Australia / Israel Review

As Israel officially undertakes “limited, localised, and targeted ground raids” into Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah military infrastructure along the border, while also conducting widespread airstrikes against Hezbollah leaders, operatives, ammunition depots and other military targets across the country, what do the Lebanese think of the players involved? 

With some necessary caveats about the quality of polls, the polling questions, the fact that the Shi’ite community in Lebanon is partially dependent on Hezbollah for social welfare and the reality that Hezbollah intimidates and sometimes murders critics, there are several polls since 2007, including three since October 7, 2023, that shed some important light on Lebanese attitudes. 

It is also important to note that no fully reliable estimates about Lebanese demographics exist. The 2020 estimate in the CIA World Factbook breaks the official population down along religious lines as 31.9% Sunni, 31.2% Shi’ite, 32.4% Christian and 4.5% Druze. There is little evidence, despite oft-repeated claims, that Shi’ites are the largest sect in the country.

Antisemitism

First and foremost, the Lebanese, like many Arab societies, are overwhelmingly antisemitic, regardless of their religious background. According to the ADL’s 2014 Global 100 survey, which asks questions based on classic antisemitic tropes rather than anything related to Israel, fully 78% of the population harbour conspiratorial antisemitic attitudes, including large majorities of Christians. 

Rating statements like “Jews have too much control over the global media,” “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” “Jews have too much control over global affairs” or “Jews have too much power in international financial markets,” the survey found that a minimum of more than 60% and in some cases more than 80%, depending on the question and religious background, believe such tropes are at least “probably true”. A Pew survey from 2009 found that 98% of Lebanese had an unfavourable opinion of Jews, including 97% of Lebanese Christians. There’s little reason to believe these attitudes have changed, and they no doubt colour views of Israel. 

Hamas and Hezbollah

Pew surveys found that Shi’ite support for Hamas had grown from 64% in 2008 to 91% in 2009, while Sunni support for the group dropped from 9% in 2008 to just 1% in 2009. This might seem odd to those who try to explain everything in the region through the lens of a sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite divide, but the likely explanation is that Hamas is considered part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” and an “external army” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It thus attracts high support among those beholden to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its leadership. 88% of Lebanese Christians also held unfavourable views of Hamas in 2009. 

Pew also found almost overwhelming support among Shi’ite Lebanese for Hezbollah, at 97%, and almost universal unfavourable attitudes towards it among the rest of the population, with 98% of Sunnis and 80% of Christians not supporting the group. 

More recent polls, including one conducted by The Washington Institute (TWI) from Nov. 14 to Dec. 6, 2023, and another by the Arab Barometer from February to April 2024, show similar breakdowns in terms of support for Hezbollah. 

The TWI poll found that “Whereas 34% of Sunnis and 29% of Christians express even a somewhat positive view of Hezbollah, 93% of Shi’ites do so.” However, since the previous time TWI had polled on this question in 2020, there has been a rise in support for Hezbollah among all groups. Furthermore, in contrast to the Pew polls more than a decade ago, positive views of Hamas were far higher among all religious groups, including 59% of Christians. Overall, “79% of Lebanese express a positive opinion of Hamas,” it found.

The Arab Barometer poll also found near universal support for Hezbollah among Shi’ites, with 83% having a great deal or quite a lot of trust in the group and only 9% of Sunnis and Druze and 6% of Christians sharing that attitude. 

Similarly, the poll found that Hezbollah’s role in regional affairs was rated positively by 78% of Shi’ites, but only 16% among Druze, 13% among Sunnis and 12% among Christians, although those agreeing that Hezbollah is good for the Arab world rose nine points among the latter three groups since 2022. 

These attitudes do not reflect internal support for Hezbollah as a domestic political party, only as an enemy of Israel. Hence: 

At the national level, only 12 percent of citizens feel closest to Hezbollah as a political party. Shiites are the only Lebanese sect in which more than one percent of members say that, among all the country’s parties, they feel closest to Hezbollah. And even among Shiites, only 39 percent say they feel closest to Hezbollah, roughly the same percentage (37 percent) who say they do not feel close to any political party.

October 7 and war with Israel

Lebanese of all religious backgrounds overwhelmingly supported the October 7 attacks by Hamas, and a significant minority supported Lebanon going to war with Israel in their wake. 

One poll conducted immediately after October 7 by the Consultative Centre for Studies and Documentation (CCSD) found that 80% of Lebanese supported the attacks, including 98% of Shi’ites, 86% of Sunnis and Druze and 60% of Christians. 

The same poll found that 32% of those surveyed favoured opening up a fully-fledged northern front immediately: “This option was supported by half of the Shi’ites, roughly a third of the Sunni, 40% of the Druze, and around 13% of the Christian respondents.” Only 5% of respondents blamed Hamas for the escalation of the conflict, with 13% blaming Iran, 34% blaming Israel and a staggering 47% blaming the United States.

When asked by TWI in its poll whether they agreed with the statement that “Right now, internal political and economic reform is more important for our country than any foreign policy issue, so we should stay out of foreign war,” 66% of Sunnis and 74% of Christians agreed, but only 27% of Shi’ites answered affirmatively. 

TWI also asked respondents to agree or disagree with the fact that there’s no military solution to the conflict with Israel and there would therefore have to eventually be negotiations on a Palestinian-Israeli agreement. Only 25% of Shi’ites agreed, as opposed to 56% of Sunnis and 75% of Christians. Unfortunately, overwhelming majorities of Christians and Druze, not to mention Shi’ites and Sunnis, agreed in the same poll that Israel is “so weak and divided that it can be defeated someday.” Only about 15% in the former two groups disagreed. 

The most recent poll by the Arab Barometer found that only 11% of Lebanese respondents view Hezbollah’s incessant attacks on Israel as “terrorism”, while 78% believe Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza are terrorist acts. Given a choice of seven terms ranging from “conflict” to “genocide” to describe Israel’s war against Hamas, 36% described it as “genocide” while 25% called it a “massacre”. 

However, when asked by TWI last year whether they viewed the war in Gaza, despite the death and destruction, as a victory for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, 97% of Shi’ites, 88% of Sunnis and 54% of Christians said it was.

Iran

Attitudes towards Iran and its role in the Middle East fall along a similar sectarian divide as those towards Hezbollah itself, according to the Arab Barometer poll, with 80% of Shi’ites, 26% of Druze and 15% among both Sunnis and Christians having a favourable attitude. 

Conclusion

While it’s unclear how attitudes on any of these issues will shift following Israel’s operations and the destruction, death and displacement that inevitably accompany urban warfare against an embedded enemy like Hezbollah, it’s already clear that most of the Lebanese population does not support Hezbollah. This potentially leaves room for some sort of political arrangement with Israel in the future should Hezbollah be destroyed or sufficiently degraded.

Unfortunately, it’s also clear that the Shi’ites, who comprise perhaps a third of the population, are almost universally radicalised and embrace total war with Israel, as do sizeable minorities among Druze, Sunnis and Christians. 

Understanding how the current war is changing these general attitudes will have to wait until new polls are conducted. Beyond the weak support for Hezbollah, however, there is little room for optimism, given overwhelming support for Hamas and October 7; a widely held belief that Israel can be destroyed militarily; a significant minority of the population that actively wanted to go to war after October 7 despite Lebanon’s severe economic and political dysfunction; and widespread antisemitic attitudes among all sectors.