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One hundred and eight years ago, just months before the end of the First World War – on March 18, 1918 – Georges Clemenceau, then France’s Prime Minister and Minister of War, addressed the National Assembly in stark terms: “People say: we do not want war, but we want peace as soon as possible. Ah! I too desire peace as soon as possible. Everyone does. Anyone who thinks otherwise would be a great criminal. But one must be clear about what one wants. It is not by bleating about peace that one silences Prussian militarism. My policy is this: I wage war.” This statement by the man widely regarded as the architect of France’s 1918 victory invites renewed reflection in light of the regional conflict unfolding today. There is no doubt that those who are not committed to peace are great criminals! And this must be said of the regime in Tehran. In matters of peace, justice and freedom, its record is unmistakably clear. In the years following Khomeini’s revolution, the notoriously brutal Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali alone ordered the execution of 10,000 opponents. His notoriety was such that he earned the nickname “the Hanging Judge.” Between 2023 and 2025, the mullahs’ regime carried out 4,000 executions out of a total of 6,000 recorded worldwide over the same period. The scale of repression in Iran speaks for itself: between 1980 and 2022, more than 10,000 opponents were killed during street protests. During the latest wave of demonstrations in 2026, more than 30,000 protesters were gunned down by the Basij. It is also worth recalling that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the mullahs have given unwavering support to the brutal rule of Assad – both father and son – in Syria, as well as to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Bolstered by this backing, the latter has preached war unabashedly for more than four decades – and continues to do so. Peace has never been part of its calculus, only temporary truces between conflicts, used to rearm and regroup. Moreover, it has succeeded in rallying both fervent supporters and opportunists to its positions and strategies. In recent days, many of these individuals have suddenly “reactivated” themselves, presenting themselves as a kind of “drawing-room resistance” against Israel and the United States. Hezbollah is now directly subordinated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Since 2005, it has carried out a series of assassinations, beginning with former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Prominent figures associated with the March 14 forces have suffered the same fate, in a spiral of violence that, for now, culminated in the killing of the editor and socio-political activist Lokman Slim. These assassinations have helped Hezbollah intimidate sovereigntists and infiltrate Lebanon’s institutions and administrations with a host of corrupt and compliant officials, at the expense of Lebanese citizens who have long aspired to a genuine rule-of-law state since independence. This has steered the Republic toward near collapse. Since 1999, Hezbollah has faced thinkers, journalists, religious leaders, and student movements who, over the years, have endured continuous repression at the hands of security services initially controlled by the Syrian occupation and later by Hezbollah and its allies. Opposition parties eventually emerged, but the results of their efforts remained limited. At the top of state hierarchies, behavior ranged from direct or indirect collaboration with Iran to outright inaction. Champions of inaction, who justified their stance by prioritizing civil peace, delivered bland, soporific speeches that could apply anywhere, at any time. These inactive actors waited in vain for better days, acting with Hezbollah as the lamb does with the wolf in La Fontaine’s fable. Meanwhile, the so-called “peace bleaters” in Lebanon and the West have criticized the United States’ campaign against Iran’s brutal and xenophobic regime, which has used diplomacy as a tactic to buy time, weaken its opponents, and advance its agendas in armaments, nuclear development, and regional subversion. These champions of peace have nothing to offer but inaction in the face of Tehran. They argue that Washington’s and the West’s sanctions policy has achieved nothing over the past three decades. This is partly true – but without those sanctions, would we have had even a semblance of neighborly relations with Iran? Did the mullahs not at one point claim control over Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa? Without sanctions, could the situation have been any worse? The same “peace bleaters” criticize President Trump, rightly or wrongly, either for his perception of priorities or for taking action against Iran. They reached their conclusions within the first hours of the conflict. For the mullahs’ regime, they could hardly have found better supporters. This regime could collapse tomorrow or survive for months – or even years – but it will almost certainly be incapable of effectively exporting its revolution throughout the region, as stipulated in the Iranian Constitution. An American-Israeli campaign against Iran will inevitably have long-lasting consequences for the global economy and for taxpayers’ wallets around the world. It is the price to pay to curb the disruptive influence of a regime that has already destabilized the Arab world – and, arguably, the world at large. Those who are not fighters will never understand this! And as for the perennial opportunists, always guided by business interests, they have no objections to hegemony or the erosion of values.

