The Australian politician in Lebanon speaking out against Hezbollah

Tripoli: Ihab Matar is a member of Lebanon’s parliament, but he wants to make one thing clear. He considers himself at least as Australian as he does Lebanese. “I still live there,” he stresses when asked when he moved from Australia to Lebanon. “I live in Australia – I have my business there.”

Matar, 43, was born in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city when the country’s 15-year-long civil war was still raging. After finishing high school, he moved to Sydney in 2000 to study computer science, later switching to medicine and becoming an Australian citizen. When the most recent Lebanese elections were approaching three years ago, he was living happily in Sydney with his wife and children, teaching anatomy at UNSW and completing a PhD.

Australian citizen and independent MP Ihab Matar at his office in Tripoli.Credit: Kate Geraghty

“My life was set,” Matar says of his life in Menangle, in Sydney’s south-west, where he was running a successful construction company.

But a political revolution was blowing through Lebanon, which was suffering through one of the most brutal economic collapses in modern history. The country’s gross domestic product per capita contracted by 37 per cent between 2019 and 2021, and inflation was running at 154 per cent – figures that put Australia’s current cost-of-living crisis in perspective. Mass protests broke out, spurred in part by the government’s decision to try to introduce a fee for WhatsApp calls.

Matar decided to return to Lebanon and run for parliament on an anti-corruption platform.

“You just live once, and if Lebanon needs me, I should be here,” he says.

Given the fury at the nation’s political class, the fact that he had spent most of his adult life in Australia and had never been involved in politics worked to his advantage.

“People wanted a new face, new blood, someone who doesn’t have any affiliation with the existing political parties,” he says in his Tripoli office. “And the people here love Australia – they believe it’s the best place on earth.”

In May 2022, he became one of Lebanon’s 128 MPs and the only Lebanese-Australian in parliament.

Two years on, Lebanon’s situation is more dire. One in five people have been forced to flee their homes because of Israeli airstrikes, and 2300 people have died since the militant group Hezbollah and Israel resumed trading rocket fire a year ago. Unlike Hezbollah strongholds in the south and east, the country’s north has largely escaped Israeli airstrikes.

That changed on Monday when Israel hit a building in Aitou, a 40-minute drive from Tripoli, killing an estimated 21 people including a six-month-old baby. The main impact in cities such as Tripoli is that no children are being educated because the nation’s schools have been converted into shelters for those displaced by the fighting.

Lebanese Red Cross members recover the remains of a six-month-old baby at the site of the October 14 Israeli strike on a home in the Christian village of Aitou in Northern Lebanon that killed at least 21 people and injured 8. Credit: Kate Geraghty

In parts of Lebanon where Shiite Muslims are a majority, Hezbollah is the dominant political force and operates as a state within a state, running schools, hospitals and other social services. Many of those who have been driven from their homes in the south say they remain loyal to Hezbollah and support its goal of helping Hamas’ war against Israel in Gaza.

It’s a different story in Tripoli, where Sunni Muslims such as Matar form the majority. He says it was a “terrible mistake” for Hezbollah to fire rockets into northern Israel last year. “A year later, we can say, ‘We told you so’,” he says, adding many of his constituents ask him: “What does the war have to do with us?” While they oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, they don’t want to be drawn into the fight.

“Hezbollah has tried forever to break through here, but they were never accepted and never endorsed,” he says of the group, which is a listed terror organisation in Australia. “They have great resistance here in Tripoli, and I think this will increase after what is happening now.”

Although Hezbollah’s leadership ranks have been decapitated and its military capabilities have been degraded by Israeli strikes, Matar says: “Hezbollah is not going away.” He hopes that it eventually evolves into a demilitarised political party. He acknowledges this will be difficult while Hezbollah continues to receive funding from Iran, which sees it as a crucial regional proxy.

Searching for people at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s el-Basta suburb that killed 22 people and injured 117 others.Credit: Kate Geraghty

In the short term, he wants to see Lebanon end a two-year impasse and appoint a president, so the national government can begin reasserting itself and broker an end to the current war.

While other Australians have been fleeing the country on evacuation flights, this accidental politician is staying put in Lebanon – hopefully he can play a role, even a small one, in guiding the country to a better future.

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