The Bottom Line

 A NOW Lebanon editorial lays out the bottom line:

[T]oday, we are fast moving to a stage where Lebanon is not big enough for both Hezbollah and Lebanon’s national institutions.

Thus the state, as ever, remains secondary to Hezbollah’s chronic navel-gazing. It remains to be seen how and when it will end. The outlook does not look bright.

As I noted in my TI analysis, the historical precedent with the Palestinian Resistance Movement is very clear: an autonomous armed trans-state actor cannot coexist with the state. That situation has led and will lead to war. It is even more acute when it is ideologically alien to the very historical and cultural experience of the country.

This has been building steadily, as regular readers of my blog know (as I've been chronicling this as it developed in the public discourse) to reach this inevitable conclusion.