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Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi and former ambassador Simon Karam—Lebanon’s representative at the meetings of the ceasefire supervision mechanism with Israel—clearly unsettle pro-Hezbollah circles because they herald the long-overdue return of external sovereignty. That sovereignty means a state’s refusal to submit to any higher authority and its recognition by other states as an equal. Youssef Raggi and Simon Karam come at exactly the right moment—at a time when most Lebanese have grown disillusioned with everything. Many now look back with nostalgia to the period preceding the 1975 civil war, that blessed era when the Lebanese state was master in its own house, exercising both external and internal sovereignty—that is, exclusive authority over its territory and population. “One does not carry the homeland on the sole of one’s shoe.” It is worth recalling that there was a time—peaking in the 1970s—when patriotism was considered outdated. Certain activists and self-proclaimed intellectuals sought to outbid one another by being more Palestinian than Lebanese, placing Yasser Arafat’s interests above their own country’s(1). These lost souls, affiliated with countless fringe groups and seduced by the dream of a universal revolution, were little more than extras playing the role of useful idiots, much like pro-Soviet sympathizers in Western Europe during the Cold War. Later, these same rebels—our local “hardliners”—allowed themselves to be endorsed by the regime installed in Damascus, a regime that ruled with an iron whip. In the end, these “Young Turks” were absorbed by the Hariri system, which granted them comfortable retirements(2). What a heroic journey it was—from underground activism under the First Republic to cushy sinecures under the Taif Republic! And what of our sovereignty in all this, one may ask? Erasure and Renunciation Lebanese citizens had lost their taste for independence. No longer masters of their own destiny, they succumbed to the supposed comforts of submission to “certain demands.” Palestinian, Syrian, Israeli, and Iranian actors—separately or simultaneously—had all abducted Lebanon’s national sovereignty. The “party of foreign interests” prevailed, and collaborators could strut proudly as the state was hollowed out from within. Crude officers roamed freely in fashionable salons, while courtiers responded only with bows and flattery. Our politicians—mere supplicants—queued in Anjar, hoping for an audience with the masters of the moment. The outcome: a tamed parliament, subjugated armed forces, an infantilized judiciary, a “Finlandized” diplomacy—and the list goes on. Without Shame No, Youssef Raggi will not mince his words. He will not travel to Tehran any more than anyone else would have gone to Canossa. Minister Araqgi can meet him in Switzerland, on neutral ground. The days when our officials were summoned to Damascus, or when orders from the Pasdaran were instantly enforced, are over. Moreover, Simon Karam’s appointment marks a reset of the rhythm. Hezbollah will no longer deal with a pliable figure heading Lebanon’s delegation to the ceasefire monitoring committee. In his time, the former ambassador rejected Syrian domination over our national will. With full latitude, he will defend Lebanon’s interests—not those of the mullahs. Add to this that his appointment has stripped the Speaker of Parliament of decision-making powers he had wrongly appropriated. So, enough is enough—the patriots are back. And nothing is more exhilarating than breaking the chains that bind the homeland. 1-They were supposedly persecuted by « political maroniticism » 2- Then they could convert their militant past into financial assets or posts as ministers.

