Najib Zwein

Before anything else, Sheikh Naim, you must understand that all Lebanese are paying today for your political recklessness, your blind submission to Iran, and your unilateral decisions that dragged Lebanon into wars neither its people nor its State chose or approved. Those who brought the country to this tragic reality and allowed the Israeli occupation to return to parts of Southern Lebanon are not those striving today to save the country. They are those who submitted to Iran’s orders and unilaterally declared war, outside the framework of the State, its institutions, and its sovereign decision-making.

In the midst of the great transformations sweeping the region, the Lebanese front appears to be the only one still waiting for the final picture of what is unfolding between the United States and Iran to come into focus. The agreement that halted the war machine and redrew the lines of regional confrontation has yet to reveal the full extent of its repercussions on Lebanon, while the Lebanese watch and wait for the coming days to disclose which direction the forces bound to the Iranian project will take, after long years of wagers, wars and ventures. It is true that the ceasefire represents a gain for all Lebanese, after the country paid an exorbitant price in lives, economic resources, infrastructure and social cohesion. Yet this development cannot turn back the clock, nor erase the catastrophic consequences the war has left in its wake. Every party today seeks to present itself as the victor, but the question that matters to the Lebanese is not who won and who lost — it is what the Lebanese State has gained, and where are the achievements that consolidate legitimacy, institutions and national sovereignty.

Lebanese have long repeated the popular saying: “A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one enemy within.” In few words, this proverb has distilled across generations an enduring political and national truth: external dangers, however formidable, remain less devastating than those that seep inward to strike at the unity of the state, paralyze its judgment and undermine its sovereignty. It is through this lens that one can understand much of Lebanon’s suffering over recent decades. Iran has never dealt with the Lebanese state as a sovereign and independent entity possessed of its own constitutional institutions; it has always chosen instead to operate through forces and organizations that owe it political and ideological allegiance. In the regional circumstances following the Khomeinist revolution, under the banner of “exporting the Islamic revolution,” it found a propitious opportunity to build relays of influence extending well beyond its national borders into several Arab countries.

For long decades, Israel waited for the right moment to liquidate what it considers a threat to its project, whether Palestinian, Lebanese, or linked to the Iranian regional agenda. Beyond military preparation, it worked steadily to arrange the diplomatic and media conditions needed to secure international cover for a major battle whose ambition was to redraw the face of the Middle East. When the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation erupted on October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu's government promoted the discourse of “existential danger”, exploiting the alignment of the major Western powers and above all the United States. That was the historic opportunity Netanyahu had been waiting for to unleash the devastating war machine, not only against Hamas but against anything that could be classified as an ally or supporter.

The entire region finds itself today before great transformations that are redrawing the political and military balances and equations. The war that erupted between America and Israel on one hand, and Iran and Hezbolla on the other, cannot be reduced to a passing confrontation or a limited skirmish, but constitutes a pivotal event whose profound repercussions will be felt across all states, and singularly in Lebanon, which finds itself once again at the heart of the storm. Experience has repeatedly demonstrated that great wars do not stop at the borders of the belligerent states, and that their consequences spread to fragile and torn entities, to states incapable of consolidating their sovereignty and of concentrating their decision-making power within their legitimate institutions. It is for this reason that maintaining Lebanon bound to regional axes and leaving it as an open arena for the conflicts of others places the Lebanese before existential dangers that it would be unwise to underestimate.

The file of Lebanese citizens exiled to Israel is among the most complex and sensitive in the Lebanese context, because it stands at the intersection of three deeply intertwined dimensions: the consequences of the Syrian and Israeli occupations, the legacy of the civil war, and the profound divisions surrounding the very concepts of the State, sovereignty, and justice. The State was absent from South Lebanon for decades, leaving the population at the mercy of the tensions between occupation forces and militia arms. When it returned after liberation, it came with a strict security and judicial logic, devoid of any genuine spirit of comprehensive national reconciliation. This is why the file has remained an open wound: Lebanon never underwent a true transitional justice process commensurate with the post-war era and the multiple occupations that had scarred it.

Since the emergence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Lebanon has strenuously sought to shield itself from falling entirely into the furnace of open-ended wars, adopting a policy built on two pillars: to be the last Arab State to sign a peace agreement with Israel, and to remain a “supporting State” for the Palestinian cause rather than a “frontline state” bearing the burden of war alone. This approach stemmed from Lebanon’s singular nature — its delicate balances and its political and social composition, which could not absorb protracted conflicts exceeding its capacities and resources. Yet this equilibrium began to shift gradually with the rise of armed Palestinian fedayeen action, as vast areas of South Lebanon transformed into what became known as “Fatahland,” under the aegis of Islamic and leftist forces. Lebanon entered then a new phase of division, particularly as the Assad regime exploited this reality and channelled it to serve its regional projects, turning the country into an open stage for wars and external settlements.