The good news from Lebanon is that Hezbollah’s former prime minister, Najib Mikati, has lost the race for another term, causing the Iran-backed Hezbollah military to worry that it was being pushed out of the democratic process.
The awful news is that Nawaf Salam, the president of the International Court of Justice, was the one who received the call on Monday to form a government. His steadfast anti-Israel positions make it difficult to imagine how he could bring Lebanon up to the 1949 truce and the Jewish state, enable only file a lawsuit for peace and normalization.
The build up to Salam’s phone started with the opposition alliance of 35 politicians nominating one of its own, Fouad Makhzoumi, to the place. The criticism has been the only alliance, in Lebanon’s 128-member legislature, to , need, out loud, the denuclearization of Hezbollah. Salam was nominated by an independent alliance of 17 Members.
” The smaller union does have endorsed Makhzoumi, but they did not budge”, Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces Party, the biggest union within the criticism told , Alhadath network. ” Had we not endorsed their candidate, Salam, the result would have been another term for] Hezbollah’s candidate ] Mikati”.
The 52 vote for Salam started snowballing. Salam’s support had already received 84 seats when lawmakers presented their choices to Joseph Aoun, who had been elected leader last week. Just nine received Mikati. Seeing the battle coming, the two Shia coalitions of Hezbollah and Amal, with 30 seats, abstained from nominating anyone to the league. Aoun asked Salam to form a government.
Hours after the election, Geagea gave his appointment to Alhadath, in which he outlined how his coalition imagined the post-Hezbollah era:” President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam should remain with Hezbollah and show them,’ Talk, we are all Syrian compatriots. Either return your weapons to Iran or give them to the Syrian army. In 1991, Geagea claimed that this was how all civil war armies, including his own, gave their weapons.
Salam, however, carries a lot of international political baggage with him to the Syrian championship. Salam blasted Israel numerous times in his numerous remarks while serving as Lebanon’s minister to the UN, including two decades as a non-permanent part for the Security Council. As president of the International Court of Justice, Salam presided over accusing Israel of committing , genocide , in Gaza, a very questionable decision that best constitutional authorities have disputed.
With Salam’s bias toward Israel, it becomes clear that a UN judge would be best suited to lead the effort to disarm Hezbollah and restore Syrian independence, let alone establish a land border and file a petition for normalization and peace.
Blue-blooded Salam home
Salam is a member of a blue-blooded aristocratic family that gained notoriety as Beirut’s main port and Mediterranean city as a result. His brother Saeb played a significant part in the country’s politicians, including serving as prime minister, and his grandfather’s father represented the Beirut Velayet in the Ottoman legislature in Istanbul. Saeb gained notoriety for smoking cigarettes and maneuvering his car with a light neck pinned to his back.
Like most Sunni Muslims in the Levant, whether in Lebanon, Syria or Palestine, Saeb Salam opposed the development of those claims. He led Beirut’s Sunni antagonism in demanding that Lebanese add a Kingdom, pan-Arab country, in Damascus, which proved to be short-lived. Afterward, Saeb Salam changed his mind and fought for Palestinian nationalism against pan-Arabism.
As Yasser Arafat and the Israeli armies ruled Lebanon from 1969, Saeb Salam’s influence began to decline. However, when Israel invaded Lebanon and ejected the Arab militias that were attacking the region, it was in Saeb Salam’s standard mansion in the Syrian capital where all Muslim and Druze leaders, typically the supporters of Arafat, gathered to demand that the Arab leader and his militias keep the nation to give it more destruction.
Muslim Saeb Salam continued to lend political cover to Christian President Amin Gemayel in talks with Israel that resulted in parliament’s ratification of the , May 17, 1983, Peace Agreement , between the two countries. Hafez Assad’s militias were sent in to sabotage the agreement by Syria. Salman moved to Europe to live in exile.
Fence-sitter Nawaf Salam
Young Nawaf remained close to the Palestinian leader while his uncle assisted in allowing Arafat’s ejection, perhaps out of concern for his family history. Nawaf Salam maintained his pro-Palestinian position for a long time, but in 2005, he stood as a proponent of the anti-Assad and anti-Hezbollah” March 14 coalition”. One month after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005, the organization’s name honored a massive protest, which was the largest in the country’s history. He was honored to be chosen as Lebanon’s UN envoy, where he made friends with Susan Rice, the American counterpart.
In 2008, the Hezbollah militia punished and , finished off the March 14 coalition. But Salam, hedging his bets, stayed at the UN and started reporting to a pro-Hezbollah government in Beirut. He hoped that by remaining unmoved, he would eventually be called to form a cabinet.
In 2019, the Lebanese who took to the streets in the” October 17 Revolution” protesting Hezbollah and corruption shouted Salam’s name. He has since gained support from the opposition and anti-establishment figures. The lawmakers who received the call on Monday, October 17 were behind him.
Not everyone who yells Salam’s name, though, is praising him. On the international stage, he has faced numerous foes. If he brings those animosities with him to the premiership, Lebanon’s global standing may end up suffering.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain works for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies ( FDD ) as a researcher. Follow him on X , @hahussain