The Iranian party, Hezbollah, has never been a territorial resistance. It has been a militia of spatial expansion, using territory as an argument for legitimacy. It is time to acknowledge this, once and for all. Since its inception, Hezbollah has lived with a fundamental division: it is simultaneously the armed wing of an imperial project—that of the Iranian Wilayat al-Faqih as defined by Imam Khomeini—and an actor that claims to embody the “resistance” to liberate a national territory. “Space” first: that of the Shiite ummah, from Qom to Beirut, structured around a Supreme Leader whose decisions, in matters of war and peace, are binding. Then there is the “territory”: that of South Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and the disputed borders, where the party presents itself as a bulwark against Israel and the guardian of a national cause. This dichotomy is not new. Upon its establishment in 1984, under the guise of “resistance to the Israeli occupation,” Hezbollah began by eliminating a significant portion of the national resistance movement stemming from the Lebanese left—Mahdi Amel and his associates. It established itself on the margins: the Bekaa Valley, South Lebanon, and the southern suburbs of Beirut. There, it built a sprawling social infrastructure financed by Iran, and later supported by Assad’s Syria within the framework of the “alliance of minorities.” Even then, the logic of space prevailed: the party saw itself as the vanguard of an axis, far more than as a mere territorial actor. Between 1990 and 2000, this dynamic became partially territorialized. Hezbollah is leading the armed resistance in a South abandoned by the state, while gradually inserting itself into the heart of the system: participating in the 1992 municipal elections, the 1996 parliamentary elections, and then in the government from the 2000s onward. The Israeli withdrawal of May 2000 provided it with a territorial baptism: it could claim the liberation of a portion of the national territory, to widespread applause, while retaining its weapons outside the state's monopoly on legitimate violence. "Resistance" then became the key to remaining a militia in a state whose mechanisms it was beginning to systematically infiltrate. After the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005 and the Syrian withdrawal, the party crossed a threshold. It took over from Damascus's tutelage, aligned itself with the Mar Mikhaël alliance and the Aounist movement—a meeting of the two suburbs, south and north—and embarked on a veritable campaign to absorb the state. The July 2006 war provided it with a "divine victory" for domestic consumption: it reactivated its territorial legitimacy at the very moment when Resolution 1701 began to limit its military maneuvering. Two years later, in May 2008, it besieged the Siniora government and launched a punitive expedition to Beirut and the Mountain, before wresting from Doha the blocking minority of the government: the quintessential instrument of a supranational veto power legitimized… in the name of "resistance." From 2008 to 2015, prevented from openly conducting operations in the South by Resolution 1701, Hezbollah definitively shifted its center of gravity to space. It becomes the backbone of the Tehran–Damascus–Baghdad–Sanaa–Gaza axis. It intervenes in Syria to save Assad, in Iraq alongside Shiite militias, and in Yemen with the Houthis, all while supporting Hamas. Lebanon is reduced to a mere link, a logistical platform, a corridor for a regional project. The da'wah of resistance, in the sense highlighted by Michel Seurat, is now directed solely toward the investment of the mulk, the center of power. Imperial space absorbs national territory. It is this imbalance that October 7, 2023, shatters. By launching an operation that draws the entire Iranian axis into a high-intensity confrontation with Israel, Hamas precipitates the hubris of the system. Driven by territorial logic—not wanting to "abandon" Gaza, preserving the myth of the "unified resistance"—Nasrallah is forced to open a northern front. But the disproportionate Israeli response, military attrition, the gradual destruction of the party's leadership and infrastructure, and the internal Iranian crisis revealed the fragility of the structure. The fall of Assad in Syria and the closure of supply routes changed everything: the axis itself began to crack. The alliance of minorities collapsed, technically if not symbolically. Where it had reigned supreme over a disintegrated state, Hezbollah found itself brought to its knees. Its totemic figures—Nasrallah, Safieddine, and other mythical military leaders—were eliminated. The space collapsed, the territory reappeared. A new American tutelage locked down Beirut airport, a governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon (BDL) close to Washington was appointed, and a president from the military was elected with explicit international support. The barely veiled prospect of leading the country toward some form of arrangement with Israel. Too weakened for a direct confrontation, the party is retreating to its only remaining resource: its territorial rhetoric. It has suddenly recast itself as the guardian of sovereignty, the defender of borders, accusing the state—which it has methodically emptied of its substance over two decades—of passivity in the face of the enemy. Hence the current paradox: after fragmenting Lebanon's territorial continuity by multiplying "security perimeters," gray zones, and controlled routes, Hezbollah now invokes the state's "failure" to mask its own impotence. It is covertly sabotaging attempts to restore public authority—from the airport to the seafront and including urban symbols—while publicly demanding that this same state assume the responsibility for confronting Israel. Having been the primary factor in the country's territorial and political disintegration, it is now attempting to hide behind the fiction of the state to survive the collapse of its imperial space. The quintessential caricature of this decline is the Raouche Rock affair, the Tarpeian Rock, the ultimate stage of Hezbollah's "sound and light" demise. This is not merely tactical duplicity; it is an ontological fracture. Hezbollah does not know how to lose because it does not know how to be a purely national actor. As long as it is the local embodiment of a spatial project—metaphysical, ideological, imperial—it can justify its difference, its arsenal, its exceptional status. The day it reverts to being a purely territorial force, subject to the rules of mulk, to sovereignty, to accountability, it ceases to be itself. For Hezbollah, recognizing the primacy of the state means admitting that "Resistance" is nothing more than a slogan. And that it is now just one party among many, responsible for its record of death, ruin, and chaos. In this sense, Hezbollah can never be transformed into a simple political party. It must disappear, however ruthless that word, that idea, may be. The future of Lebanon is at stake here today. Solutions imposed from the outside have always failed because they stumbled against a local elite obsessed with the art of compromise, of "at the same time," of mutual nibbling away: appeasing the militia without acknowledging its logic, praising the state without giving it the means to exercise its sovereignty. But experience since 1967 is unequivocal: there is no state without a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, nor any territory without continuity. Sovereignty cannot be perpetually treated as a variable to be adjusted. The real fault line today no longer opposes "Resistance" and "foreign agents." It divides those who accept Lebanon as a political territory, with a state that alone decides on war and peace, and those who want to maintain it as a mere foothold in a sectarian, regional, or imperial power structure. As long as this ambiguity persists, Hezbollah will continue to play both sides, hoping that time, or a change of power in Washington or Tehran, will one day restore the illusion of its former grandeur. But the country's time is not that of the militia. Lebanon can no longer afford to waver between space and territory. It must, once and for all, choose to exist as a state—or accept being nothing more than the exhausted stage set for a decaying empire.