On 28 February, thunder rolled across the world – an abrupt and violent movement. Brutal, certainly. Unexpected? Not quite. The event had long been anticipated – yet its timing, scale and objectives remained unknown. The date is now clear. The scale, however, is still uncertain. As for the objectives – what do they mean for Israel and for the United States? Given the stance of the mollah regime toward Israel – and the foundations of power it has built at great expense to pursuit the goal of eradicating the country and paralyzing Lebanon – Israel is fighting for its survival. So, too, does Benjamin Netanyahu. The objective that follows is stark: eradication. The United States has an entirely different agenda. Negotiations with Iran had stalled – a familiar Iranian tactic. President Trump, accustomed to swift deals and frustrated by his interlocutors’ delays, had one aim: to eliminate a religious power with which it was impossible to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement, starting with the United States itself. Along the way, he sought to avenge the 1979 hostage crisis, a wound that remained raw. The ultimate goal: to resolve the Middle East issue quickly and clear the way to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Could Netanyahu have pushed Trump’s hand? It’s a plausible hypothesis. For the White House, the objective was a quick victory without committing ground troops. For the Israelis, the approach is long-term. That difference promises to be a major point of contention. Russia: silent. Its focus lies elsewhere. Its positions in Africa, including Libya, are secure; its footholds in Syria (Tartus, Hmeimim) and Sudan (Port Sudan) are established. Only victory in Ukraine remains in its sights – a victory that will be sealed once negotiations with the United States guarantee recognition of Russian control and ownership of Crimea and the oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, which it has not fully conquered. Additional claims concern the broader future of Ukraine. President Putin’s stance makes it likely that Trump would support such negotiations. China: silent. Its main concern remains securing its supply of hydrocarbons, essential to maintaining its industrial power. The military successes in Venezuela by U.S. forces, and in Iran by American and Israeli armies – noting that both countries possess Chinese detection systems and air-defense equipment – do not prompt China to make a show of force, except – like the Russians – to insist on adherence to international decisions, which are otherwise ignored by both Iran and Venezuela. States that have sought protection from Russia or China after expelling other, perhaps imperfect but loyal countries, will find themselves at a loss if they become targets in the future, given the lack of a Russian or Chinese response to the offensive against Iran. The UAE Modernizes, Europe Absent What does the future hold for the BRICS+? Only time will tell. But those who claim to be protectors cannot afford to act solely as predators. Having freed themselves from Saudi tutelage – long burdensome and mired in conventional as well as economic stagnation – the Emirates have modernized, paving the way for a prosperous, globally connected future. They have secured strategic autonomy, and the contrast with Saudi geopolitics is evident on almost every front: Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner of Pakistan and backs Somalia’s federal government, while the UAE leans toward India and maintains a special relationship with the unrecognized Somaliland; in Sudan, Riyadh supports the regular army (SAF), whereas UAE backs the Rapid Support Forces (RSF); in Yemen, Saudi Arabia supports the internationally recognized government, the UAE the southern separatists; at sea, in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, Saudi Arabia pursues a national security strategy, while the UAE has developed a network of ports and logistics hubs across the Indian Ocean. Finally, regarding Israel, Saudi Arabia has still not officially recognized the Jewish state, unlike the UAE, signatories of the Abraham Accords (2020). Saudi Arabia, aspiring to be a territorial and political power, seeks to establish a system of collective security. The Emirates, by contrast, aim for maritime and commercial partners. Two very different approaches to politics, international relations, and diplomacy. Two divergent global positions in terms of influence and action. Europe? Absent. Or at least inaudible. It had every reason and every opportunity to play a role – the capacity to do so was there. How could it, when part of Europe is focused on the East, hypnotized like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights, while another, smaller portion looks toward the sea, the Mediterranean, and the Near and Middle East? A third part is incapable of action, viscerally attached to the United States, no matter the cost. And Iran in all this? Who is in command, who is leading, who has a strategy? For now, Iran attacks every country. In conclusion, the United States and Israel pursue different objectives at different tempos. There was a convergence of immediate interests. In the medium and long term, however, their paths appear to diverge sharply. Israel has no intention of negotiating. What, then, will become of Iran? Fragmented, fractured, Westernized? In any of these scenarios, the outcome would favor neither Russia nor China. As for the United States, fixated on its desire to see this reviled religious government disappear, it could not negotiate on its own terms. Now, the question remains: with whom will it negotiate?

