On the Illusions of Peace in Lebanon

If the state of dejection that Lebanese people are living through at this stage is understandable, given the successive defeats that have haunted them for years and reached their apex with the two wars of support launched by Hezbollah without consulting anyone — wars that led to the return of Israeli occupation, the displacement of more than a million Lebanese, and the wholesale destruction of southern villages — the excessive enthusiasm of some for peace with Israel, and the headlong rush of others toward normalization, whether media-driven or otherwise, carry no logical justification whatsoever, and the least one can say of them is that they are precipitate and irresponsible.

The reason is not that those who harbour reservations about peace necessarily support the war or wish to see it prolonged, nor that those who call for restraint in the face of this artificial and premature media normalization — which the law, at least for the time being, should be prosecuting — are opposed to a ceasefire and the return of stability. The point is rather to make clear that peace with Israel is no leisurely stroll, and that rushing to dream of a beer in Tel Aviv amounts to nothing more than a puerile, premature fantasy.

This fracture plays out on two entirely contradictory levels. On one side, there are those prepared not only to turn a blind eye to what Israel has done to the Lebanese — killing them, occupying their land — but to absolve it of those acts, laying the blame exclusively on those who dragged Lebanon into the confrontation, without even alluding to the grossly disproportionate response that Israel has inflicted and continues to inflict: the occupation and levelling of villages, the evacuation orders served on entire localities to empty the regions and create a new reality on the ground, the targeting of hospitals and heritage sites, and much else besides. On the other side, there are those who refuse to read the shifts taking place and persist in tying the Lebanese front to the region's wars — wars they themselves essentially ignited in service of those conflicts and in revenge for their symbols — brandishing threats of retribution at their conclusion, invoking a surplus of power that has partly been broken in the recent period, and rejecting the efforts of the Lebanese state to end the war and recover its long-confiscated sovereignty.

Lebanon cannot face this level of danger with such a depth of division, to the point where Lebanese people seem to disagree on almost everything — and at the top of that list of disagreements is the question of who is friend and who is enemy, which is precisely where the greatest peril lies. At the very moment when Israel descends upon Lebanon and kills its sons — civilians, soldiers, journalists, paramedics, and doctors — some persist in absolving it and concentrating all accusation on those who embroiled the country in this war, the very same parties now seeking a ceasefire, as they have always done: igniting the fire, then turning to find ways of extinguishing it.

In the period following the Taif Agreement, the Lebanese had already divided over how to confront Israel and repeatedly failed to reach a national defence plan, owing to the lack of cooperation from Hezbollah — and from its regional patrons behind it, naturally. Lebanon was seeking to extend the legitimate authority of the state across its entire territory, which is after all the vocation of any government on earth. Yet it must be said that despite the depth of that disagreement, no one at the time put themselves forward to defend Israel, no one advocated a rushed peace with it, and no one violated the laws that remain in force until further notice by engaging with Israelis or hosting televised or journalistic exchanges with them.

If the repeated entanglement of Lebanon in wars from which it gains nothing is something unacceptable — and the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, exhausted by conflict, death, and displacement, reject it without ambiguity — the illusion that peace with Israel would be a pleasant stroll, in a complete vacuum of power, is a fatal error, one liable to deepen the fracture among Lebanese and to aggravate the country's internal fragmentation still further.