A Lebanese vanguard for the Islamic revolution: Hezbollah's combined strategy of resistance and accommodation
The aim of the thesis is to study how Hezbollah has accommodated a system that it initially rejects but endorses for strategic purposes. It is suggested that Hizbullah's strategic undertaking involves a certain tension between making compromises and concessions while also sticking to its radical pledge to Khomeinism and the Islamic revolution. Did accommodation imply that Hezbollah abstained from these radical impulses while submitting to the social and political Lebanese fabric of pluralism? The contention of this thesis is that Hezbollah has operated in a way that combines its revolutionary pledge to the Islamic revolution with its accommodating strategies to the Lebanese state. That is, the national path chosen by Hezbollah should not be seen as the movement's surrendering of an Islamist objective to the constraints of the nationstate, or the confessional system, inherently despised by the Hezbollah. Instead, Hezbollah's Islamist project should be understood as a strategy of resistance which is situated on various levels, and it is argued that the movement has successfully combined this project of resistance with a strategy of accommodation to the Lebanese state. A crucial question to be answered is, resistance against what? The thesis suggests that Hezbollah's struggle against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon should not only be understood as an effort to liberate the land but also to promote a broader awakening of defiance that was part of the Ayatollah Khomeini's vision of the Islamic revolution. The thesis combines a theoretical framework of Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci to understand how Hezbollah tries reproduce its pledge to this revolution with an accommodation to the Lebanese state.