This term is more relevant than ever in every country in the world and has returned to its original definition: an act can only be consensual, or consented to, if it is accepted by the other party. The first example that comes to mind is the sexual act, which dominates headlines, drives trends on social media, and can annihilate a career or a vocation. As long as it applies to an act between two individuals, the term has limited consequences. But when it becomes the foundation of a policy, a society, or even the pillar of a country, that is a completely different matter. In Lebanon, everything is consensual: its democracy, its rule of law, its very existence. Originally, this much-coveted term comes from its Latin root consensus , meaning “accepted by all.” And that is precisely Lebanon’s curse: everything must be accepted by everyone, otherwise nothing exists. Trying to please everyone is the same as pleasing anyone, as Sacha Guitry once said. And in Lebanon, the “anyones” not only abound, they make the law. If life is made up of competition, in Lebanon it is a fan club: no one has lost, everyone has won—almost. The only time there was a loser (without naming them explicitly) was during the Taëf Accords, which reduced the powers granted to the President of the Republic in favor of those of the Prime Minister and the Speaker of Parliament. But, as Beigbeder wrote, Christians have broad shoulders and must bear all the misfortunes and sins of the world. Since that day, everything has been based on consensus, including democracy. A consensualism not between the different components, factions, tribes, and religions that make up the country’s communities, but between their specifically designated leaders or their parties—even though some enjoy a longevity far greater than others. All it takes is for a single person to wield a veto for the machine to grind to a halt, under pretexts as fallacious as they are varied, the most recent being civil war. Implementing Resolution 1701 (and incidentally 1559, which serves as its introduction) would lead to civil war. Granting expatriates the right to vote for the 128 deputies would guarantee blood flooding the streets. Begging (and the word is still too proud) for justice for August 4 would trigger an apocalypse more devastating than the explosion itself. In the name of consensual democracy, it is consensual totalitarianism that reigns. In three weeks, it will have been one year since the new occupant of Baabda took up residence. In his inaugural speech, some nostalgics heard echoes of a dream shattered on September 14, 1982. Others saw the advent of a new era, carrying hope. But once again, consensus has returned to the forefront, with its political and security scarecrows—convenient pretexts to slow down any decisive action in the eyes of those it affects. Today, we are at the same point as on January 8, 2025. Everything must be accepted by everyone, otherwise nothing happens. Under these conditions, it is impossible to build a state governed by the rule of law. Demilitarizing militias and paramilitary groups would be madness, because it would not be consensual. It would be state-sponsored rape, even if the rapist were originally the executioner. Not only would he have to be appeased, but also absolved; otherwise, it would be the end of consensus, and therefore the announced beginning of civil war. This applies to all files: the port, the major scandals, where it is imperative to preserve the consensual balance—that is, the confessional and communal balance. Why should a Christian minister be prosecuted and not his Muslim colleague, when religious dignitaries strive to draw red lines around every child of their community? How can an army composed of Shiite soldiers be sent to confront their “brothers”? On this point, we have in fact indirectly consented to security subcontracting entrusted to a foreign army whose ranks do not include sons of that community. Civil war? If it were to occur (although it takes two to tango, which is clearly not the case under the current circumstances), as Anatole France said, it would at least be less detestable than war with a foreign enemy, for one would at least know why one is fighting. Our true tragedy lies elsewhere: we imagine ourselves to be the center of the world. Everything would revolve around us; the entire planet would be suspended from our slightest movements. Reality is far crueler: we are alone, and the world could not care less about Lebanon. The day we understand that our navel-gazing has no place, that no one will consent on our behalf to the existence of a state, that law is not negotiable and sovereignty is not begged for, then perhaps we will stop waiting for permission to live. For by constantly demanding everyone’s agreement in order to exist, we have ultimately consented collectively, once again, to our own disappearance…