What is happening in Lebanon today can no longer be understood within the framework of a war or a conventional conflict, but within what René Girard described as the “spiral of violence”: violence is no longer a means, it becomes an autonomous system that reproduces itself through discourse before it does so on the ground. In this context, Hezbollah’s discourse, no less than the statements of figures such as Mahmoud Qomati, cannot be read as situational or emotional expressions. We are facing a coherent discursive structure, one that goes beyond politics to remake society through symbolic and material force alike — the discourse itself becoming an instrument for reshaping reality, not merely reflecting it. This is where the danger of a political discourse built on accusations of treason and intimidation reveals itself: not as a situational aberration, but as a component of a deeper structure seeking to redefine the very notions of state, society, and legitimacy. René Girard offers an indispensable analytical framework for understanding what is unfolding, through his concepts of “founding violence” and the “scapegoat mechanism.” Violence, according to Girard, persists only if it is relegitimized through a moral discourse that confers upon it a quality of necessity or sanctity. In the Lebanese case, one can clearly observe: the conversion of war into a moral duty, the redefinition of defeat as “sacrifice,” and the reduction of opposition to the concept of “treason.” In this sense, the accusation of treason is not deployed as a descriptive tool but as a mechanism of exclusion, preparing the isolation of the dissenter and stripping him of his legitimacy. In his theory of the scapegoat, Girard shows that societies in crisis tend to displace their internal tension onto a substitute victim, who is made to bear responsibility for the chaos. What we are witnessing today is a gradual shift: from a clearly identified external enemy to an internal enemy of multiple faces, encompassing the media, opponents, and even anxious citizens. This shift is not incidental: it is a symptom of a profound crisis in the structure of legitimacy, where the maintenance of internal cohesion becomes conditional on the production of an “internal enemy.” The Spiral of Violence as a Self-Regenerating Mechanism Jeanne-Henriette Louis, in her work L’engrenage de la violence, offers a complementary framework, illuminating how violence transforms into a closed system that reproduces itself: violence generates fear, fear generates silence, and silence permits more violence. In the Lebanese case, this loop manifests clearly: a war that drains society without end, a discourse that justifies it and forecloses all questioning of it, social and media pressure to silence dissenting voices. The result is not merely the perpetuation of violence, but its consolidation as the norm. Adaptation to Violence Some read society’s adaptation to this violence as a positive sign — which is precisely what Boris Cyrulnik’s writings contradict, through his analysis of the phenomenon of “adaptation to trauma.” Societies subjected to repeated traumatic events may develop defensive mechanisms that lead them to accept what was previously considered unacceptable. In Lebanon, this adaptation manifests in: the normalization of the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the acceptance of destruction as a given, and silence in the face of a discourse of internal threat. This adaptation does not signify recovery; it indicates, on the contrary, a profound dysfunction in the perception of reality, where trauma is absorbed rather than addressed. The most striking mutation in Hezbollah’s current discourse remains its shift from expression to imposition. The discourse no longer seeks to persuade; it aims to impose a particular definition of patriotism, to monopolize the designation of the enemy, to intimidate those who disagree. This translates concretely into the emergence of an illegitimate parallel power: one capable of making existential decisions (such as war), without being held accountable to any institution whatsoever. Yet the paradox lies in the abyss between the narrative and reality: against the discourse of power and victory, Lebanon is confronted with an entirely different reality — the displacement of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the massive destruction of infrastructure, the deepening of economic collapse, the erosion of state institutions. This gap between narrative and reality is not a mere contradiction: it is a constitutive element of the perpetuation of the crisis, insofar as it prevents any serious revision or genuine reckoning. This leads us to the disintegration of the social contract itself: in any state, the decision to go to war is one of the most significant expressions of sovereignty, and is subject to the principle of accountability. But in the Lebanese case: the decision is made outside official frameworks, its consequences are imposed on society, and any debate around it is forbidden. This reality leads to the disintegration of the social contract, where the citizen loses his role as a partner in decision-making and is reduced to a passive recipient of its effects. Lebanon today stands at a decisive crossroads. The question is no longer solely that of an external confrontation, but