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Forty days ago, Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine passed away. An exceptional mind, a Shia democrat, a thinker of the living together, and an inveterate supporter of preserving Greater Lebanon. This article is not so much a tribute as it is a precise testimony of everything this man—humble, discreet, and unknown to the general public—was and what he brought to the public debate. He is a calm, slender, taciturn man. Every day, in the early afternoon, he arrives at the March 14 general secretariat, settles in quietly and gives himself over to his reflections, his readings, his writings. A new initiative, no doubt, is taking shape, worked out with his fellow travellers Samir Frangieh and Fares Souaid. The ideas Frangieh puts to paper, in French or in Arabic, pass through Shamseddine's hands — he reflects, reciprocates, adds his comments and observations. The intellectual and political osmosis between the two men, intensely human, is total, and the result always substantial, carried by a philosophical, humanist, profound vision of conviviality. Dressed in a light grey suit and a shirt, invariably sober, with Gaulish moustache and features, he smokes cigarette after cigarette, drinks cup of coffee after cup of coffee. The air of a poet from the early nineteenth century, tinged with a left-wing intellectual from the early twentieth. Pessoa having met Trotsky in a café on Hamra Street in the 1970s. Then the regulars of the general secretariat begin to arrive, one after another. The man remains placid. The body slight. Nearly motionless. The head, on the other hand, moves like a serene and composed racing engine, almost animated by a life of its own. Substantive debates follow one another, calibrated to the cultural and intellectual level of whoever is present. The master is not only a thinker; he is a pedagogue, an educator. And one approaches him as one would a sage, a druid arrived from another time. This is not merely an impression, an energy he gives off. The man is genuinely a well of knowledge and wisdom. And, above all, he has no need to advertise it, to display his learning, to accumulate the idle chatter and pointless tirades that others rely on. He is precise, rigorous, laconic, and allows himself, from time to time, a flash of sardonic humour when irritated by some leader's discourse, attitude or political behaviour. Megalomania, populism, the absurd reign of the inspired historical leader? All of it irritates him to the point of genuine restlessness. His voice rises slightly, but no more than that. The British gentleman in him always prevails, even in revolt. Despite the paroxysmal climate of hatred — the struggle against the assassinations, the shows of force, the acts of violence perpetrated by Hezbollah — the man refuses nonetheless the easy choice, the choice of instinct and impulse. He keeps a perfectly clear head. And the notion of living-together runs in his blood. He believes in it, unshakeably: in Greater Lebanon, the land of the Cedar as a “style of civilisation” and “one of the least inhuman societies in the world” — those two expressions of René Maheu and Georges Naccache that he cites constantly, as does Frangieh. “The philosophy of the pact and the spirit of consensus are the very essence of Lebanon,” he professes to all who will listen. Mohammad Hussein Chamseddine and Sayyed Hani Fahs, two voices of Shiite moderation. This man, to whom one owes, alongside Samir Frangieh above all, a large share of the documents and initiatives of March 14 since the Qornet Chehwan Gathering, is called Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine. He is a Shia from Arabsalim, in South Lebanon. He lives in the southern suburbs and has no intention of leaving, intimidation or no. Hezbollah, no more than anyone else, does not frighten him. With good reason: Shamseddine is a resistant from the first hour. Formed in the ranks of Fatah, within which he founded, with others, the Lebanese Popular Organisation of South Lebanon, he turned the page on the war once the war was over, working ceaselessly toward a national reconciliation capable of bringing about an end to the Syrian occupation, without losing sight, naturally, of Israel’s diabolical role in fuelling sectarian conflict across the region. One of the fundamental principles of his personal code is moral and intellectual coherence. The Permanent Congress for Dialogue Under the guidance of Imam Mohammed Mahdi Shamseddine, of whom he is one of the disciples, and of Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine founds, together with Hani Fahs, Samir Frangieh, Nassir al-Assaad, Saoud al-Mawla and Fares Souaid, among many others, the Permanent Congress for Lebanese Dialogue in 1993. A concrete, clear-cut initiative, indirectly inspired by the thought of René Girard and his work Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World . Its purpose is to bring people from opposing trenches to sit together and think through the war, which is promptly done. At first, not knowing one another, the exchanges are tense. One must play mediator and “translate” as each person speaks, since the war and its physical and moral barricades have dismantled whatever common language, lexicon or conceptual approaches once existed. But the barriers gradually fall, and a shared esprit de corps, consensual and Lebanist, begins to emerge. The Congress’s founding charter, drafted that same year, raises from the outset the question that no one, since the end of the fighting, had dared to formulate directly: how does one build a unified state without first answering the fundamental question of who we are and what we want? Because the Lebanese problem is not, in the first instance, institutional. It is a matter of identity, and therefore of philosophy. Lebanese identity is a complex identity, formed of a multitude of allegiances — familial, linguistic, cultural, religious, regional — that do not overlap and do not cancel each other out in succession, but integrate into a permanent process, always ongoing, always unfinished. To reduce them to a single belonging, national or confessional, is to open the way to violence. The Lebanese state, consequently, far from being an ordinary state, is called upon to govern not only individuals but communities, cultures, regions, sensibilities — and any mechanism that claims to simplify this complexity, in one direction or another, ends by crushing it. With Anne and Samir Frangié, as well as Chawki Dagher, at the ceremony where Frangié received the Legion of Honour on October 10, 2016. It is in this spirit that the manifesto for an understanding on the foundations of the Lebanese nation, published in May 1999 in An-Nahar and co-signed by some thirty intellectuals, politicians and academics of all confessions, gives public form to the Congress’s approach. What the manifesto rehabilitates is the “Lebanese dream” that the Lebanese failed to preserve: that “style of civilisation” grounded in Islamic-Christian conviviality, the culture of consensus raised to an art of living, openness to the world without dissolution in it — an