For several years, the Gulf States have been investing enormous resources to transform the region into a world-class artistic, technological, and educational hub. Qatar is no exception and has been doubling its efforts to attract talents from around the globe while nurturing local skills. The Qatari state continues to launch ambitious projects, whether artistic, architectural, or sporting such as the FIFA World Cup held in Qatar in 2022.To achieve this goal, the government collaborates with internationally renowned artists, high-level cultural and educational institutions, and top local and international talents. One of the landmark projects scheduled in Doha in 2026 is Art Basel, the global gathering of contemporary art. After Switzerland, Miami, Hong Kong, and Paris, Doha will host Art Basel from February 5 to February 7, preceded by two preview days on February 3rd and 4th. The event will take place at the creative hub M7 as well as the Doha Design District in Msheireb’s city center. As the world leader in contemporary art, Art Basel was founded in 1950 in Basel, Switzerland, to provide a prestigious platform for artists, galleries, and collectors from around the world. It sets the tone for the art market, influencing prices, artistic movements, and global trends. The Qatar edition of Art Basel 2026 was made possible thanks to a partnership between QSI (Qatar Sports Investments) and QC+. It holds tremendous importance for the country and the region as it highlights the cultural and artistic landscape not only of Qatar but of the entire Middle East. It also consolidates Qatar’s place on the global contemporary art scene. According to Vincenzo de Bellis, Chief Artistic Officer and Global Director of Art Basel Fairs, Doha offers an ideal environment for a fresh perspective on art. The country stands at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. With its rich and complex history, Qatar strongly encourages innovative artistic experimentations. The chosen theme for the Art Basel Doha, 2026 edition is “Becoming”. It perfectly embodies this part of the world, where ancient oral traditions blend with cutting-edge technologies, and centuries-old trade routes have evolved into vast networks of cultural and financial exchange. In such context, art becomes the most faithful witness of Qatar’s history and it clearly reflects the living forces shaping the region’s identity. For the 2026 edition in Qatar, Art Basel has appointed Wael Shawky, an Egyptian-born artist based in Doha, as Artistic Director. Shawky is recognized for his intellectual rigor and his deep knowledge of the region, qualities that led to his appointment in 2024 as Artistic Director of the Doha Fire Station. There, he launched the Art Intensive Studies Program (AISP), designed to foster critical thinking, hands-on learning, and professional development for emerging Qatari and international artists. Shawky has exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Tate Modern London and the MoMA New York. In 2024, he was acclaimed for his work Video Drama 1882 at the 60th Venice Biennale. He is currently exhibiting at LUMA in Arles and at the Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh. On the other hand, the fair’s selection committee includes representatives of prestigious local and international galleries such as Lorenzo Fiaschi, co-founder of the renowned Galleria Continua Italy; Daniela Gareh, director of White Cube London; Mohammed Hafiz, co-founder of Athr Gallery Riyadh; and Sunny Rahbar, co-founder of The Third Line Dubai. Hosting Art Basel in Doha represents a major event that will undoubtedly reshape the artistic landscape of the entire region, offering participants an international visibility and a unique opportunity to engage with the global art scene.

