Berri’s emerging positions .. No free softness

In the past days, a remarkable shift has emerged in the speech of the Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, as his tone looked more severe and hard than what the Lebanese have been accustomed to in recent months. Since the end of the war, Berri was one of the most prominent advocates of calm and settlements, as he adopted the policy of recycling angles and making concessions in an effort to maintain stability and avoid slipping into open confrontations.
This approach distinguished his vision of the vision of Hizbullah, which often tended to the most strict discourse, but this track suddenly changed. The followers of the path of land positions notice that he was very shocked as a result of the American retreat from the promises he had received, which gave the impression that the calm is possible if Lebanon made a series of concessions. This decline was not limited to dropping the bet on external promises, but was also reflected in the internal accounts, as it seemed that Berri lost confidence in the feasibility of engaging in unimaginable settlements. However, his disappointment did not stop at the limits of the external position, but rather extended to the Lebanese interior. Berri felt that those who worked to satisfy them and provide the cover for them, specifically the presidents of the republic and the government, did not exchange him the same position. The clearest evidence was the approval of the government plan in the absence of Shiite ministers, which he considered a political message to him personally. This reality prompted Berri to reassess his options. The dangers waving on the horizon, starting from the disturbing developments in As -Suwayda to the possibilities of escalation south of Litani, are in his view not to be avoided once the calm is called. Rather, a new approach is based on decisiveness and firmness may be more realistic at this stage. Here, the question arises: Will Berri be at the site of the political confrontation in the next stage? What might explain this shift is the arrival of information to Berri about the restoration of Hizbullah for its capabilities after the war, allowing it a broader space for maneuver. This data, if true, may be a fundamental element in a wild encouragement to raise the ceiling of his speech, after he considered himself to be bowed to the storm of international and regional pressure.