original contribution, the text affirms, to universal civilisation, one the Lebanese had not known how to measure before losing it. One of the Congress’s first concrete initiatives will be a gathering on what was then called the ihbat , the Christian post-war communal despondency, with the participation of Patriarch Sfeir and Imam Shamseddine. Hezbollah, too, is invited to the dialogue within the same dynamic, through a committee set up by Tarek Mitri in 2001, which also brings together Amal and the Jamaa Islamiya. But it collapses in 2005, with the Syrian withdrawal and the polarisation of March 14 against March 8. The logic of the Congress will snowball and, through a kind of positive contagion, break the communal straitjacket that enables Assad to divide the Lebanese and prevent them from forging a sovereignty-guaranteeing unity. The Qornet Chehwan Gathering, bringing together the main Christian forces, takes shape, followed by the Democratic Forum, grouping the left and Qornet Chehwan, then the Democratic Left, assembling the sovereignist left-wing forces dissenting from a Communist Party syrianised to excess. Walid Joumblatt also broadens his parliamentary bloc to include representatives of certain sovereignist Christian political tendencies. Everything converges toward the Bristol Gathering, quietly sponsored in the shadows by Rafic Hariri. The fate of the Syrian regime in Lebanon is sealed. The Shamseddine philosophy In the same vein, Shamseddine’s leitmotif, what he repeats incessantly to everyone, is that the problems of each community in Lebanon are not problems specific to that community stricto sensu . They are the problems of all Lebanese. And that, consequently, there is no partial, regional or communal solution to Lebanon’s problems — only national, cross-cutting solutions to the communities’ difficulties. For him, the famous post-war ihbat was not a problem that could be resolved by one community alone. It could only be addressed within a trans-communal, and therefore national, logic, one guaranteeing sovereignty and a national equilibrium grounded in living-together, justice and freedom. The Qornet Chehwan Gathering was never meant, in this sense, to become a new Christian Lebanese Front, but rather what it subsequently became: a composite dynamic, a plural opposition. Nor, in his view, is there any strictly Shia solution to the problem of Hezbollah, whose resolution is Lebanese, and passes through a community of cross-cutting efforts capable of refounding the state and its monopoly on violence. Within this framework, he will never tire of recounting, to reproach a March 14 directorate that allows itself to be walked over, consumed by its internal quarrels and power games, or by the logic of cheap pseudo-compromises, insipid and spineless, the wise Arab parable that perfectly illustrates, for him, the March 14 complex: “A man is convinced he is a grain of wheat. Terrified of being eaten by a hen, he ends up being committed. After months of therapy, the doctors manage to convince him that he is a human being and not a grain of wheat. On the day of his discharge, no sooner has he stepped through the hospital door than he spots a hen and rushes back inside, trembling with fear. His doctor asks him: — But surely, you now know perfectly well that you are not a grain of wheat! The man replies: — Of course I know! But does the hen?” “The golden rule” Why this coexistence-minded Lebanism, respectful of the communities and their specificities, but equally of justice, equity and citizenship? For Shamseddine, Lebanon’s “golden rule” is a sentence spoken in the 1950s by Hamid Frangieh, directed at Charles Malik, then Foreign Affairs minister, on the eve of his joining the Baghdad Pact: “If the Lebanese agree on something bad, it immediately becomes a source of good; and if they quarrel over something good, it becomes a factor of evil.” In other words, consensus is the foundation of the Lebanese formula, and no absolute truth can exist in Lebanon. “It is Lebanon’s golden rule, at the origin of the 1943 formula. Unfortunately, since Taëf, the political class understands nothing of this rule and does not believe in it.” It is this same conviction that brings him, in 2004, to take the floor at a congress in Saydet al-Jabal and correct, with near-surgical precision, the misreadings the Lebanese political class has been committing since the end of the war. Three errors, he says, sum up the collective blindness: believing there was a winner and a loser, believing the defeated were beaten by their adversary, and failing to see that the defeat is first and foremost a defeat of the Lebanese by themselves, through their own disunion. To which he adds a fourth, perhaps the gravest: that of drawing one’s strength from abroad, as though sovereignty could be founded on dependence. The essential thing, he rules, is not that Christian and Muslim figures find themselves side by side in the same room. The essential thing is in the substance, in the philosophy of the pact — in the necessity of dispelling the fog, of recalling that consensus is not a casuistic method among others, but the very condition of Lebanon’s existence. At the book signing for his work, Zaman Samir Frangié, on May 28, 2019. For Shamseddine, the Lebanese state cannot be an ordinary state, governed by ordinary mechanisms. A simple state is necessarily reductive, and a reductive state is, by definition, totalitarian; unable to align itself with a society as complex as Lebanese society, it ends up seeking to reshape it to its own design, to “simplify” it. The true challenge is the opposite: to adapt the state to the needs of its society, rather than the society to the demands of a state poorly fitted to it. He will therefore never cease working, from the 2000s onward, to rebuild these bonds, initiative after initiative, notably the Beirut Appeal of 2004, which draws the wrath of the Lebanese-Syrian security apparatus, alongside Samir Frangieh, Fares Souaid and Saoud al-Mawla. To him, too, is owed an essential contribution to the foundational working documents of March 14, including the one that, at the conclusion of the movement’s annual congress, defines “the culture of peace and of connection in the face of the culture of violence and exclusion,” drawing a cross-cutting fault line in the regional conflict then under way. On the strictly Shia level, given everything set out above, it should come as no surprise that the man was an inveterate partisan of the wilayat al-umma developed by Imam Shamseddine and of the plurality of the marjaa , and fundamentally hostile to the Iranian wilayat al-faqih and to Khomeinist despotism. For Mohammad Hussein Shamseddine, the state project is the only viable guarantee for all Lebanese, Shia included, light years away from the supremacist fantasies sustained by this or that foreign power. The loss of a “kindred soul” After March 14’s self-sabotage, Hezbollah’s political victory, and the accession of the pro-Iranian party’s candidate Michel Aoun to the presidency, Mohammad Hussein Shamseddine’s faithful companion Samir Frangieh — his true political and intellectual twin, a man with