of the nature of the internal system taking shape under the pressure of the war and the discourse accompanying it. If the spiral of violence, as Girard describes it, continues unbroken, it will not lead to stability, but to further escalation and explosion. And if adaptation to trauma persists, as Cyrulnik warns, society will gradually lose its capacity to distinguish the normal from the abnormal. The real danger lies not only in the war itself, but in its transformation into a permanent condition, remaking society on the basis of fear rather than citizenship. Breaking this loop begins with returning to the fundamental questions: Who holds the power to decide on war? Who bears responsibility? And where does the citizen stand in all of this? Without that, Lebanon will not be a state, but an open arena for conflicts that exceed its capacity for endurance.

Political circles around the world, and more particularly international markets, lived this Monday, March 23, in anguish over military developments that risked occurring upon the expiration, in the evening, of the ultimatum launched by President Donald Trump to the Iranian regime, enjoining it to ensure free maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, failing which he would order the bombing of power plants and energy infrastructure in Iran. In response, Tehran threatened to attack energy and vital facilities, particularly seawater desalination plants, in several Gulf countries. Monday thus began in a particularly tense climate until the White House chief suddenly revealed in the early afternoon (Beirut time) that discussions had been engaged over the weekend with “the Iranian State,” he specified without any reference to the Islamic Republic, in order to reach an “agreement,” the outlines of which he did not indicate. He merely pointed out in this context that he had postponed the bombing of electrical and energy facilities for “five days,” allowing time for the talks engaged with the Iranian regime to unfold. In a frank discussion with journalists, the US president revealed that contacts had been undertaken with “a very respected senior Iranian official,” noting in this regard that it was not the new Supreme Leader, whose fate, health condition, and location remain a mystery. In the late afternoon, Israeli sources revealed that the “senior official” in question is the head of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, a former general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and former police chief. Israeli media and American sources went so far as to emphasize that formal talks were planned in Islamabad, Pakistan, between Mr. Ghalibaf, on the one hand, and American Vice President Mr. Vance, and negotiators designated by Mr. Trump. But a new twist: shortly after the US President's announcement, media close to the Pasdaran, as well as the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and "authorized sources" in Tehran, categorically denied any contact, direct or indirect, with the US Administration. Following the denial made public by the Pasdaran, the main person concerned, the head of Parliament, also published a statement in the early evening affirming that no negotiations had taken place with Washington, neither directly nor through a mediator. This fluctuation at the Iranian level has raised many questions. Did President Trump have discussions with a “moderate” wing of the Iranian regime, represented in this instance by the Speaker of Parliament, without the Revolutionary Guards being closely or remotely involved? Did the denial, which the Pasdaran hastened to publish, bring to light a clear fault line within the regime between a pragmatic current, advocating a realistic agreement with the United States, and the radical hardline faction that refuses any compromise and insists on continuing the fight with the United States and Israel? In recent years, there has often been talk of such a split between "reformist" and "radical" currents in Iran, but given the turn taken by the total war waged by the American and Israeli armies against the mullahs' regime, the fissure between these two wings of power, controlled before the war by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has undoubtedly widened and could very likely have led to a deep fracture within the regime between the "pragmatists" and the "radicals," especially in the absence of a Supreme Leader capable of acting as an arbiter and last resort. This break and the absence of the authority of the walih el-faqih would explain the speed with which the Pasdaran rushed to deny any draft agreement or any negotiation initiated with the American side. With the clear aim of discrediting and emptying of its content the announcement made by President Trump, the Pasdaran and the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs went so far as to affirm that the statements made by the White House chief constitute only a "maneuver aimed at lowering the price of oil on the international market." Whether this imputation of motive is founded or not, the American president's revelations indeed caused a rapid drop in the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, for May delivery, which lost nearly 7.4% of its value in a few hours, falling to 90.95 dollars. In this context, some observers emphasize that the new five-day