Layering Narrative

whoever gains the most was the most likely culprit

This is a very "Arab street" mindset. Not only is it "contestable", as you said, [Name], it is also easily manipulated.

For example, for any given action or event, there may be multiple beneficiaries. There is no doubt that a dozen nations, organizations, even individuals benefited from the extermination of Mughniyeh - Syria, Israel, the US, Iran, Saudi... perhaps even factions and individuals within Hezbollah.

Whatever the truth, whether it was a Syrian down payment for peace talks with Israel, a Mossad/CIA hit team, Saudi agents taking a hit at a top pawn of Iran or even members of Hezbollah who hated Mughniyeh... perhaps Mughniyeh supplied weapons to the Chechens, and it was the Russians who caught up with him.

There is simply no way for us to know for sure, without entering this data into a geopolitical context, and this is where manipulation becomes not only possible, but useful.

It is useful for Israel to have the Arab world fear the long reach of Mossad hit teams. It is useful for Syria to blame Israel for the hit, giving Damascus plausible deniability in front of Hezbollah and the Arab world. It is useful for Hezbollah to blame everyone else, in the hope of deflecting attention from fractures in its organization... and so on.

Given all this, I have found that Arabs, the average person, not those in a position to understand the proper context, are unique in their ability to compartmentalize information - thus preventing its synthesis, and the formation of a single coherent narrative. At least this is how it appears from without.

This can be very confusing for outsiders, and I am speaking as someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, where people knew how to read the news and were no strangers to compartmentalizing between public and private.

For example, take the attacks by Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq in Jordan a couple of years back that resulted in massive civilian casualties, all Muslim. I remember quite clearly reading editorials in Amman discussing how Muslims could not have been responsible for such horror, and that only Jews could have resorted to such brutality.

This was a popular sentiment, as usual, that Mossad and the CIA, disguised as al Qaeda, were bombing Muslims in the Middle East to divide them, and bombing the West to provide a pretext for invading Muslim lands.

I remember polling conducted within months of the attacks where up to half of the population believed that Israel/US/West was responsible. What was stunning, however, was that, simultaneously, something like 80% of Jordanians now rejected terrorism as a tactic, even when conducted by Muslims against the Jews/US/West.

There is a disconnect there. On the one hand, it is almost a matter of civic duty to publicly demonstrate Arab/Muslim unity and denounce the Jews/US/West for murdering Muslims. On the other hand, there is a private layer of understanding that Muslims were responsible, and that terrorism is an unacceptable form of violence.

Something similar occurred in Lebanon. Publicly, many Sunnis and Christians were denouncing Israel's bombing campaign; privately, many were outraged that Hezbollah asked no one before plunging the country into war, and were hoping the Jews would bloody Hezbollah and thus weaken it's growing power.

So, while I understand your desire to "speak in probabilistic terms", I also know that most average people, particularly those on the ground, linked by family and tribal structure, intuitively understand the situation and who is responsible for what.

When it comes to Arabs, you can often learn more listening to gossiping women than reading the most respected editorial writer.