whom he always worked in tandem, in resonance, in total synchrony — gravely ill and worn down by the wanderings and capitulations of the sovereignist political leaders, withdrew from the scene and faded away quietly. It was a political rupture, a clean severing of something whole. Shamseddine, whose loyalty was truly unshakeable, hastened, the following year, to write his friend’s biography, Zaman Samir Frangieh ( The Time of Samir Frangieh ), every page a testimony of friendship and gratitude, yet without emphasis, without the slightest grandiloquence. Simply a civic and civil commitment to Greater Lebanon and the culture of connection, of living-together, of peace. To honour Samir’s memory, Shamseddine effaced himself entirely. But he had no need to place himself centre stage — his modesty defended him against it. And, through Samir, it was of himself, of that same Lebanese coexistence-minded breath, that he spoke. Mohammad Hussein Shamseddine slipped away as he had lived, in the most complete discretion, on the night of 1 to 2 March, at the hour when Hezbollah was initiating its war to avenge Khamenei. With the entire country engulfed in turmoil, his death passed almost unnoticed. In any case, few Lebanese, beyond the circles of Samir Frangieh’s friends and the former March 14 general secretariat, knew him or had heard of him — and that, for the rest, was always what he had wanted. Yet history will record that it is largely to him, an honest, courageous and lucid Shia democrat, that most of the coexistence-minded and unitary political literature of March 14, in opposition to all tutelages, occupations and other parapolitical monstrosities, owes its existence. His path and his legacy constitute, in themselves, a testimony that Greater Lebanon, freed of its demons, possessed of a genuine state, reconciled with itself, is truly a “style of civilisation” that deserves to live.

A torrent of iron, fire, and blood – unmatched in recent years, except for the August 4 explosion at Beirut’s port – rained down Wednesday across Beirut, its southern suburbs, and countless towns and villages throughout Lebanon. According to initial figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, more than 180 people were killed and nearly 800 injured in a wave of simultaneous Israeli airstrikes, which struck roughly a hundred targets nationwide in just ten minutes. The attacks came even as a regional two-week truce had been announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, coinciding with the opening of Washington-Tehran negotiations on a comprehensive agreement aimed at a lasting cessation of hostilities. Israel struck Beirut and some fifty towns – from the south to Hermel, including Aley, Chouf, and the Bekaa – without prior warning, just hours after the army’s Arabic-speaking spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, issued the usual alert urging residents of the southern suburbs and villages south of Zahrani to evacuate. “Hezbollah targets remain squarely in Israel’s sights,” he had warned that morning. By early afternoon, the Israeli army launched what its spokesperson described as “the largest coordinated strike” against Hezbollah since the start of the war with Iran, hitting roughly a hundred Hezbollah positions across Lebanon “simultaneously, within ten minutes.” According to the spokesperson, the strikes targeted “around a hundred command posts and military infrastructures” belonging to Hezbollah. Yet, numerous civilians were killed or wounded in the ten-minute deadly frenzy, which Tel Aviv has dubbed “Eternal Darkness.” The grim name has fueled fears of a broader military operation against Hezbollah, accused by Israel of “taking refuge among civilians north of the Litani River.” Tel Aviv made it clear that the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, which it had nominally accepted, “does not apply” to Lebanon and that it would continue its military operations against Hezbollah – operations that, judging by Wednesday’s raids, amounted to near-indiscriminate warfare. The strikes drew sharp condemnation from President Joseph Aoun, who denounced them as “an act of barbarism,” even as Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz described them as “the largest operation against Hezbollah since the buzzer attacks.” Unlike the earlier buzzer attacks, Wednesday’s assaults hit not only Hezbollah members and supporters but also ordinary Lebanese with no ties to the Iran-backed group – civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. By early evening, another Israeli raid targeted the Tallet el-Khayat neighborhood in western Beirut, reportedly aiming at a senior Hezbollah official, according to the Israeli army. The scale and intensity of Wednesday’s Israeli strikes underscore just how fragile the Washington-Tehran negotiations remain, hanging perpetually under the threat of renewed hostilities. More importantly, they highlight Israel’s apparent determination to escalate its operations in Lebanon – a stance justified in Tel Aviv by the Lebanese state’s inability to disarm Hezbollah. Several Israeli officials have suggested that military operations against the group could extend as far north as the Litani River, aiming to neutralize what they perceive as a persistent threat to Israel’s northern communities. On Wednesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry publicly criticized the Lebanese authorities for failing to curb Hezbollah’s arsenal. In the coming days, it will become clearer whether this trajectory of escalation will continue or be curtailed. Iranian Threats Tehran responded to Wednesday’s raids by threatening to pull out of the ceasefire agreement and retaliate against Israel’s ongoing attacks on Hezbollah. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reportedly raised the situation in a phone call with Pakistan’s military chief, while U.S. President Donald Trump told PBS that the Lebanon-Hezbollah situation would be “dealt with” – against Iranian wishes – outside the framework of the next two weeks of negotiations. The U.S. president said this was due to Hezbollah, which he described as a “Lebanese terrorist organization.” He added that “this will also be resolved,” emphasizing that the ongoing clashes between Israel and Hezbollah were “separate skirmishes” from the U.S. campaign against Iran. His remarks align with reports from American media suggesting that Washington has effectively given Tel Aviv the green light to continue its operations in Lebanon. Moreover, Mr. Trump revealed that the document Teheran had referenced differed from the one that would actually be discussed in Islamabad. Since the U.S.