Neither arena nor Cannon Fodder

Ten minutes were enough for Beirut and the other regions to endure the most ferocious Israeli attacks they had ever witnessed. The toll was hundreds dead and thousands wounded. All of this came to pass after the conclusion of the opaque agreement between America and Iran on a ceasefire. Israel, led by a Netanyahu unwilling to accept any agreement that would return him to the difficult domestic reality of Israeli politics, sought to convey to all parties that Iran's declaration of including Lebanon in that agreement was null and void. Iran repudiates it verbally, while continuing on its side to observe the agreement. As for Hezbollah, dispersed across every corner of the country and intermingled with the civilian population, it declared its adherence to the ceasefire and has, until now, refrained from retaliating against Israel beyond a handful of rockets fired at Kiryat Shmoneh.

Lebanon is officially an arena open to violation, with the consent of that very government which then decreed a period of national mourning for the victims. As for the Lebanese people, it is on its government and its officials that they have decreed their own mourning.

Those who live inside a war are not asked to understand, but only to bear witness and to remain human as far as possible. That is what I shall do.

We are not an arena.

We are not a land open to the settling of scores, nor a map on which others trace their lines of fire according to their own interests. We are human beings, with names, homes, children, and a memory already burdened with enough wars that we did not choose. And yet, every time, the same role is reimposed on us, that of serving as the arena and the corridor, the messenger and the front line, the permanent victim. We are bombed so that some power can send its signals, destroyed while others negotiate elsewhere, killed because we had the misfortune of being born in this part of the world.

We refuse all of this.

We refuse to take part in a war in which we have no say, no stake, and no power to bring it to an end. We refuse to be reduced to a mere card in the hands of any axis, and to be summoned to die in silence beneath grand slogans that neither feed our children nor protect our homes.

We refuse to be vassals, whether of Iran or of anyone else. We refuse to have our land, our lives, and our future governed by decisions that come from beyond our borders, under the banner of a theocratic state that sees in us nothing but an extension of its influence and a shield for its protection. We refuse to have an entire society taken hostage and plunged into battles that exceed both its capacities and its will, only to be asked afterward to celebrate the sacrifice. What sacrifice could that be, one that its own authors did not choose, and what resistance could that be, one imposed on people by force?

Just as we refuse to be lectured about Israel, its perfidy and its brutality, we equally and simultaneously refuse Israel's own barbaric practices; we refuse that it remain above all accountability, and that a state founded on force and occupation continue to threaten us, bomb us, and destroy our cities, justifying each of these acts in the name of security. What security could that be, built on the ruins of others?

Had the Palestinians ever obtained their rights, had justice ever existed in this region, neither Iran nor anyone else would have been able to exploit that gaping breach to blackmail us, and we would never have found ourselves on the front line of others' wars.

We are the victims of two lethal equations, one being that of an occupation deaf to the rights of others, and the other that of an instrumentalisation which sees in us nothing but a tool. Caught between the two, we are ground to dust.

But despite all of this, we proclaim today that enough is enough. Enough of being used, enough of being taken hostage, enough of being killed in the name of causes whose management serves none of our interests.

We want a genuine state, not the shadow of another, powerless to exercise its own authority, but a state that makes sovereign decisions on war and peace rather than having them imposed upon it. We want a single army, a single decision, an indivisible sovereignty.

These words may seem futile against the roar of warplanes, the rain of rockets, and the chaos of blood and mutilated bodies. But the word is, in truth, the most powerful weapon we possess. For war begins when human beings are stripped of their voice, and ends, sooner or later, when they recover it.

We are not an arena.

We are not numbers.

We are not cannon foder.

We are human beings…

We simply want to live.