deadline, thus until Friday, set by President Trump reflects a desire to calm the markets throughout this week and to stem the climate of panic that was perceptible during the weekend and Monday morning. Regime change? In any event, President Trump maintained a clear climate of optimism throughout Monday, day and evening, which he accentuated by providing the broad outlines of the talks that had allegedly been engaged with the "senior Iranian official." He first specified that contacts had been initiated "Saturday evening," further asserting that a "regime change" is underway in Iran. "There is a regime change," he emphasized, noting in this regard that all senior officials of the power that was in place before the war have been killed. The US President affirmed that "Iran wants to reach an agreement" and that its new interlocutors in Tehran, whom he described as "very reasonable," have agreed to deliver their stock of enriched uranium, significantly reduce the range of their ballistic missiles, put an end to uranium enrichment and thus renounce acquiring nuclear weapons, and refrain from destabilizing the countries of the Middle East. These concessions, if confirmed in fact and materialized by a solid agreement, would amount to a total capitulation. The coming days will allow uncertainties on this plan to be lifted. In the meantime, military operations, shelling, and air raids continue intensely in several Iranian regions as well as in South Lebanon, where the Israeli army announced having taken several members of Hezbollah's elite unit, al-Radwane.

It Was Called Palestine In the aftermath of the First World War, and pursuant to the decisions of the San Remo Conference of April 1920, a new geopolitical entity was proclaimed in the Middle East under the name of the State of Palestine, constituted of the sanjaks of Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre according to the administrative division of the defeated Ottoman Empire, with the addition of the Transjordanian Badiya. The constitution of the State of Palestine was signed on 10 August 1922, and the population census was likewise completed on 23 October of the same year. The League of Nations, designated guardian of human civilization and guarantor of its flourishing, had issued a document specifying the conditions imposed on Great Britain, the mandatory power over the State of Palestine, the mandate being due to enter into force on 29 September 1923 and to expire on 15 May 1948. In order to resolve the question of the sanjak of Acre, which extended northward to the south of the vilayet of Beirut, a border demarcation was established between the French and British mandatory authorities, and the two parties concluded the Paulet-Newcombe Agreement on 23 December 1920, defining what we know today as the Lebanese-Palestinian border, which became the Lebanese-Israeli border upon the withdrawal of British troops from Palestine at the expiry of the mandate on 15 May 1948 and the proclamation of the independence of the State of Israel. As for mandatory Palestine, whose recognized government was placed under the presidency of the British High Commissioner, the Colonial Office judged it necessary to separate the Transjordanian Badiya, with a surface area of 90,000 km², and to create an emirate with autonomous administration, two years after its annexation to the State of Palestine, entrusting it to Emir Abdullah ibn Hussein, one of the sons of the leader of the Great Arab Revolt. This emirate in turn transformed, under the British mandate, into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The separation of the Transjordanian emirate responded, in the view of certain historians, to a British necessity: to facilitate Zionist immigration to Palestine stretching between the river and the sea and to foster the emergence of the 'national home for the Jewish people,' as phrased in the declaration of British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour on 2 November 1917. In mandatory Palestine, the labour market developed and the country experienced accelerated economic growth; Jerusalem established itself in its rank as the second capital after Cairo, while the port of Haifa took the lead among the ports of the eastern Mediterranean. The various spheres of political, social and cultural life flourished; parties, associations and chambers of commerce were formed, part of the agricultural sector adopted modern production methods, and the labour market expanded to meet the needs of the British armies that had made Palestine their operational centre for the administration of their colonies. In this context, three consulates were opened in Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa to meet the needs of the Lebanese community and its remarkable presence, whose numbers reached some one hundred thousand residents, most of whom returned to their homeland during the Nakba. Added to these were Saudi, Iraqi and Syrian communities of comparable size, until the hour of the end of the British mandate over Palestine, the hour that marked the birth of the State of Israel, following the defeat of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. These armies had mobilized some 25,000 soldiers, in addition to the Arab Liberation Army whose ranks counted three thousand volunteers under the command of the Lebanese