-brokered truce was announced, the Islamic Republic has halted attacks on Israel and reportedly ordered its proxies to follow suit. Indeed, since the truce was declared, Hezbollah has not fired a single rocket at northern Israel or Israeli positions in Lebanese territory. It did not even respond to Wednesday’s raids, demonstrating, once again, if any proof were needed, its strict alignment with Tehran’s directives. Iran, however, has continued missile strikes against Gulf states, including Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE reported being targeted by 17 missiles and 35 drones, all “successfully intercepted by air defenses.” Negotiations Set to Begin Talks between Tehran and Washington are set to open Saturday in Islamabad. U.S. Vice President JD Vance will lead the American delegation to the talks, which are being held under the auspices of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He will be accompanied by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Tehran has yet to announce the composition of its own delegation. Both sides face a two-week window, set by President Trump, to reach a final agreement on a series of points around which a preliminary understanding has reportedly been reached. Does this signal a triumph of diplomacy? Not quite. The divisions between Tehran and Washington remain deep, and the stakes tied to the conflict – which has now lasted just over five weeks – are so high that compromise solutions may prove extremely difficult, if not entirely unimaginable. Put simply, the mullah-led Iranian regime is fighting for its survival, while the United States is defending its credibility. Viewed this way, Tuesday’s agreement offers both sides a temporary reprieve. The truce therefore feels less like a diplomatic breakthrough than a pause imposed by a convergence of factors: the exhaustion of the actors involved – particularly Iran, under heavy pressure from both Israel and the United States – and domestic and international pressures on President Trump, including major anti-war protests at home and falling stock markets alongside soaring oil prices abroad. The impact of Trump’s announcement was almost immediate: oil prices fell, sparking a rebound in financial markets. Another sign of easing tensions: Iraq announced the reopening of its airspace, closed since the start of the conflict. The United States remains firm on its conditions for a lasting agreement. While it has secured an Iranian commitment to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Washington continues to demand significant concessions on Tehran’s nuclear program and regional activities. President Donald Trump, who hailed a “total victory,” said the issue of Iran’s nuclear program could be “resolved” within the next two weeks. Tehran, which is calling for the full lifting of sanctions and binding international guarantees, appears to be maneuvering. The Associated Press has reported discrepancies between the Persian and English versions of a document outlining Iran’s conditions for talks. The English version reportedly omits any reference to maintaining the nuclear program – a provision included in the Persian text – something Trump appeared to acknowledge in remarks to PBS. In any case, the coming two weeks will determine whether this preliminary agreement can evolve into a lasting settlement or merely prove a brief pause in the conflict.

“When will the war end? I say: when we meet again.” Mahmoud Darwish I am by nature an optimist, without being armoured against sadness. Yet, despite the darkness and brutality of the war, I find myself living through one of the most hopeful periods of my life — contrary to many around me. I believe we are witnessing Lebanon’s last wars, and in the quiet of the night my thoughts drift toward “the day after the war.” I think, with genuine compassion and without seeking to blame anyone, in near-total neutrality, about the shock that will strike households whose members were raised in a deep hatred of Israel, its people, and Jews in general — Arab nationalists, Syrian nationalists, communists, Islamists of every stripe. Those who cannot bear to hear the word “Israel” and replace it with the “Zionist entity” or the “occupied and temporary entity”; those who once preferred — and some still do today — to burn Lebanon rather than abandon the liberation of Palestine, raising the banner of “freedom of armed Palestinian action across all Lebanese territory,” forcing their own state to surrender its sovereignty through the “Cairo Agreement,” as a sacrifice to the Palestinian cause. How will they bear a new reality in which Israel will not withdraw from Lebanon this time except through a comprehensive peace agreement? In which there can be no return to the 1949 armistice, but rather strict and binding security arrangements designed to guarantee the safety of its northern border forever? A heavy price Lebanon will be forced to pay to recover its land To those who ask me these days, I say: when the hour of genuine negotiation arrives, there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The price we will have to pay, if we wish to restore the land and people of the South to the Lebanese state, will be steep. Once more, read the text of the 1983 Israeli withdrawal agreement, which you scorned by naming it “May 17” or “the accord of humiliation and shame” — the same accord you brought down through the uprising of 6 February 1984. Read it again, wish fervently, and pray that Israel will agree to something resembling it after the war. My intuition, borne out by every visible sign, tells me it will not. This time, Israel will no longer settle for a conditional withdrawal or fragile security arrangements susceptible to being undone by suicide operations; sustained and sporadic attacks against its occupation forces will no longer be possible. The Assad regime no longer exists to support the “resistants” and cover their flanks; the theocratic Iranian regime is tottering; the Soviet Union has long since dissolved; and the land, now emptied of its inhabitants, no longer resembles what it once was — the people of that territory are the water without which the fish of resistance cannot survive. Israel will demand permanent guarantees and genuine international monitoring mechanisms in which it will participate and which it will oversee — or, at best, that role will fall to the armies of the United States and the Arab nations hostile to the Iranian regime. Foreign powers may even impose radical transformations in the very structure of the Lebanese state, so that the South does not once again become a launchpad for rockets fired at northern Israel, or a network of tunnels from which to strike it. Those who built their identity upon “the Islamic resistance in Lebanon” will discover that this chapter has definitively closed, and that the Khomeinism they had embraced as a faith and a way of life now belongs to another era — a crushing burden for themselves, their families, and Lebanon as a whole, one that will be impossible to carry. They will confront a bitter reality: Palestine has not been liberated, Lebanon has paid the full price, and Israel has not been defeated — on the contrary, it now finds itself in a position to impose its own terms. The Lebanese will then understand that those who set Beirut ablaze repeatedly, who devastated the South time and again, are the very same people who today oppose any political solution capable of sparing the country a renewed catastrophe. But the day I speak of will not be one of revenge or mockery. It will be the day of an encounter grounded in the shared conviction that the wager on liberating Palestine