The Gulf States emerged and accumulated wealth through the exploitation of their energy resources, but they have also undergone, in rapidly successive stages, a profound transformation that has enabled them to assert themselves on the international stage. Eager not to remain merely “the Gulf States,” Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar sought to move beyond a purely regional status by building on the assets they had acquired, while multiplying and developing them through a process resembling a forced march—sometimes judged excessive or unrestrained, yet reflecting a determination that has allowed them to pursue their ambitions and achieve global recognition. The regional identity that characterizes these Gulf States has been given an international dimension. As a group, they have become a pivotal element in the world, a point of convergence. Their image has evolved, enabling what might be called their entry into globalization, to borrow a common expression in the Anglo-Saxon lexicon. Each, in its own way, has been careful not to remain isolated and has therefore made communication a priority—speaking with most regional actors, but also with those that exert influence, in various ways, over this part of the world. In this regard, one may cite the United States and Europe, Russia and China, but also Turkey and Iran, as well as India today. Dialogue in all directions: speaking with everyone and positioning themselves to facilitate exchanges, meetings, talks and negotiations. These are actions in which they now play a major and sometimes indispensable role. Their outlook, attention and actions have extended beyond the region between the Red Sea and the Gulf toward the East and the North, and today toward Africa, with a dynamism comparable to that of other countries diversifying their global relations—notably Russia, China and Turkey, and more recently, though still in an embryonic manner, Japan—without overlooking the former colonial powers and, of course, the United States of America. On the geostrategic level, these states have deployed an effective diplomacy that now enables them to engage with Iran or Israel, with a mediation capacity grounded in their economic strength, the remarkable development of their diplomatic tools and expertise, and their determination to be an indispensable actor the world can rely on. All of this has earned them recognition and a role that may go beyond their initial objectives, because they have been able to mobilize their strengths to achieve their goals and seize every opportunity that arose—sometimes amid regional disputes—where they demonstrated wisdom and diplomacy in order, ultimately, to gradually assert an aspect of their power. Relations, diplomacy, alliances, partnerships, dialogue, mediation, influence… The Gulf States have thus moved from what could be termed “hard power” to “soft power.” Their hard power was exercised as exporters of energy commodities and through their actions in finance, the construction of conference centers and exhibition halls, sports competitions and urban development, as well as the development of ports of international importance—Dubai was the world’s 11th largest container port in 2024 and ranks among the six leading players in the maritime sector. As for soft power, these states have developed it through the organization of various events that sometimes drew criticism, but were always carried out using the most modern and innovative means. Rejecting isolation, they decided to engage with all actors on the international stage, relying on their economic and diplomatic strength and rejecting the adage that “my enemy must be your enemy.” Why should that be a rule? They do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; should all relations with Russia therefore be severed? They provide their own answer. Thus, the Gulf States are not a minor partner for Russia today. Pragmatism—far beyond this single issue—has enabled them to achieve the international status they now enjoy and to carry out a genuine revolution in their operating methods, their conduct in international relations, and their dealings with partners. Their credo? To engage only in battles that are truly their own. There are issues in which one should not interfere; others’ interests need not be theirs. This blend of action and neutrality should not be mistaken for inaction. Note: The importance of this theme prompted the organizers of the 4th Mediterranean Strategic Meetings (RSMed 2025) – a conference held annually in Toulon, France, since 2022 by the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES) – to dedicate a roundtable discussion to it in the program for these days (October 8 and 9, 2025). Next article: The Gulf States, in search of a very specific kind of power (3/3)

All the thinkers and political leaders who continue to reflect on the unveiling of the countless facets of the Lebanese war, all those drawn to what Michel de Certeau called “cultural poaching, through which non-specialists and the dominated fashion a space of their own,” were struck by the passing, on November 8, of a friend and leading figure who was, and will remain, the essayist Jean-Claude Guillebaud (1944–2025). A journalist and editor, winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 1972, a great reporter and war correspondent (notably for Le Monde, Sud-Ouest, La Vie, among others) for more than two decades, and co-founder and president of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) from 1987 to 1993, Guillebaud authored some forty reports and essays, dazzling in the richness of their references. An editor with a luminous instinct, curious about everything, his books leave one with the impression that he had read everything, noted everything. His death, a loss for French and international journalism, is also a loss for Lebanon, which with him loses a committed witness, a great journalist who saw, understood, and made others understand Lebanon. His passing should also be an occasion to reflect on the memory of the Lebanese wars and to finally get to the heart of the matter—something that will not happen as long as the Lebanese themselves have not become aware of what Jean-Claude Guillebaud