Yes, there were supposed to be many reasons preventing thousands of those who participated in the March 13 rally from going to Martyrs’ Square. Yet these thousands went down and participated in the rally – faces and families that had abstained from attendance in past years. This time, perhaps there were even more reasons for them to boycott participation in the commemoration of March 14. The orators were the same, and the number of party flags and emblems had doubled, to the point that it was entirely natural to watch them headed to the square in their neighborhoods and roads. In spite of all this, civic classes – uninvolved in political parties – participated in this year’s March 14 rally outside the traditional line-ups.

These people did not go down to the square to listen to the speeches, nor to show solidarity with the partisan masses. There were many of them, and one issue drove their participation. It was the rally’s central slogan: No to illegitimate weapons in Beirut’s streets.

Once again, Hezbollah has failed to grasp the real civic sensibility of the capital’s inhabitants. They are less beholden to politics and its prejudices than other Lebanese classes. This is because their “Harirism,” which reached its peak at the time of PM Rafik Hariri’s assassination, is weak in political content. It was a kind of a civic desire and endeavor charged with some disdain for politics, due to the vulgar way in which events were occurring. It was reinforced by the injustice of the assassination. Yet this sensibility, which is not beholden to politics and tends toward calm rather than clamor, is also charged with an intuitive and instinctive rejection of weapons.

Hezbollah has once again given March 14 an opportunity to represent this sensibility, after the alliance had distanced itself from such content over the past four years. In the square this year there were many who had previously boycotted participation. They were not a majority, but they reserved a wide space for themselves. They did not listen to the speeches, but they carried the central slogan. They did not participate as activists, but the sight of their participation had stronger significance and impact than activism.

They went down to the square in spite of the great disappointments that have struck them in past years, and in spite of enormous pressures in their neighborhoods and regions. They do not hate Michel Aoun much, and they have never felt that Najib Mikati is their adversary or competitor. They came down only because they saw weapons in their streets and because these weapons were used before their eyes.

There were many of them this year, and everyone saw them. It is true that not many photographs were taken of them, but this is not important as long as everyone felt that they had come out of their houses. They came in silence and calm, without flags or slogans, without convoying together in the neighborhoods before heading to the square. They came down as families, individuals and friends. In this there was a kind of quiet determination that transcended the force of participatory clamor.

Completing the mission requires a different awareness this time. Transforming the slogan – rejection of illegitimate weapons – from its current familial and political significations to a civic value requires broadening the space for this kind of participation. It requires too an aspiration to reach other civic classes that still refuse to participate. This aspiration requires actual change in discourse and faces.

No one in the March 14 leadership today is taking this mission upon himself. The review that was conducted did not cover the neglect of these classes’ ambitions. Much was said about the mistakes of concessions, bargains, visits and alliances. Yet what about these people? They are March 14, 2005.