at the expense of Lebanon’s existence was a grave mistake. What happened is that we were already living the Palestinian tragedy, and now we find ourselves immersed in the Palestinian and Lebanese tragedy together, having gained nothing but destruction and grief, at the cost of sons and daughters whose young lives were cut short for nothing. A day on which the Lebanese will acknowledge that the peace reached by sister Arab nations was not a betrayal, but the best of what was possible — the only choice that preserves what remains of our country and our state. A peace that means secure borders, a state capable of exercising its sovereignty fully, an economy open to the world rather than closing in on itself under the slogans of “resistance.” That day will mark the beginning of a truly new era. An era in which Lebanon emerges from the cycle of endless, chained wars fed since 1969 by the illusions of “the central cause” and “armed resistance to the last breath.” An era in which the Lebanese recover their right to an ordinary life: building their homes, cultivating their land, raising their children far from the sound of explosions, airstrikes, rockets, and fiery speeches. It will not be easy, for a generation raised in the conviction that “Israel is the enemy forever, and we must struggle without respite, whatever the losses, to erase it from the map from the river to the sea,” to wake suddenly to a world in which this “enemy” will not leave except after signing a weighty agreement designed precisely to protect it. But history shows no mercy to those who remain prisoners of the past, and the day after the war will be, whatever the outcry and whatever the cost, the day of those who chose Lebanon first — whether they arrived at that choice early or late — to rebuild together and heal the wounds of the homeland and of souls.

Since the outbreak of the latest military escalation on the southern border, Lebanon has found itself at the heart of the regional picture as a theatre of open confrontation, reviving longstanding questions about its role, the limits of its decision-making autonomy, and its capacity to bear the cost of engagement in conflicts that far exceed its borders. Against this backdrop, a fundamental question presents itself: how is one to assess the merits of this confrontation from a strictly Lebanese perspective, in light of the consequences it has produced on the military, economic, and social levels? The field data points to a considerable cost. Vast areas of the South suffered serious damage to infrastructure and private property, while waves of internal displacement affected hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, further burdening host regions and an already deeply strained state grappling with a severe economic and financial crisis. Key productive sectors, agriculture and tourism foremost among them, were also badly hit at the very moment when the Lebanese economy was in most need of any opening for recovery. Assessments diverge, however, when it comes to actual military gains. Some argue that engagement in the confrontation forms part of a broader deterrence strategy, anchored in regional balances, and that it aims to impose new equations or consolidate existing ones. Others contend that the results have produced no qualitative shift in the balance of power, and that the outer limit of political outcomes remains close to pre-ceasefire arrangements — or even to a return to the practical effects of those arrangements as they stood before the latest escalation — which raises questions about the relationship between the cost incurred and the results achieved, all the more so given that this escalation itself unfolded within wider regional interactions and logics that extend well beyond the strictly Lebanese framework. This divergence of assessment reflects, to a considerable degree, a fundamental disagreement about Lebanon's position within the regional conflict. Is it a direct party endowed with an independent margin of decision, or a link in a broader network of alliances in which local and regional calculations are inextricably intertwined? The answer is not merely theoretical: it bears directly on how the war is understood and how its utility is judged. On the domestic front, the escalation has revived the debate on the role of the state and the limits of its authority. The question of the monopoly on arms and the prerogative of decision over war and peace remains among the most sensitive in Lebanese political life. One camp holds that concentrating this power within state institutions is a sine qua non for strengthening sovereignty and building lasting stability. The other argues that security realities and existing balances impose different formulas, and that any serious approach to this issue must take into account the mutual fears and apprehensions among Lebanon's constituent communities. This debate is not new, but recent developments have lent it renewed sharpness. Experience has shown that the plurality of decision-making centres generates serious challenges in terms of internal coordination and crisis management, while also affecting Lebanon's position in its external relations, whether with regard to the diplomatic track or its capacity to benefit from international support. This question is bound up with a broader interrogation about the nature of the political system. Since the adoption of the Taëf Agreement, foundations were laid for the reconstruction of the state and the reinforcement of its institutions, yet implementation has remained deeply uneven, under the combined effect of internal complexities and shifting political balances, both local and regional. This variable-geometry application has contributed to keeping essential questions — sovereignty, institutional reform — in the realm of perpetually open and unresolved debate. Beyond the question of sovereignty, there is the matter of citizens' trust in the state. Successive crises, from the financial collapse to the fallout of war, have eroded this trust and driven large segments of the Lebanese population to rely on alternative networks to meet their needs. This in turn undermines the possibility of building an effective social contract, founded on a relationship of reciprocity between the state and its citizens, grounded in rights and duties. It is within this framework that one can understand what is sometimes described as a certain "selectivity" in the application of laws or in the approach to public affairs. This selectivity is partly the product of distrust towards institutions, or of the feeling among certain groups that the rules are not applied equally. Yet it simultaneously contributes to weakening the very idea of the state as a common and unifying point of reference, making any attempt to establish stable rules of governance all the more difficult. At the regional level, what is unfolding in Lebanon cannot be separated from a broader context shaped by the interactions between international and regional powers. The experience of recent years across several arenas of the region has demonstrated how internally fragile states can be transformed into arenas where these