discovered there. The Ground Swell of October 2019 Jean-Claude Guillebaud’s last contact with Lebanon coincided with the groundswell of the “October Revolution” of 2019. Triggered by one injustice too many—the government’s attempt to tax the free WhatsApp application, in desperate search of easy revenue—the popular uprising led tens of thousands of Lebanese, thirsty for “a hoped-for but ravaged Lebanese citizenship” (in Guillebaud’s words), to thwart, for a few brief weeks, a political system built on “everyone for himself, omnipresent corruption, and the absence of even minimal citizenship” (ibid.). He reported on it in the weekly La Vie, in an article whose title echoed a saying of John Paul II: “Lebanon Is a Message” (La Vie, November 12, 2019). There he paid tribute to the Lebanese who had taken to the streets to express their rejection of corruption and political cynicism, at a time when many were convinced that the very soul of Lebanese society was irredeemably rotten. This was not Jean-Claude Guillebaud’s first encounter with Lebanon. Having come to cover the early months of a civil war that would stretch on for years, his experience as a reporter brought him into contact with many of the conflict’s protagonists, among them the deputy and statesman Samir Frangieh, whose friendship and integrity—not to mention his state of health—would matter deeply in Guillebaud’s life. In his moving short book entitled How I Became a Christian Again (Points-Essais), in which he examined the rational path that led him back to the Christian faith, the essayist spoke of his time in Lebanon and of the “funereal gratuitousness of the massacres” that punctuated the civil war—a war that would turn well-brought-up young men into monsters and awaken his conscience. “I think of the great savagery specific to the passage to action that manifested itself in Lebanon during the first years of the civil war,” he wrote. “In the evenings, in Beirut, at the home of Le Monde correspondent Lucien George, we would speak of it late into the night (…). We were living through indescribable horrors (…). Yes, that strange vertigo which, in a matter of moments, can transform an ordinary man into a torturer capable of anything (…). The event thrust before us a question that no longer truly concerned journalism, and that question was that of Evil (…). It was indeed this ancient question that resurfaced with a crash in the streets of Beirut or in the mountains of the Shouf Mountains, given over to the funereal gratuitousness of the massacres.” “The return of this spiritual question of Evil to Western consciousness remains associated with Lebanon in the 1970s,” he wrote (pp. 33–35). The Problem of Evil Taught by the Catholic Church, the existence of the fallen Archangel had in fact been “erased” from Western consciousness by the Enlightenment and the masters of suspicion, who reduced it at most to a personification of evil. Yet, on the doctrinal level, the existence of the fallen angelic creature has never been questioned. Thus, in a famous homily dated June 29, 1972, commenting on the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI declared: “Faced with the situation of the Church today, we have the feeling that through some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the people of God. We see doubt, uncertainty, problems, unease, dissatisfaction, confrontation. Trust in the Church has been lost. Trust is placed instead in the first profane prophet who comes along, speaking to us from the platform of a newspaper or a social movement, and we rush after him to ask whether he possesses the formula of true life, without thinking that we already possess it, that we are its masters (…).” Paul VI’s assertion, corroborated by the Popes who followed him, unsettles our rationalism. One might even speak of the metamorphosis evoked by J.-C. Guillebaud as a kind of inner invasion that temporarily dispossesses a human being of his ordinary conduct. What the Western Jean-Claude Guillebaud rediscovers through contact with the Lebanese war is a “key of interpretation” of a reality lost after the great void left by the “death of God,” which over time gave way to a spiritual desolation bordering on despair, and to an even greater “disappointment” with what the philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, in Introduction to Existentialisms, calls the “replacement myths” (p. 14). Subsequently, Guillebaud’s reflection confirmed him in this rediscovery of demonic dispossession—a rediscovery he qualifies as “flatly anthropological” (p. 47), and not sentimental or pious. This rediscovery said nothing specific about Lebanon or the Orient. What it spoke to concerned human nature in general, in the dimension accorded to it by Christian thought and anthropology. The Stubbornness of Hope What everyone can retain from Jean-Claude Guillebaud is his passion for knowledge, his deep curiosity to understand why things are as they are, or were as they were. His is an intellectual adventure of irreproachable honesty. Deploying all the skill and experience of the investigative journalist in the service of this need to understand, he thus became a reflector of an era. His books will remain beacons in the fog, with the sense of detail he displayed for pleasure and charm, and with quotations that are worth chapters in themselves, such as this one: “It happens,” writes Søren Kierkegaard, “that faith travels incognito” (How I Became a Christian Again, p. 183). Jean-Claude Guillebaud was a Christian of the stature of the great credible witnesses of Western conscience. “I do not believe despite evil; I believe with it. It is in this tension—between the wound of the world and the promise of light—that hope becomes courage,” he wrote in The Faith That Remains (Éditions de l’Iconoclaste, 2017). This sentence captures his spiritual posture perfectly: it speaks of a faith inhabited by grace, a lucid faith that makes contradiction itself—evil, suffering, doubt—a place from which light can emerge. For Lebanon as for France, and for his wife Catherine, his intellectual and spiritual legacy reminds us that in the stubbornness of hope there is an act of resistance. One is tempted to write: “Blessed are the meek.”