How October 7 changed Lebanon and Hezbollah’s political reality

Analysts say Hezbollah’s decision on October 8 to join a ‘support war’ for Gaza changed Lebanon’s political reality. Save Share Beirut, Lebanon –A day after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Hezbollah made the decision to join the war, in what it said was support of the Palestinian people. It is a decision that analysts say has forever shaped Lebanese politics. Experts said the group had underestimated the depth of Israel’s intelligence penetration in the run-up to the war, which later manifested in thebloody September 2024 pager attackand the assassination of much ofHezbollah’s leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. “Hezbollah got sucked into a vortex which culminated in the decapitation of their leadership and the invasion of south Lebanon,” Nicholas Blanford, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a book about Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “That dealt Hezbollah a major blow to their popular standing and galvanised the election of Joseph Aoun as president and the formation of a new government that took a much stronger line against [the group].” Hezbollah’s decisions have left the group politically weakened. And while analysts say the group has not been defeated, despite claims to the contrary from some critics, it is no longer the political or military hegemon in Lebanon it once was. Before October 7, Hezbollah – a group representing Lebanon’s large Shia community – was the strongest political and military actor inside the country. The Iranian-backed group’s influence stretched across the region. Hezbollah was a key ally of the al-Assad regime in Syria and helped it retake territory from anti-Assad opposition groups. It also had connections with allies in places such as Iraq and Yemen. Hezbollah had key electoral influence in Lebanon, where it often wielded its power to elect or collapse governments. It was also not against deploying its supporters against movements opposed to it, as in 2019 when they took to the streets of Beirut to beat back protesters calling for political reform of the country’s sectarian system, in which Hezbollah has become a key player in the years since the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990. In the months leading up to October 2023, Hezbollah’s confidence was on clear display....