conflicts intersect and overlap. Lebanon appears, in this configuration, to be particularly exposed to the influence of these balances, by reason of its internal composition and the entanglement of its external relations. It is within this same framework that the recent announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran must be situated — a fifteen-day halt brokered by Pakistan, intended to open a negotiating process between the two parties with the aim of reaching a settlement to the crisis between them. This process, however, raises a series of questions for Lebanon, since it remains unclear whether this agreement concerns it directly or indirectly. It also raises the question of Lebanon's place in such arrangements, at a time when it has no official representation at the negotiating table, while the Lebanese state should in principle be the sole authority empowered to negotiate on its behalf. This situation illustrates a persistent problem related to the limits of national sovereignty: matters that directly concern Lebanon are being addressed within external negotiating frameworks without the state holding the role that should rightfully be its own. Faced with this picture, the choices on offer are neither simple nor clear-cut. A realist approach requires acknowledging the intertwining of internal and external factors, and recognising that any path out of the crises demands a balanced treatment of these factors, on the basis of consolidating the state — not indulging or undermining it. This entails, on one hand, strengthening state institutions and their capacity to manage sovereign dossiers and public services, so as to guarantee a just state, bound by the rule of law and ensuring equal rights; and, on the other, working to reduce internal polarisation and build a minimum of consensus around fundamental questions, in order to reinforce national legitimacy without eroding the role or sovereignty of the state. In the final analysis, Lebanon's recent war raises far more questions than it answers. It reveals the scale of the price that engagement in open-ended conflicts can exact, and casts fresh light on structural questions relating to the state, sovereignty, and the social contract. While readings and assessments remain divided, the central challenge remains that of turning this experience into an opportunity for a rethinking of choices — rather than allowing it to become one more episode in the spiral of recurring crises.

As noted in our previous article, the four pioneers of modern Lebanese painting – Khalil Saleeby, Omar Onsi, César Gemayel, and Mustafa Farroukh – imbued Western Impressionism with a distinctly Lebanese and Eastern spirit. Omar Onsi, a leading figure in modern Lebanese painting, is distinguished by his mastery of transparency and light. By working primarily in watercolor, he captured the poetic essence of Lebanon’s mountaintops and its natural landscapes. Influenced by Monet, Onsi abandoned the use of black, instead rendering shadows in deep blues and purples. Painting outdoors, his exceptional command of light earned him the nickname “Lebanon’s master of light.” With his rigorous observation of reality and a distinctly modern sensibility, Onsi helped liberate Lebanese painting from rigid classical portraiture, opening the way to scenes of everyday life and a heightened vision of the Lebanese landscape. An Early Calling Born in Beirut in 1901 into a cultivated Sunni family open to European ideas and ways of life, the young Omar discovered drawing and painting at an early age, encouraged by his grandfather, a poet to whom he owed his name. After a brief stint at the medical faculty of the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut), he abandoned his studies against his parents’ wishes and chose an artistic path under the influence of Khalil Saleeby. He went on to train in technique, portraiture and the nude in Saleeby’s studio. In 1921, he won a silver medal at the Beirut International Fair, marking the first public recognition of his talent. Multiple Influences In the early 1920s, Onsi spent several years in Jordan, where he worked as a teacher of painting and English. There, he encountered the stark light and desert hues. This exposure to the Levantine landscape deepened his sensibility and nourished his pictorial imagination, leading him to paint Bedouin scenes and arid landscapes in a style that verged on the ethnographic. Toward the end of the decade, he moved to Paris to further his training, notably at the Académie Julian, La Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi, where he encountered Impressionism firsthand, as well as the Barbizon and Fontainebleau schools. He painted Parisian scenes, nudes and portraits, and formed friendships with Lebanese artists in the diaspora, including the sculptor Youssef El Howayek. In 1933, he returned to Lebanon with his second wife, following a period of retreat in Syria after the death of his first spouse. This personal upheaval marked a decisive turning point in his artistic development: his palette grew lighter, his colors more vibrant, and the influence of Impressionism on his work became more pronounced. Return to Beirut and Recognition Upon returning to Lebanon, Omar Onsi made a living from his art. He held his first exhibition at the School of Arts and Crafts in Beirut in the early 1930s. The press soon hailed him as a leading landscape painter, and Beirut’s elite began acquiring his works. While continuing to depict rural scenes, Onsi also ventured into much bolder and taboo subjects, including the nude. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he exhibited across Europe, Egypt, and the Middle East, developing an iconography that was at once local and transnational. His Role in Modern Lebanese Painting Omar Onsi played a pivotal role in shaping Lebanon’s artistic institutions. In 1957, he co-founded the Lebanese Association of Painters and Sculptors, and from 1960, he served on the board of the Sursock Museum, which emerged as one of Beirut’s foremost centers of modern art. Until his death in 1969 in Beirut, he continued to explore the endless variations of the Lebanese landscape, while simultaneously strengthening the country’s cultural infrastructure through his teaching and active involvement. A major retrospective at the Sursock Museum in 1997 cemented his reputation as a pioneer of modern Lebanese painting. Today, his works are held in prestigious institutions such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, as well as in private collections, specialized galleries, and at auctions conducted by leading houses such as Christie’s and MutualArt. An Iconic Work One of Omar Onsi’s most striking paintings is At the Exhibition , created upon his return from Paris in 1932. This bold oil fuses portraiture and observational scenes, capturing a striking cultural tension between modernity and Eastern social codes. It marks a turning point in Onsi’s style and thinking, as he moved away from classical portraiture. The scene depicts veiled Middle Eastern women dressed in black, observing a female nude in a museum – Oriental spectators confronted with an erotic object from the West. It was a profoundly transgressive image for its time. In another room, a Western-dressed woman converses with a man in a suit and tarbouche, highlighting the meeting – and tension – between Western modernity and Eastern tradition. Its multi-plane composition creates a deep sense of perspective, while purples, blacks, and blues intensify an atmosphere at once intimate and dramatic, accentuating the light on the nude figures. The painting encapsulates the clash of civilizations between an established Eastern society and one in transition, offering a vivid reflection of Lebanese society during the interwar period. Next article Lebanese Impressionism: César Gemayel, a Pioneer Between Two Worlds Read on the same topic Lebanese Impressionism: From Parisian Greyness to the Light of Mount Lebanon (1/4)

