In his speech on Dec. 20, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah mentioned the security incident that occurred in the city of Sidon a few days prior — an important point to note. Regarding this incident, official Lebanese army sources confirmed that on Dec. 14, two suicide bombers, one of whom was a Palestinian national, attacked an army checkpoint at one of Sidon’s entrances, leading to the death of one army officer. As a result, the army conducted a series of raids in the area while the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp held a very tense funeral for the alleged suicide attacker.

In Nasrallah’s characterization of the incident, it is worth noting that he painted it in a much more accurate and sensitive manner. “No one can take the recent attacks against the Lebanese army and its checkpoints lightly. You are well-aware of the charged communal and sectarian climate that exists in the country and the city of Sidon as well as the [partisan and sectarian] affiliation of the young men who died. No one can underestimate the seriousness of what occurred, because ideologically — and everyone knows what I’m talking about — intellectually, morally and spiritually, the facts surrounding the incidents are very serious. This was more serious than the Iranian Embassy bombing or the planting of car bombs in the Bekaa [Valley], Beirut or the southern suburbs. It was even more serious than the launching of rockets against Hermel. This is much more serious. The incident was very alarming, because it could herald a new course [of events].”

Many people failed to pay attention to the revealing nature of these words. How could a single incident carried out by two people be more serious than the twin suicide attack against the Iranian Embassy in Beirut? And why did he say that this “could herald a new course?”

Sources close to Hezbollah revealed to Al-Monitor that the issue is related to Hezbollah’s reading about the true objectives of jihadist factions in relation to Sidon. According to that reading, those who attacked the army checkpoint, those who intentionally wanted the two suicide bombers who targeted the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on Nov. 18 to be a Lebanese citizen of Sidon and a Palestinian refugee living near the city, and those who wagered on the Salafist Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir in Sidon — before he was forcefully defeated by the Lebanese army on June 23 — all belonged to the same faction. Their goal has been to cause internal sectarian strife, made even worse than a possible Sunni-Shiite one, by the addition of a new denominator, namely the Palestinians residing in Lebanon’s refugee camps. More importantly, they have contrived their plans to make it so that the strife erupts in a geographically sensitive and deadly location.