Articles

What you are reading here is not one more article on a cause that the world believes it already knows. It is an attempt to understand — to understand how a people that has carried its dream for decades continues to carry it, on a land that has never fallen silent and never will. This text is the introduction to a multi-part study on the Palestinian situation, in its historical, political, and human ramifications. Because what is unfolding cannot be reduced to a headline. And because silence, too, is a stance. As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (Do not forget the pigeon’s food). As you conduct your wars, think of others

“They are finished (…). This war is seven times more powerful than the previous one.” With those few words, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth summed up the diection the war – launched on February 28 by the United States and Israel against the Iranian mullahs’sbregime – has taken, or is now beginning to take. The U.S. minister stressed that this war remains in its early stages, specifying that additional aircraft and military forces will be dispatched soon to the Middle East to take part in ongoing operations. The Secretary of War’s remarks clearly reflect the developments now unfolding in Iran. March 4, 2026, was marked above all by intense and sustained airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Air Force against regime buildings, command centers and infrastructure in the Tehran region. More than one hundred Basij centers – the repressive armed wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – were reportedly targeted by Israeli bombers.

The Salam government’s decision to outlaw Hezbollah’s military and security activities – and to prosecute those behind them – is undoubtedly historic. Yet, it remains insufficient given the sheer scale of the “descent into hell” that this Iranian proxy has, once again, forced upon Lebanon. It is historic because it shatters a long-standing Lebanese tradition of political self-effacement and complacency – a stance long dictated at times by a fear of an internal strife and at others by political opportunism toward a group that has, over the years, successfully imposed its grip on the country and built a security and military apparatus that surpasses the capabilities of the Lebanese state.

We have long lived under the shadow of the imagined power of Iranian propaganda — or let us say, the propaganda of the Axis of Resistance — which had made Iran into a great, cohesive, and untouchable power. Events have shown that there is a vast gulf between actual power and narrative power. This had already happened with Hezbollah: many had believed in the image of its absolute supremacy. Iran deceived us, through its followers and its media army — disguised television channels, paid journalists, digital influencers of every kind, and others — by propagating its fictional narrative about: the image of technological supremacy, and the image of powerful allies who support it (China, Russia), thus fashioning in public opinion the image of an "unbreakable axis."

The initiative taken by Hezbollah on the night of March 1 st to March 2 to reactivate the South Lebanon front, presumably at the request of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, will it lead to a return of Israeli occupation in part of the country's southern region? This question was acutely raised on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in light of the announcement by Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, of the Hebrew State's decision to "take control of additional areas" in South Lebanon "to protect border communities." Clearly, the Israeli army will advance into Lebanese territory and occupy new sectors that will be added to the five strategic positions from which the IDF had not withdrawn after the implementation of the ceasefire agreed upon in November 2024.

The least that can be said about dragging Lebanon into the war targeting the “Islamic Republic” of Iran is that it constitutes a crime against the country and against the people of the South in particular. It appears that the aim is to finish off Lebanon at the very moment the United States, in coordination with Israel, has decided to rid itself of the Iranian regime. What is the point of binding Lebanon's fate to that of a regime in Iran that wants to commit suicide? What is to be done when the Israeli occupation continues to expand in the South, the number of displaced persons keeps rising, and even parts of the Bekaa are affected? Is the underlying Iranian demand to push Lebanon into an internal crisis from which it can never escape, by turning the South of the country into another Gaza?