Lebanon, Naim Qassem, and the Suspended State

In a moment of acute regional sensitivity, where Lebanon’s security dossiers intersect with the trajectory of regional and international negotiations, three closely intertwined themes impose themselves on the domestic landscape: the threats of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem, the controversy surrounding attempts to reposition the “Lebanese card” in the regional bargaining game, and the dossier of displaced persons and their encampments within the capital, particularly in densely populated neighborhoods such as Bechara al-Khoury. These themes, despite their apparent divergence, point in their depths to one and the same question: to what extent does Lebanon remain a state capable of asserting control over its own decision-making and controlling its security and social boundaries?

Naim Qassem’s recent threats were not simply a domestic political discourse; they arose within a tense regional context bound to the negotiations over the future of southern Lebanon, the implementation of Resolution 1701, and the redrawing of rules of engagement in the aftermath of the last war. Within this framework, the discourse can be read as a twofold message: inwardly, a reaffirmation that the arms dossier and the Party’s military role remain outside any unilateral internal settlement; outwardly, a signal that any arrangements concerning Lebanon cannot be dissociated from Iran and its role in the region. This is what revives the idea that Hezbollah intends to return the “Lebanese card” to Iran in its entirety, wresting it from the grip of the Lebanese state.

It is therefore striking that a strong direct political response failed to emerge from within Lebanon, while the position of the American Secretary of State stood out as the most unambiguous. This disparity in reactions reflects a subtle reality inherent to the Lebanese system: the state avoids direct internal escalation on sensitive sovereignty dossiers, whereas the United States regards any threat to stability or to the diplomatic process as a direct infringement on its interests and on the role it plays in managing regional balances.

Conversely, this political climate cannot be dissociated from the social and security reality within the Lebanese capital. Beirut itself is living under a twofold pressure: the pressure of regional political fracture, and the pressure of social and economic deterioration from within. It is in this context that the dossier of displaced encampments in neighborhoods such as Bechara el-Khoury emerges as one of the manifestations of the state’s fragility in managing the public sphere.

The informal settlements along roadsides and in overcrowded neighborhoods cannot be approached solely as a humanitarian issue, nor solely as a security issue. They are the direct consequence of the absence of a clear state policy for managing displacement within cities, and of the lack of municipal and administrative capacity to organize the urban space of the capital. Over time, these encampments are transformed into environments of social pressure: congested arteries, weakened services, daily friction with residents, and the absence of effective regulatory oversight.

But the real danger lies not in the existence of these encampments in themselves, but rather in the general environment that surrounds them: a state in crisis, an acute political fracture, economic strangulation, and an open-ended regional tension. In such circumstances, any administrative or social vacuum can convert into a point of fragility liable to be exploited or to explode at the first crisis.

It is precisely at this juncture that linking the political level on one hand to the security and social levels on the other becomes necessary. For when political messages from regional and domestic actors intensify around the future of the Lebanese decision, while simultaneously the state’s capacity to control the daily texture of life in the capital diminishes, a single picture takes shape whose central finding is the progressive erosion of the concept of the central state.

It would nonetheless be inaccurate to characterize the situation as a collapse or as an inevitable “time bomb.” Lebanon, despite all its crises, still retains a margin of relative stability, itself the fruit of complex internal and regional balances that prevent total explosion. But this stability remains fragile, and any intertwining of political escalation on one side and social deterioration on the other is capable of significantly raising the level of risk.

In conclusion, Naim Qassem’s threats reflect the continuing conflict over the definition of who holds the decision-making power in Lebanon, while the displaced encampments in Beirut reveal the limits of the state’s capacity to manage its daily affairs. Between these two levels, Lebanon appears as a state operating within an extremely narrow space, caught between a truncated sovereignty and accumulated internal pressures, rendering any minor dossier capable of becoming the emblem of a larger crisis, should it fail to be addressed within a comprehensive vision oriented toward the state rather than toward axes of alignment.