Did We Betray Our Country on June 26?*

When we have been driven back by enemy fire; when the adversary has stormed our cities, razed so many towns and villages, and forced our fellow citizens from their homes; when it has demonstrated that it can keep advancing until it encircles our capital; and above all when, weary of war, those who clamored for battle finally pleaded for a ceasefire, it stands to reason that, at the negotiating table, one cannot afford to be overly fastidious and may have to compromise on certain principles, such as national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Defeated France had to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the Kaiser's Empire in 1871; likewise, Germany, upon signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, was compelled to accept, among other humiliating terms, the demilitarization of the Rhineland and the reduction of its army to one hundred thousand men.

Has Hezbollah won a resounding victory over Israel? Not that I am aware of.

There is little point in swaggering merely to buy time, or in sacrificing oneself in a futile rearguard action simply to strengthen Iran's hand in its negotiations with Washington. More than four thousand Lebanese have already given their lives to provide Tehran with greater diplomatic leverage.

The facts are undeniable: we have suffered a severe military defeat, and Lebanese of every political persuasion must acknowledge it and draw the necessary conclusions.

Had our forces captured Metula, Nahariya, or Haifa, had they advanced far enough to threaten Dimona, then I would readily believe that we could have imposed our terms on Israel.

That would have been perfectly logical: if the enemy wished to recover its territorial integrity, it would have had to relinquish certain attributes of its sovereignty. But that is not what happened. Quite the opposite.

To accuse the Lebanese delegation of seeking to liberate Lebanese territory in exchange for the disarmament of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah* is therefore nothing more than reckless one-upmanship.

Profitable One-Upmanship... Yet So Pernicious

Passion can cloud even the soundest minds. Hence the reactions of certain "research associates" and political commentators—these self-appointed champions of territorial integrity—when the framework agreement was announced in Washington on June 26*.

These latter-day sovereigntists accuse the Lebanese state of capitulation. Like Caiaphas during Holy Week, they rend their garments and cry "treason!"

Yet this outcry conceals a rather sordid game that does little credit to those who claim the mantle of patriotism. If the Shiite tandem and those within its orbit seek to torpedo the trilateral agreement, it is because they want to place the Lebanese file in Tehran's hands and fold it into a broader negotiation—one that would be conducted by the belligerents of the Persian Gulf, whether in Islamabad or somewhere in Switzerland.

And, in the height of cynicism, the critics of the June 26 agreement claim that their only concern is to defend national sovereignty and its supposedly inviolable principles.

Let Us Take Abu Ammar as Our Example

For Hafez al-Assad, beginning in the 1970s, the primary target was not the Lebanese Christian who defied his rule, but the Palestinian. The PLO was the first enemy to be crushed, long before the Lebanese Front or the Lebanese Forces.

In the grand geopolitical reshaping of the Levant, should an international conference ever be convened to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, the tyrant of Damascus was determined that the "Palestinian card" should never escape his grasp. In his eyes, the Palestinians were merely Southern Syrians, and it was for him alone to decide their fate.

Yasser Arafat, however, intended to remain master of his own cause. He played a prolonged game of cat and mouse with the autocrat on the banks of the Barada. Tossed from one country to another—from Jordan to Lebanon and finally Tunisia—Abu Ammar refused to surrender his prerogatives. In the end, it was he who signed the Oslo Accords on behalf of his people. He was not about to allow a coup-born officer from Qardaha, whose legitimacy was dubious at best, to represent his nation of exiles.

Shall We Surrender the "Lebanese Card"?

We Lebanese now face much the same predicament. Shall we hand over the Lebanese card to Iran in order to strengthen its bargaining power in negotiations with Donald Trump? Which course better serves our sovereignty: confronting Israel directly in Washington or Rome, or gratuitously entrusting that card to the empire of the mullahs, which some insist would defend our national interests more effectively than we ourselves can?

Let us remember that with the fall of the Assad father-and-son regime, fortune briefly smiled upon us, allowing Lebanon quietly to reclaim the card that Damascus had long confiscated.

And now an Iranian-controlled militia, with astonishing brazenness, seeks to assign us to Tehran and reduce Lebanon to a mere agenda item in negotiations conducted exclusively between Iran and the United States.

The Lebanese card is not meant to be surrendered, nor to be endorsed at the command of a patron from the Gulf of the Achaemenids. And, if truth be told, the Lebanese card has never brought good fortune to freebooters.

*Let us recall that the framework agreement signed on June 26 by Lebanon, Israel, and the United States has as its ultimate objective the liberation of Lebanese territory from every form of occupation, whether Israeli or Iranian. Is it to be condemned simply because it proceeds in stages? Let us see what emerges from the forthcoming talks in Rome, where the delegations are meeting.