Why Are the Lebanese Afraid of the Word “Peace”?

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Perhaps no phrase better captures what Lebanon needs today than the one Pope Leo XIV carried with him during his visit to Lebanon and made a central message to the Lebanese people. His visit came to a country exhausted by wars, crises, and divisions, placing peace at the heart of Lebanon’s public discourse, not as surrender or concession, but as an act, a responsibility, and a project for the future.

Yet Lebanon’s paradox is that we, who have lived through so much war, have sometimes come to fear the very word “peace.”

Why?

Why must a Lebanese justify calling for peace? And why do some feel that merely using the word can put them in the dock, as though they had relinquished their rights, accepted surrender, sought normalization, or abandoned the cause?

Has peace become an accusation in Lebanon?

These are not linguistic questions. They reveal a deep problem in Lebanon’s political culture.

Lebanon has lived through decades of war. Civil war, occupations, invasions, attacks, assassinations, internal conflicts, and regional struggles turned into Lebanese crises. Each time, the Lebanese paid the price: the dead and wounded, displacement, destruction, economic collapse, emigration, and social fragmentation.

And yet we still have not learned that war is not Lebanon’s destiny.

Perhaps the time has come to redefine peace.

The peace Lebanon needs is not the peace of surrender, nor the peace of submission, nor a peace imposed from abroad.

It is a Lebanese peace.

And that peace begins with a simple idea: Lebanon must be master of its own decisions.

The state must decide on war and peace.

State institutions must be the sole authority.

The Lebanese Army must be the institution that protects the borders and sovereignty.

The law must stand above everyone.

And Lebanon must not remain an open arena for other people’s wars.

Peace does not mean relinquishing our rights. It means seeking to protect those rights by means that preserve Lebanon and its people, rather than by means that turn Lebanon once again into a land of war.

Peace is not weakness.

It may in fact be one of the hardest forms of strength.

It is easy to open fire, easy to declare war, easy to raise slogans of victory. What is harder is preventing war when you have the power to ignite it, choosing negotiations when they better serve your people, and using diplomacy, law, and international relations to protect your country.

That is why peace does not contradict sovereignty.

On the contrary, genuine peace is the fruit of sovereignty.

A sovereign state decides when to fight and when to negotiate. It speaks on behalf of its people, defends its borders, signs agreements, and assumes responsibility for implementing them.

But when decision-making centers multiply, peace itself becomes impossible.

There can be no lasting peace as long as forces within the country are capable of deciding on war outside constitutional institutions.

And this is not about one sect rather than another, or one religious community rather than another.

The problem is not the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Christians, or the Druze.

The problem lies in sectarian logic when it becomes a substitute for the state.

Lebanon does not need armed communities to protect one another. Lebanon needs a state that protects everyone.

A Shiite should not need a party in order to feel safe. A Christian should not need outside protection. A Sunni should not have to look to a regional power for support. A Druze should not have to fear for his existence.

The state is the guarantee.

This is where internal peace becomes a condition for external peace.

We cannot speak of peace with the world while the Lebanese themselves live in a state of mutual fear.

Lebanese peace means moving from the logic of groups to the logic of citizenship.

It means ensuring that a Lebanese citizen feels that his rights are protected because he is a citizen, not because he belongs to a sect, a party, a region, or an axis.

That is why implementing the Constitution is not a technical matter. It is part of the peace project.

The Constitution defines institutions, powers, and relations between the branches of government. Lebanon’s problem is not always the absence of texts, but their failure to be implemented and the replacement of the state with a system of political and sectarian quota-sharing.

Peace cannot be built on quotas.

Peace requires the rule of law.

And the state requires an independent judiciary, effective institutions, accountability, and equality among citizens.

But peace is not limited to politics and security.

There is also social and economic peace.

What does a ceasefire mean if a Lebanese citizen remains without work?

What does security mean if a young Lebanese is forced to emigrate?

What does stability mean if poverty keeps rising, the state remains powerless, and the economy lies in ruins?

