is a wise man, not another Said Sahhaf (the old Iraqi information minister who is the perfect embodiment of the ostrich strategy)

(For more about the external factors that might influence Mr Nasrallah’s decision, read Raja’s big-picture analysis on The Lebanese bloggers..)