It Is Not Peace That Is at Stake

Amid the political and media clamour surrounding the ongoing negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under American sponsorship, many are absorbed by the traditional question: does Israel want peace? Are we standing before a new phase in relations between the two countries, or merely facing security arrangements imposed by the balance of power that emerged from the war?

But the truth is that this question, however important, is not the most important one for Lebanon.

The fundamental question today does not concern what Israel wants, but what Lebanon has managed to reclaim for itself after long decades of confiscation of its national decision-making.

For the first time in many years, Lebanon is not sitting at the negotiating table as a battlefield or a bargaining chip in the hands of others, but as a state representing itself. And this shift, in and of itself, constitutes the most significant political event in everything that is currently unfolding.

The Lebanese have unfortunately grown accustomed to seeing their country serve as part of other people's wars. They have grown accustomed to seeing the existential dossiers of war, peace, sovereignty and security managed outside legitimate institutions, and to seeing the state reduced to a mere witness to decisions taken elsewhere.

During many periods of our recent history, it was not Lebanon that negotiated — Lebanon was the very object of negotiation.

And the Lebanese always paid the price.

The price of wars whose timing they had not decided.

The price of settlements in whose drafting they had not participated.

The price of regional conflicts that had turned their homeland into a mailbox for other people's military and political messages.

Today, for the first time in a long while, the picture seems different.

Not because Israel has suddenly changed, nor because the region has become more peaceful, but because the Lebanese state has begun to reclaim a fundamental sovereign right: the right to speak in Lebanon's name.

Lebanese may diverge on the details of the negotiations. Positions may differ on certain clauses, orientations or priorities — and that is something natural and healthy in any democratic society.

But what ought to be the subject of national consensus is that the Lebanese decision has returned to constitutional institutions, and that it is the state that manages this dossier on behalf of all Lebanese.

This is precisely where the real value of the current process lies.

For states are not measured solely by the extent of their territory, the size of their population or the volume of their economy, but by their capacity to hold the monopoly on sovereign decision-making.

And sovereignty is not a slogan raised on ceremonial occasions — it is a daily practice that begins with the mastery of the right to decide on war and peace, and ends with the state's capacity to speak on behalf of its citizens on the international stage.

From this standpoint, the debate over Israel's intentions becomes less important than the debate over how to protect Lebanon's newly acquired gain.

Yes, Israel seeks to defend its security interests — this is a reality that needs no discovery. Every state negotiates from its own interests, seeks its own security and stability, and attempts to obtain as much as possible. But the question that should occupy the Lebanese is this: has Lebanon finally become capable of defending its national interests through its legitimate institutions?

If the answer is yes, then we stand before a historical turning point that transcends the results of the negotiations themselves.

Agreements can succeed or fail. Understandings can be implemented or stumble. But the recovery by the state of its natural role remains a long-term strategic gain.

Lebanon paid an exorbitant price when the decision over war and peace left the state's institutions. It paid a heavier price still when Lebanese priorities became entangled with regional agendas. And it paid an immense price when the fate of the Lebanese became bound to calculations that bore no relation to the Lebanese national interest.

This is why the real challenge today lies not only in reaching the best possible agreement, but in preventing any return to the past — that is to say, in preventing the decision from being wrested from the state once again and returned to the spheres of influence, the axes and the external conflicts.

What would be most dangerous is for the debate over the negotiations to transform into a new internal confrontation among the Lebanese. For past experience has shown that internal division has always been the door through which the outside world infiltrated the national decision. When institutions converge around the superior Lebanese interest, however, Lebanon becomes more resilient in the face of pressure and better able to defend its rights.

What Lebanon needs today is not merely a truce on its borders, but a truce with its own political history — a history built on the duality of decision-making. It needs not only security arrangements, but the consolidation of the principle that the state alone is the ultimate reference point in the great national causes.

This is the true meaning of the citizenship state for which we struggle — a state that is not reduced to a sect, a party or an axis. A state in which all citizens are equal before the law, all forces are subject to institutions, and all sovereign decisions emanate solely from legitimate authority.

For without a state, there is no citizenship.

And without sovereignty, there is no state.

And there is no sovereignty when decision-making is scattered among multiple centres of power.

This is why the political value of the current negotiations lies not only in the understandings or agreements they may produce, but in the fact that they reflect the beginning of Lebanon's transition from the position of a battlefield to that of a state — from the position of the recipient to that of a partner, and from the position of a bargaining chip to that of the one who holds the cards.

And it is this turning point that must be preserved, whatever developments may come.

If the last century was marked by the Lebanese struggle over the identity of the state, the coming phase must be that of reclaiming the state itself — a state strong through its institutions, free in its decision, sovereign over its territory, one in whose name only those elected by the Lebanese and empowered by the Constitution to represent the Lebanese Republic may speak.

The road will perhaps not be easy, and it will no doubt be strewn with obstacles, pressures and challenges. But what has been achieved thus far deserves to be preserved.

For nations are built not only through military victories or political agreements, but through the construction of institutions and the recovery of national decision-making.

And in the end, while the Lebanese may diverge on the results of the negotiations, they should not diverge on a single truth: the Lebanon that negotiates for itself is worth a thousand times the Lebanon on whose behalf others negotiate.