Articles

I stepped into Nejmeh Square as a daughter returned to trace the features of a face long hidden behind rusted locks, barbed wire, and decisions that weighed upon the hearts of the people. I visit it for the second time since it had been closed in my face — closed in our faces, for years, those of us who once believed that squares were created to belong to us, and that cities only lock themselves in old books when historians write of sieges and wars. For long years, Nejmeh Square remained a name we pronounced with caution, gesturing toward it the way one gestures toward a wound that has not healed. It was shut by those who believed they possessed its keys, and the keys of those within it; our steps were confiscated, and our reunion with its corners — which know the sound of our footsteps better than the "guards" ever could — was indefinitely postponed.

On the third day of the US-Israeli offensive against the Iranian regime (the joint operation "Roar of the Lions"), developments accelerated on the military front and spread to Lebanon. During the night of Sunday, March 1st, to Monday, March 2nd, and throughout Monday, the Lebanese front erupted in violence following missile attacks launched by Hezbollah against northern Israel, particularly the Haifa region. Brazenly disregarding the clear position of almost all local political factions and, above all, the central government, which explicitly warned the pro-Iranian party against any attempt to become involved in the Iranian conflict, Hezbollah nevertheless made the suicidal decision to drag Lebanon into this war (yet another pointless war) to avenge the death of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, killed last Saturday, February 28, during the first Israeli airstrike in Tehran.

The dramatic circumstances the country is experiencing undoubtedly require the presence of statesmen! Lebanon has known them, and we miss them, especially since their number is limited. Certainly, a statesman must be in power to prove himself, and he can only assert himself in significant circumstances. Thus, since 1943, certain presidents of the Republic have risen to the occasion as head of state in the face of events. They have risen to the occasion either through their vision or through concrete decisions that have spared the country from catastrophe. They have also demonstrated their competence by firmly adhering to the Constitution and the laws in force, through force, diplomacy, or a wise and firm policy. Above all, they have assumed their responsibilities regarding the defense of the sovereign, independent state. Current events demand that those in positions of responsibility within the executive branch (for the legislative branch, one must refer to Mr. Nabih Berri) demonstrate that they are truly statesmen and not mere civil servants or administrators. There are statesmen in the government. The time has come for them to assert themselves and spare the Lebanese people the worst.

Could it have been otherwise? Lebanon, which has been since 1973 the sole active front of every regional war, could it, for once, have remained outside an existential conflict for one of its political components — Hezbollah — insofar as the latter forms an integral part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, currently under Israeli-American fire in Tehran? No. Hezbollah thus magnificently ignored the international warnings relayed these past days by the Lebanese state, to the effect that its intervention in the ongoing war between Iran and the American-Israeli axis would provoke its annihilation and cost Lebanon dearly. As if the party wanted to deliver a resounding snub to the President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, and to the Salam cabinet.

At the helm of Iran since 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had, for over three decades, embodied the ideological continuity of the Islamic Republic and its declared confrontation with the United States—the “Great Satan”—and Israel, designated as its implacable enemy. At 86 years old, the Supreme Leader was the longest-serving leader in the Middle East. Wearing the black turban of the ‘sayyed,’ a symbol of his claimed lineage from the Prophet Muhammad, he concentrated the vast majority of power in his hands. As head of the Iranian theocratic system, he held ultimate authority over religious, political, and military affairs. His portrait dominated the country’s public spaces, while the question of his succession remained taboo.

The dangerous juncture through which the Palestinian cause is passing is perhaps the most critical since the Nakba of 1948 — not only because of the erasure of the principle of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, the confiscation of their land, and the establishment of another state on that land, but also because of the nature of the Israeli project, which has assumed an expansionist colonial character and relentlessly seeks to devour ever more territory, thereby nullifying the two-state solution and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state even within its minimum borders — those of 1967.