officer Fawzi al-Qawuqji, while the armed Zionist movements had succeeded in building a more modern army that began the fighting with an effective strength of 30,000 soldiers, rapidly brought by field recruitment to some 115,000 men in the space of a year. The battle was thus decided on the basis of Israeli quantitative and qualitative superiority, while the Arab armies remained positioned in the rear, far behind the partition lines approved by the United Nations. What Happened in Jericho? Jericho, the land that witnessed the birth of the first human settlement aspiring to sedentariness, construction and production, thirteen thousand years ago, in the Neolithic era. It is there that the concepts of society and city began to form, in their embryonic state, before appearing in their full maturity in the Sumerian civilization. The Canaanites built it, the Babylonians inhabited it, the Romans passed through it, and it finally came to rest with the Palestinian Arabs. Jericho, city of warmth in the depths of winter, beside the Dead Sea that sinks four hundred meters below the level of the Mediterranean, where the baptismal waters descending from Mount Hermon find their rest — it is a symphony of history, geography and humanity, in all the dimensions of its singular uniqueness. It was there, in Jericho, that the Palestine war came to an end, a part of the cities and territories remaining under the control of the Jordanian army commanded by the British general Glubb Pasha. It was there that a congress was held, in several stages, gathering Palestinian notables in order to acclaim King Abdullah ibn Hussein as sovereign over all Palestinian territories and to proclaim the union of all Palestine with the Transjordanian emirate. That was the first Arab union of the modern era! Thus the Transjordanian emirate transformed into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, whose capital was Amman and not East Jerusalem. At the beginning of 1949, the law of Jordanization of the Palestinians was promulgated to deprive all Palestinian passport holders of the rights of Jordanian citizenship. By this measure, the Palestinian territories west of the river took the name 'West Bank,' the country being thus named after the river and not after its people. At the conclusion of the first armistice agreements with Israel on 12 December 1949, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon took part in the negotiations, while the president of the State of Palestine in exile in Cairo, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, and his Prime Minister Ahmad Hilmi Abd al-Baqi were prevented from representing the Palestinian people, despite the Arab League's recognition of the All-Palestine Government that had emerged from the National Council convened in Gaza on 30 September 1948. Thus General Glubb Pasha prevailed, the Palestinian president failed, and Palestine became either Israel or Jordan. It Came to Be Called Palestine The first decade following the Nakba was devoted to the reconstruction of the refugee communities in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip and in the diaspora, as well as in what the language of that era designated as the 'cordon' countries — Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The condition of Palestinians in the West Bank likewise changed: the designation of their institutions shifted from Palestinian chambers of commerce to Jordanian chambers of commerce, and this change spread to associations, clubs and newspapers — every sign bearing the name of Palestine was converted to Jordan. There was henceforth a king, a crown, a state and an army, but without the word Palestine. The Jordanian king being protected by the British Crown and American goodwill, the minds of the Palestinian Nakba generation turned toward the leader of the Egyptian revolution — or coup d'état — Gamal Abdel Nasser, to the point of believing they saw his image in the moon. Other minds rallied under the banner of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath, little matter whether the allegiance was to Damascus or Baghdad. In the context of the conflict between the 'Arab reactionary right' and the 'progressive national forces,' a Palestinian majority aligned itself with the nationalist and leftist currents contemporary to that era. Within this climate, at the dawn of the second decade of the Nakba, the interests of the Nasserist leadership in its confrontation with Arab reaction — Saudi Arabia and Jordan — converged with Palestinian longing and the passion for the recovery of Palestine. This is what came to pass at the Arab Summit of 1964, where a political entity was proclaimed under the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to which an organized army was attached, the Palestine Liberation Army, with the Egyptian command over the Ain Jalut Brigade, the Syrian command over the Yarmouk Brigade, the Iraqi command over the Qadisiyya Brigade, and the Jordanian command over the Badr Forces Brigade. From this point began the march of the contemporary Palestinian entity, which embraced several nationalist and leftist currents, but rested in its essence on the Fatah movement as the central current, tracing an independent path from the Arab capitals and characterized by conservatism, moderation, alliance and confrontation when necessary. Between