Recent "spillovers" of the war beyond the territorial boundaries that had delimited the conflict since its outset, with their attendant casualties, compel us to pause and reflect. Guerrilla Warfare by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, or Régis Debray's Revolution in the Revolution? , to cite only these two works, analysed at length, in the wake of the golden age of revolution in the 1960s, how irregular warfare, far from being reducible to a simple tactic of harassment waged by weak forces against a superior adversary, takes the form of a subtler and more disquieting undertaking, in which the civilian population no longer serves merely as a refuge or logistical relay, but becomes progressively the very stakes of the confrontation, one that the dynamic of violence never ceases to work upon and recompose according to its own logics. Within this framework, the guerrilla — the post-Clausewitzian war — does not content itself with operating within a given social milieu that it would presuppose as already won over or naturally favourable, but acts upon that milieu with a will to reconfigure it, to compel it out of indifference or ambivalence, by generating situations in which all neutrality is rendered untenable. Guevara spoke of creating the revolutionary conditions rather than awaiting their "social maturity." This logic, which one might describe as a strategy of induced polarisation, rests on a relatively constant mechanism, whose historical iterations reveal both a remarkable plasticity and a formidable efficacy. An insurgent organisation first embeds itself within a social fabric that has not necessarily rallied to its cause in its entirety, conducts targeted actions against a state or occupying power, then exposes itself, deliberately or by calculation, to reprisals whose scale, frequently disproportionate, falls indiscriminately upon combatants and civilians alike. Through this process, the adversary's violence, far from constituting a mere strategic cost, acquires an operational function, insofar as it helps produce the conditions for an emotional and political shift within the population, transforming endured suffering into a catalyst for mobilisation. "The fish in the water" Such a dynamic does not arise from empirical improvisation. It inscribes itself, in fact, within an already ancient theoretical tradition, whose most influential formulations appear in the writings of Mao Zedong on protracted people's war. The celebrated metaphor of the fish swimming through water, frequently invoked to describe the osmosis between guerrilla and population, suggests in reality a constant labour upon that "water," which the guerrilla strives to consolidate and politicise, sometimes at the price of deliberate constraint, in order to ensure its own survival and expansion. In Chinese revolutionary practice, this transformation of the social milieu is accompanied, among other things, by propaganda campaigns, mechanisms of internal pressure, and an indirect instrumentalisation of the adversary's violence, called upon to reveal, through its brutality, the oppressive nature of the enemy. The Algerian war of independence offers, in this respect, a particularly illuminating example of this dialectic, inasmuch as the Front de Libération Nationale, by conducting spectacular actions in urban centres, most notably during the Battle of Algiers in 1957, exposed itself to systematic repression by the French army, whose methods — where torture and disappearances coexisted with intensive surveillance of working-class neighbourhoods — produced a paradoxical effect. A significant portion of the population, initially reticent or cautious, found itself progressively drawn into the independence camp, not solely out of solidarity but also out of a form of moral and existential necessity, so intolerable had any intermediate position become under the weight of the violence endured. An analogous phenomenon can be observed in the Vietnam War, where the Viet Cong's implantation within rural villages did not rest exclusively on any prior allegiance of local populations, but on a capacity to exploit the effects of American military operations, particularly the massive bombardments and forced displacements that were punctuated, at intervals, by massacres of civilians. The events at Mỹ Lai in 1968 remain emblematic in this regard, insofar as they contributed to transforming a localised act of violence into a catalyst for commitment, reinforcing the legitimacy of the insurgency among segments of the population that had until then remained hesitant. "One, two, many Vietnams" In more contemporary contexts, most notably in the Middle East — that privileged laboratory of innovation in post-warfare — this logic appears ceaselessly in renewed forms, as armed organisations operating within densely populated areas engage in permanent interaction with the adversary's military power, whose reprisals, frequently broadcast across the international media, feed cycles of anger and mobilisation. In the Palestinian territories, the various phases of insurrection, whether spontaneous or organised, have regularly given rise to military responses whose effects on civilian populations have contributed, in complex and sometimes contradictory ways, to reinforcing the dynamics of support for armed groups. The Lebanese case, in its current configuration, illustrates this mechanism with singular acuity. Hezbollah, whose revolutionary heartland is today being systematically dismantled — its Iranian Pasdaran cadres and its own commanders hunted down and killed, its bastions in southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut reduced to rubble by Israeli strikes, while two million people were torn from their places of life — finds itself compelled to execute a strategic withdrawal toward regions that are far from well-disposed toward it: Beirut, the southern and northern Metn, for instance, milieus in which the war it initiated encounters muffled opposition and at times open hostility. This forced displacement thus opens a new phase in the confrontation, whose stakes extend well beyond the purely territorial register to become properly social in nature. Hezbollah has always openly claimed inspiration from and application of Guevara's subversive techniques in polemological terms, in ways that