Mar Mikhael Agreement

The Mar Mikhael Agreement is a memorandum of understanding signed on 6 February 2006 at Mar Mikhael Church in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut by Michel Aoun, leader of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, and Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shia movement Hezbollah. The document set out shared positions across ten areas of Lebanese public life, including national dialogue, electoral reform and the security and sovereignty of the state, and it created a cross-sectarian political alliance that reshaped Lebanese politics in the years that followed, helping bring Aoun to the presidency in 2016. In return for political backing from Hezbollah, the Free Patriotic Movement offered the group cover as a Christian political partner, including during the 2006 war with Israel. By the early 2020s the alliance was under strain, with Free Patriotic Movement figures publicly calling for it to be reexamined amid the economic crisis in Lebanon.