Two Wars Between the humiliating defeat of the Arab armies in the war of 5 June 1967 and the October War of 1973, the war of the crossing of the Suez Canal, an urgent need was imposed on the Arab leaderships: to allow Palestinian organizations to 'light fires in Israel's environment,' in the phrase of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. The left Ba'athist leadership in Damascus outbid the Egyptian leader by demanding a war of 'prolonged popular liberation,' while the Ba'ath leaders in Iraq displayed an arrogance and condescension that General Hafez al-Assad was incapable of bearing. Thus was summoned the Palestinian armed struggle, emanating from a people eager to fight for its homeland, its identity and its political future, and it was to this rhythm that the march toward the recovery of Palestine on the political map was undertaken, whatever the cost. The cost was truly heavy in blood, destruction and battles: the confrontation with Israel did not constitute its only dimension, despite the wish of the ordinary Palestinian; each time the interests of any Arab state entered into collision with the Palestinian armed project, the results proved harmful to all, as was the case in Jordan and Lebanon: if the Jordanian regime succeeded in three years of conflict in putting an end to the armed Palestinian presence on its territory, the Lebanese regime experienced a different course at the moment of the signing of the Cairo Agreement in 1969, whereby the Lebanese state relinquished its sovereignty over a part of its territory, whether in the South or in the refugee camps. And so, as soon as the October War ended, Lebanon and all its inhabitants, Palestinians included, found themselves caught in the catastrophic consequences engendered by the Arab-Israeli negotiations under the banner of 'peace' — but this is another subject. As for the journey of recovering Palestinian national identity, it was concluded only with the decision of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to disengage from the West Bank and to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative. The Organization thus obtained official Jordanian recognition, without however receiving the Arab West Bank — until the Oslo Accords of 1992, in the wake of the revolution of the Intifada of Stones. Judea and Samaria When Sunni political Islam — Hamas — launched its war against the Oslo Accords, it advanced no slogan relating to national identity or to the future of the Palestinian human being. Hamas made the Al-Aqsa Mosque the compass toward which it directed its military and political operations, as well as the point of popular polarization, and the central mission, broad and undefined, was to 'liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque'; nothing fortuitous there: Hamas crowned it with the operation of 7 October, through which the commanders of the Qassam Brigades wanted, according to their own statements, to achieve this goal or die in its pursuit. The 'Al-Aqsa Flood' operation is a model of hardline religious thought, and of the most radical extremism in converting the course of the national liberation struggle into a course of Islamic-Jewish religious conflict. It is the very path followed by contemporary Israeli extremism against the backdrop of religious Zionism. I consider that both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, are victims of the intersection of a terrorism of religious extremism that exchanges services and feeds each other on both sides: an intellectual, political and cultural terrorism that uses violence and ever more violence, in the service of a conflict whose only outcome is the destruction of societies from within. This result appeared rapidly in the Palestinian case, and manifests in the Israeli case at a slower pace, but with striking clarity. The example is that the first measure taken by the Israeli government was to substitute for the name of Palestinian territories enshrined in international law at the demarcation of the Oslo Accords at the United Nations the biblical name 'Judea and Samaria.' Just as Hamas had abolished the national and secular definition of the conflict, leading once again to the erasure of Palestine and the return to the term 'Judea and Samaria.' Since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, 44% of the surface area of Palestinian territories in the West Bank has been annexed and Judaized; 90,000 dunams have been confiscated under the name of state property, while the occupation army has seized 27% of the lands as military zones; the number of settlers has tripled; nearly all Bedouin encampments and their villages in the communal lands and the Jordan Valley have been razed — not to mention the siege of cities, the destruction of three camps through 1,900 armed attacks, the destruction of 1,022 residential, agricultural and industrial installations, the issuance of demolition orders for 1,167 buildings, and finally the arrest of 11,000 citizens, the killing of 835 people and 6,450 wounded, men, women and children. Such is the balance, to date, of the intersection of two extremisms on Palestinian territories, territories that lost their name, recovered it, and now face renewed dispossession. It was called Palestine, it came to be called Palestine, but they now want to make it Judea and Samaria.