distinguish it from the formal, statist foquismo applied by the PLO during the war. Hezbollah fights according to a spatial logic, not a territorial one. The foco is therefore mobile, because the space of war is that of the wilayat al-faqih . Territory in itself is of no importance — it is disposable and expendable. As are the inhabitants of the heartland, transformed into martyropaths, prepared to die for doctrine rather than for land. Hezbollah proceeds by urbicide in the name of Iran's spatial empire. To this must be added, moreover, on the polemological level, a neo-Achaemenid layer of Persian strategy. Bound by the logic of empire and vast territorial expanse, the Persians waged wars on multiple fronts, employing to this end proxy wars and the subsidisation of allies through their satrapy system. They also financed enemy cities — including Athens against Sparta — in order to set them against one another, which allowed them to manage fronts without always occupying them militarily. The Persia of the Pasdaran thus fashions a kind of neo-Guevarist permanent revolution, applying across the region for two decades, and in the context of this war by bombarding vast territorial expanses, the Che's celebrated formula: "Create one, two, many Vietnams." The objective is not merely to pressure adversaries, above all the Gulf states, into conceding and seeking peace at the earliest opportunity, but also to internationalise the conflict as broadly as possible in order, paradoxically, to bring it to an end. The "win-win" game Beyond Hezbollah's urban maquis, a calculation of an altogether different order takes shape, one that might be described as a subversive positive-sum game working to the exclusive advantage of the armed organisation — the sinister and now notorious win-win game. By inserting itself into zones resistant to the war and by sustaining activities that expose those zones to Israeli strikes, Hezbollah compels Israel to bomb populations that are hostile to it, turning the adversary, despite itself, into an instrument of loyalty recomposition. The suffering inflicted upon milieus that had contested the war cannot, within this schema, but draw them closer, by necessity, to the one who presents itself as the only available protector. But the calculation extends further still, for the presence of the displaced from southern Lebanon in these neighbourhoods provokes, among the host populations, reactions of hostility and at times open rejection — tensions from which the organisation profits, by a mirror effect, to foster a sense of internal cohesion among its own. There is no more powerful cement than the shared sense of belonging nowhere, and of being safe nowhere except within the ranks of the armed community, sheltered within the warmth of the communal asabiyya . The analysis of these phenomena gains in depth when it draws upon conceptual frameworks from political philosophy and anthropology, beginning with Clausewitzian thought, which, by affirming the intrinsically political nature of war, allows us to understand how violence can be mobilised as an instrument for transforming collective subjectivities. René Girard's theory of mimetic violence illuminates the way in which cycles of reprisal tend to be self-sustaining, each act of violence serving to justify the next, in a spiral where the distinction between aggressor and victim becomes progressively blurred. Michel Seurat's analyses of fragmented forms of power in the Middle East suggest that violence, far from disorganising the social fabric, sometimes participates in its recomposition, by producing new loyalties and redefining communal fault lines. Such a strategy, which consists in provoking or exploiting the adversary's violence in order to transform a population, inevitably raises fundamental moral questions. On one side, it may appear as a pragmatic response to a situation of radical asymmetry, in which insurgent forces possess no other lever by which to contest the domination of a superior adversary. On the other, it implies a form of instrumentalisation of civilians, exposed to heightened risks — sometimes without their explicit consent — in the name of a political objective that exceeds them. Within this tension there emerges one of the fundamental ambiguities of irregular warfare, in which the boundary between a strategy of liberation and deliberate endangerment becomes difficult to draw with any clarity. The guerrilla, when it operates within such a logic, thus does not content itself with reflecting a given state of society, but contributes actively to producing it, by transforming violence into a vector of rallying and making collective suffering a constitutive element of political mobilisation. This displacement — whereby the population ceases to be a mere backdrop and becomes the very theatre of war — confers upon these conflicts a profoundly tragic dimension, one in which the construction of loyalty passes through the shared experience of violence, and in which neutrality progressively dissolves in the impossibility of remaining apart. Return of the repressed? It is necessary, however, not to leave this logic without its counterpoint, for if the strategy of induced polarisation supposes that violence can indefinitely manufacture commitment, it sooner or later encounters a resistance that one might call, after Freud, the return of the repressed. The culture of martyrdom and the culture of life cannot durably coexist without entering into conflict — their collision remaining, in the end, inevitable. The explosion at the port of Beirut in August 2020 provided the most tragic demonstration of this, less as an accident than as a symptom of an organisation that has made death a mode of governance, and that found itself one day confronted, at the very heart of the city it claimed to defend, with the consequences of that choice. Eros and Thanatos cannot durably share the same territory, and one of the two logics will ultimately prevail — without anything in history permitting us to suppose it will be the latter. Yet here too, Hezbollah reveals itself to be devious, perverse. For beyond the asabiyya it cultivates within its own community — and indeed beyond it, through the creation of binary internal tensions, Good against Evil, summoning each person to choose a side — it is already laying the groundwork for a post-war order in which only one victory will truly count: the one that will crush dissident voices, the "enemies within," "the traitors." The victim of today, who seeks to extend the zone of support against the enemy, already presents itself openly as the executioner of tomorrow, ready to erect the gallows. The only viable logic, when confronted with this ideological impasse, is that of the double enemy: the "territorial" enemy, Israel, with its daily crimes against the civilian population, and the "spatial" enemy, Hezbollah, with its transnational ideology in the service of the Pasdaran. The urbicide of Gaza finds its echo in another, shifting, that passes from territory to territory. Between the two, how many more innocent victims will perish before the culture of life finally prevails, once and for all?