BEIRUT — Hezbollah's armed insurrection in May, which overran Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, has dealt a further blow to hopes of true state sovereignty in the country, strengthening Hezbollah and weakening the Western-backed government.
It also brought about a new political accord, negotiated in Doha, Qatar, providing for election of a president after a long stalemate, formation of a national unity government, a new election law, and a return to a national dialogue over relations between the state and non-state actors, particularly Hezbollah.
There is much speculation about the reasoning behind the government's decisions in May to dismiss the pro-Hezbollah chief of airport security and investigate Hezbollah's private telecommunications network, which sparked the confrontations. The government had been under long-standing international pressure to honor at least some of its international commitments to contain Hezbollah, and it wrongly calculated that the group would respond in a limited way. Most importantly, the government mistakenly reckoned that Hezbollah would not risk Shiite-Sunni clashes in Beirut.