Almost three weeks of war and nearly a million displaced people. The axe has fallen. Displaced people who have essentially chosen the capital, already stifled in a Lebanon bleeding economically and, above all, devoid of political will to change a status quo that has become totally obsolete. A state of affairs that not only hinders progress but is, let's say it without ambiguity, responsible for all our ills. No country in the world, without a strong or at least respected state, can exist. Today, it is essentially the Shiites who are displaced. The very people that Hezbollah claims to protect. And the most frightening thing is that, destitute in tents and in the rain, many continue to swear allegiance to this party which has no god but itself. One can question the effectiveness of the indoctrination exercised by this militia, but it primarily reveals a political fact: the military entity and the political entity mutually nourish each other and regain strength in a context where the State, incapable of enforcing its sovereignty, finds itself powerless to regulate or integrate an entire community. In Lebanon, displacement is never a simple logistical problem. It's not just about housing, feeding, caring. It's about containment. Containing old tensions, latent fears, fractures that we have become accustomed to circumventing rather than resolving. And as often, what we postpone eventually returns, but worse. No one has ever eradicated anyone. It is therefore not a question of excluding Shiites from the equation, but of knowing how to integrate this community and its ideology within a currently fluctuating geography. Because beyond humanitarian reception, there is a tangible suspicion — which did not come from nowhere — and the fear of making room for someone whose activity is unknown, and who, by being a target, could cause what is trivially called collateral damage. This climate of distrust can only provoke sedition and close doors. Yet, the spirit of solidarity of the Lebanese has never faltered. We saw it in 2006, then after October 7th. But today, it faces an unprecedented obstacle: the fear of being exposed. Furthermore, while Lebanon displays a fragile coexistence, it has never truly shed the divisions created by the civil war. Certainly, technically, there is no longer an East or a West, but in people's minds, there is. And these divisions are rooted in a system of eighteen communities attempting to cohabit, each carrying its cultures, its narratives, and its sometimes diametrically opposed ideologies. These divisions have never been truly integrated into the state fabric. They have been managed, patched up, arranged, but they remain a legacy that each crisis reopens. There is also the immediate need for survival, to save what remains of the remnants of a life too shortened by expectations that struggle to emerge. The absence of citizenship in Lebanon, complicated by this communal system, is often rightly mentioned. But what this million displaced people highlights is that this absence of citizenship has concrete consequences: an inability to integrate segments of the population, a state paralyzed by its inertia, or even ineptitude. A million displaced people to house in dilapidated and crumbling infrastructures: a humanitarian and health catastrophe already underway. And the slogans, allegiances, rumors, and conspiracy theories, all this exacerbates the problem, but also serves to absolve the state of what it does not want to undertake. It's not about waking up and, with a magic wand, executing a decision. It's about starting to show an act of goodwill, even if it were to end in failure. Every war ends around a negotiating table. Will that of 2026 see the painful birth of a nascent state? Because by constantly managing in emergencies, postponing decisions, compromising with the unacceptable, we don't just mismanage. We get used to the idea that there is no alternative. And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous. Because at this rate, soon there won't be much left to displace. Nor to save. Any minister, however well-intentioned, cannot successfully implement their strategy if hindered by the hierarchy of their ministry. The systematic cleansing of institutions has never truly begun, and yet it is the key to the solution: a solid state that sanctions when necessary, that regulates the proper functioning of the country. For whether we like it or not, we must accept each other to keep this country... unless we have already decided to lose it.