Alagha 471was asserting that accepting the deployment—which had been a repeated
Israeli demand—and agreeing to the terms of UNSC Resolution 1701
would serve the national interest.
ollowing a UN-brokered cease fire in mid August 2006 and the F
ending of Israel’s blockade of Lebanese ports in September, Hizbullah
celebrated the end of the war with a “divine victory” parade on 22
September.^44 Nasrallah gave a speech attended by Lebanese MPs, cabi-
net members, politicians, and clergy, as well as many Arab dignitaries.
An audience variously reported at around 800,000 guaranteed a per-
fect human shield that barred Israel from executing its threat of killing
Nasrallah as soon as the opportunity presented itself.^45 On a conciliatory
note of sorts, Nasrallah stressed that Hizbullah would surrender its arms
when Israel relinquished the Sheb‘a farms, released the Lebanese prisoners
of war, and turned its landmine maps over to the UN. However, Nasrallah
also affirmed that Hizbullah’s rockets had increased, from 20,000 before
the war to 33,000.^46 While the parade and speech illustrated Hizbullah’s
continued—or renewed—power at both the national and the street level,
many 14 March cadres criticized Nasrallah, and in a pun on his name,
which means “Victory of God,” stated that there is nothing in the military
dictionary called a “divine victory.”^47
n important outcome of Hizbullah’s growing dominance at the A
national level and the various strategic alliances that it was building (pri-
marily with the FPM) was the emergence of the party as the leader of the
Lebanese opposition. Al-Intiqad had a face-lift in order to accommodate
this new image. Starting with issue 1192, the left banner of the paper read:
“Lebanon 1: The Popular Movement for National Unity.” Al-Nour began
to label itself as “the voice of national unity” and would open its broad-
casts with the national anthem, followed by songs by Marcel Khalifé, a
popular Christian nationalist-leftist Lebanese singer.
As a political price for its “victory” in the war, Hizbullah demanded
that the opposition be given one-third veto power in the cabinet, in a
move to further consolidate the influence that the party already held over
the legislature and President Lahoud. This could only be accomplished
through its alliance with the FPM, which had received the highest number
of votes in the 2005 legislative elections.^48 Hizbullah also demanded the
formation of a representative national unity government and the holding