Does Lebanon Have One Government?

The question could hardly be simpler. Does Lebanon have one government headed by Nawaf Salam, or several governments, each with its own agenda and controlled by one minister or another?

It was only natural for Nawaf Salam to settle the matter and prevent Defense Minister Michel Menassa from speaking during the parliamentary session that saw the passage of the amnesty law, with all its merits and flaws, a law that reflects better than anything else the state of Lebanon, with all its decay and tensions.

Nothing illustrates this Lebanese decay more clearly than the alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law of former president Michel Aoun. This alliance opposed the amnesty law and sided with the defense minister, who intended to express before Parliament the Lebanese army’s position on the law. This would have meant undermining the existing system at its very foundations by portraying the army as an entity autonomous from the Council of Ministers. In other words, the army would have a position of its own, alongside that of the Council of Ministers, which represents the executive authority… or so it is supposed to.

Had the defense minister spoken before Parliament, Lebanon would effectively have acquired four authorities: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary… and a fourth, the Lebanese army as an authority in its own right, instead of the army being under the authority of the executive branch, represented by the Council of Ministers acting collectively and by the presidency of the Republic. Does the country need yet another authority at a moment that can, at the very least, be described as decisive, since it will determine whether Lebanon remains a viable country or not?

The alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, in other words the Aounist movement, is no coincidence. Michel Aoun’s presidential term, from 2016 to 2022, was essentially a Hezbollah presidency. Together with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, Aoun placed the Lebanese state under Hezbollah’s orders, which means under Iran’s orders. This came at a time when Hezbollah had always opposed any Lebanese army activity on Lebanese soil. Its first objection was to the very presence of the army in southern Lebanon. Who remembers the helicopter flown by officer Samer Hanna, which was shot down in southern Lebanon by a Hezbollah fighter who was later released? Who remembers Michel Aoun justifying the killing of the pilot by asking: “What was Samer Hanna doing in southern Lebanon?”

Michel Aoun said this before becoming president of the Republic. It was the period when he was presenting his credentials to Hezbollah, a phase that lasted ten years, beginning in 2006. It preceded his arrival at Baabda Palace as Hezbollah’s presidential candidate, a candidate who opposed none of Hezbollah’s decisions.

The alliance between the Aounists and Hezbollah is opportunism at its most blatant. It also reflects a strategy of undermining Nawaf Salam’s government from within, with one objective: to prevent any progress in the negotiations under way between Lebanon and Israel. The prime minister was therefore right to stop Michel Menassa, who is nothing more than a retired officer with good intentions who does not grasp how much damage can be done when those intentions are misused, particularly when they are exploited by Iran, which exercises total control over Hezbollah.

Ultimately, Lebanon faces a far more serious challenge than the amnesty law, with all the flaws it contains. It is confronting a historic test: how to rid itself of the Israeli occupation. It is an occupation that Hezbollah wants to see continue in order to justify retaining its weapons, which are directed first and foremost against other Lebanese.

What Nawaf Salam did was a profoundly national act at a time when Lebanon has no option other than direct negotiations with an Israeli monster that is doing everything in its power to alter the character of southern Lebanon by inflicting further destruction and carrying out more explosions in villages and towns across the region.

From this perspective, Lebanon cannot afford to lose itself in the labyrinths of the amnesty law and similar issues. The country has no choice, at least for the time being, but to face the reality that Israel is the only party that benefits from Hezbollah keeping its weapons. Anyone who rushes today to Hezbollah’s rescue and seeks to dismantle Nawaf Salam’s government is placing himself at the service of Israel and the occupation. Everything else is mere detail, and all those details ultimately serve the project pursued by the “Islamic Republic,” one of whose objectives is to turn Lebanon into an Iranian hostage in the negotiations being conducted, directly or indirectly, between Washington and Tehran.

It is shameful that the Aounists and their satellites should once again place themselves at the service of Hezbollah and Iran. In reality, such behavior is hardly surprising from a camp that has never stopped stabbing the Lebanese army in the back. Did Michel Aoun not flee in October 1990 to the French Embassy compound in Baabda while Lebanese army officers and soldiers were courageously confronting the Syrian army as it advanced toward the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defense in Yarzeh?

For someone who brought the Syrian army into Baabda Palace and the Ministry of Defense in 1990, serving the Iranian project in Lebanon in 2026 comes naturally…