No, Hezbollah Did Not ‘Hand Over The Evidence To The STL’

I noticed that much of the foreign media did not properly convey the nuance of Hezbollah’s handover of their evidence dossier to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

To read the headlines, you’d assume that the ‘Party of God’ has cheerfully handed the documents to the United Nation’s tribunal, and is waiting for their judgement. The natural assumption here is that Hezbollah is cooperating with the STL.

The more complex truth is this: Hezbollah does not believe in the STL and its authority. It even wants it to be eliminated. What really happened is that Hezbollah wants to keep things calm with Prime Minister Hariri, so it handed the documents to the Lebanese authorities (not to the STL). The Lebanese authorities then handed over the documents to the STL.

This handover by proxy reminds us of Hezbollah’s negotiations with Israel using a (usually German) proxy. This is a typical Hezbollah tactic for getting things both ways: It shows that it is cooperating, but it does not concede legitimacy to the STL and reserves any future right to completely denounce their findings.