Peace also means enabling the Lebanese to live with dignity.

To find a school, a university, a hospital.

To find a job.

To be able to build a home and start a family.

To feel that the future lies in Lebanon, not at Beirut airport.

Peace, therefore, is not merely the absence of war.

Peace is the presence of life.

And this is where the Pope’s words, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” take on their deeper meaning.

He did not say: blessed are those who wait for peace.

He said: the peacemakers.

Those who make it.

And this responsibility belongs to the Lebanese before it belongs to the international community.

We cannot ask the world to make peace for us while we ourselves refuse to take part in making it.

Peace requires a Lebanese decision.

It requires a state.

It requires dialogue.

It requires political courage.

And above all, it requires a change in a political culture that has turned war into heroism, compromise into betrayal, negotiation into weakness, and peace into concession.

We must rehabilitate the very idea of negotiation.

Negotiation is not betrayal.

Diplomacy is not surrender.

And seeking a settlement that preserves Lebanon’s interests is not a concession of Lebanon itself.

States do not protect their interests with weapons alone. They also protect them through law, diplomatic power, the economy, alliances, institutions, and their ability to build balanced relations with the world.

The Lebanon we want must not be beholden to any axis.

Not Iran.

Not Israel.

Not the United States.

Not any regional or international power.

Lebanon first.

That is what sovereignty means.

Lebanon’s relations with others must be based on Lebanese interests, not dependency.

Lebanon must be a bridge, not an arena.

A state, not a card to be played.

A homeland, not a platform.

Perhaps this is the true meaning of Lebanese peace.

A peace that does not erase disagreements, but prevents them from turning into wars.

A peace that does not ask the Lebanese to abandon their memory, but refuses to let memory become fuel for another war.

A peace that does not forget the martyrs, but does not send their children to another death.

A peace that does not ignore occupation or aggression, but places the interests of Lebanon and its people first.

We must therefore stop being afraid of the word “peace.”

Perhaps we should fear something else instead: that war should become normal in our lives, while speaking of peace becomes suspect.

What country wants to remain a prisoner of war?

What people wants its children to live waiting for the next war?

And what state can build an economy and a future when the decision for war is not exclusively its own?

The time has come to move from the question: How do we win the war?

To a more important question:

How do we prevent war?

And from the question: Who is stronger?

To the question:

How does the state become stronger than everyone else?

And from the question: Who protects our community?

To the question:

How can the state protect all Lebanese?

These are not questions of surrender.

They are questions of nation-building.

The peace Lebanon needs, therefore, is not only peace between the Lebanese and Israel, nor between Lebanon and Syria, nor between Lebanon and any other state.

It is, first and foremost, peace between one Lebanese and another, peace between the citizen and the state, peace within the state itself, and peace between Lebanon and its surroundings and the world.

Peace means Lebanon ceasing to be an arena.

And becoming a state.

Peace means restoring decision-making to institutions.

Peace means placing weapons exclusively in the hands of the state.

Peace means making the Constitution a reference rather than a slogan.

Peace means making citizenship stronger than sectarian belonging.

Peace means making development stronger than war.

Peace means making the future of our children more important than our victories of the past.

And in the end, perhaps we should not be ashamed of the word “peace.”

We should be proud of it.

For those who seek peace do not seek less death. They seek more life.

Those who want peace do not abandon their homeland. They seek to protect it from becoming a permanent arena for conflict.

And the peacemaker is not weak.

He is the one who possesses the courage to break the cycle of violence.

The Pope said: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

And Lebanon, which has known war more than it has known peace, now needs to turn those words from a religious formula into a national project.

A project that says clearly:

We want Lebanon to be a state, not an arena; sovereignty, not dependency; citizenship, not sectarian power-sharing; development, not destruction; peace, not war.

Perhaps the greatest resistance we can mount today is resistance to turning Lebanon into a battlefield.

And perhaps the greatest victory for the Lebanese would be for their children never to have to fight the next war.

Blessed would Lebanon be if it became a peacemaker, rather than a perpetual victim of wars.