Hariri, Nasrallah speeches will shape next steps in Lebanon

The final attempt to form a government in Beirut may depend on two speeches that will be made in the next few days on opposite sides of Beirut. On Feb. 14, the primary Sunni leader in Lebanon, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, will give a speech; this will be followed by an address on Feb. 16 by the primary Shiite leader in Lebanon, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

Both speeches will in part be commemoration and memorial. Hariri will be talking on the ninth anniversary of the assassination of his father, the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which occurred on Feb. 14, 2005, in the heart of Beirut. Nasrallah will be talking on the anniversary of the assassination of two key Hezbollah officials: Sheikh Ragheb Harb, who was killed in south Lebanon by the Israeli army on Feb. 16, 1984, and Sayyed Abbas al-Mousawi, Hezbollah’s former secretary-general whom the Israelis assassinated in south Lebanon on the same day in 1992 by an air-to-surface rocket during a commemoration of Harb’s assassination. Also, on Feb. 12, 2008, Hezbollah military official Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated by a car bomb in Damascus.

The two speeches therefore are suffused with blood. Moreover, the two occasions directly concern the speakers, since the two occasions have been the foundations for the men's political presence.

Rafik Hariri’s assassination forced his son Saad into public life and Lebanese politics, after years of working in business outside Lebanon, especially in Saudi Arabia. Mousawi’s assassination made Nasrallah, then 32, the new secretary-general of Hezbollah. He later became an exceptional Hezbollah commander and a symbol of its victories in a series of battles with Israel, from July 1993 until April 1996, passing through the full withdrawal of Israeli occupation from Lebanon on May 24, 2000, and finally with the 33-day Second Lebanon War that started on July 12, 2006.