Opinion

When Israeli officials threaten to treat southern Lebanon like Gaza, the statement is not only reckless but politically revealing, exposing the extent to which regional escalation has become entangled with domestic calculations inside Israel while simultaneously reflecting Lebanon’s own structural paralysis. Such rhetoric should be dismissed for what it is—electoral posturing dressed as strategic doctrine—yet it cannot be separated from a far more consequential reality: Lebanon has once again been dragged into a war it did not choose, by an actor that does not answer to the state and does not bear the costs of its decisions in any accountable way.

Lebanon did not collapse because of a flaw in the numbers, but because meanings and values fell apart. Suddenly, the money stolen from ordinary people was no longer called theft, but a “financial gap.” There were no longer any responsible parties, only “losses.” And there were no longer any victims, only “depositors” who were being asked to understand the circumstances and share in bearing the cost. This is not merely a matter of language. It is the very heart of the battle. When a crime is reduced to an accounting term, the debate becomes technical rather than ethical and legal. The issue is removed from the arena of justice and transferred to that of management, shifting from “who stole?” to “how do we distribute the loss?” And here begins the great slide: the victims gradually transform from rights holders into actors in the solution, rather than bearers of rights.

The philosophical question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, appears almost simple when set against the issue the country now faces: a (peace) agreement whose signing is made conditional on the disarmament of Hezbollah. This condition – set by our government, imposed by Israel, and desired by a growing majority of the Lebanese population – cannot, however, be met within a set timeframe. Moreover, whether through the Lebanese army or through strikes on Hezbollah positions, the militia’s arsenal remains operational. The problem is not only the presence of weapons, but also the infiltration of the militia into certain segments of the state apparatus. The militia paralyzes any measures taken against it and, worse, triggers internal unrest, while also raising the specter of mutiny aboard a drifting vessel that has already begun to sink.

Lebanese people often repeat a formula that has become almost axiomatic in describing their crisis: Lebanon is trapped between an "extremist" triad, doctrinal and religious in nature, embodied by Israel, Iran and the United States of America. This expression condenses a profound sense of siege and pressure, and reflects a popular awareness that the country's fate is no longer shaped from within alone. Yet the strength of this narrative lies in its simplicity, while its weakness lies in the risk of concealing the complexity of reality and the multiplicity of its layers. In practice, these three powers cannot be placed in the same category under the heading of "religious extremism" without falling into oversimplification. Religion does play a varying role in the policies of these actors, but it is neither the sole factor nor, in some cases, even the primary one. The more appropriate approach is to understand each party within its own structure, and then to read how these structures intersect on the Lebanese scene.

President Donald Trump's various statements and U-turns will alter relations with the Europeans, NATO, and US allies. They will trigger reactions from Pacific and Middle Eastern countries. Westerners are advocating moderation and want to assume a role in securing the Strait of Hormuz after the cessation of hostilities. Will the United States be sidelined in the region? On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran without prior notification to the heads of state and government of Western countries and NATO members. In the aftermath, however, US President Donald Trump requested their support, notably for securing the Strait of Hormuz, but also to provide direct backing to American operations.

Lebanon and the Lebanese cannot confront the challenges facing the country while divided to this degree over the great strategic choices, especially the question of how to deal with the Israeli occupation and resolve the issue of confining weapons to the state, a legitimate, self-evident demand recognized in every country in the world, for there is no state that accepts the existence of an armed faction beyond its control, capable of igniting a major war not merely without its consent but without so much as consulting it. The lines of vertical fracture in Lebanon keep widening, and the rift among the Lebanese deepens by the day, until Lebanese political discourse finds itself confined between two poles: one racing toward a peace whose conditions have not yet ripened, and another retreating into the field without reading the exceptional transformations the region has witnessed over the past three years, from uncontested Israeli supremacy to the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria to the American-Israeli-Iranian war.

Anyone examining Hezbollah's logo and the image it represents will note that, since its creation, this party has been an armed wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is no longer a simple symbolic representation, but a reality supported by facts: Hezbollah has supported Iran because it is its armed wing, and Iran has often boasted of controlling four Arab capitals, including Beirut. The organic link between the 'head' and the 'armed wing' was confirmed by the ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon. The two agreements were inextricably linked; when an agreement wavered in Tehran, the other wavered in Beirut. So much so that some research and study centers claim that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), just as it controls the decision-making centers in Iran, also controls those of Hezbollah in Beirut. There are at least two pieces of evidence supporting this:

I once followed a long speech by the late Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, in which he recounted in painstaking detail the events of “the day the Prophet’s family women were taken captive.” He was visibly and deeply moved throughout. I remember being genuinely struck by the way this painful episode was summoned as though it had occurred two or three days before, presented in a manner admitting no question of its veracity, as if transmitted by eyewitnesses whose testimony stood beyond all doubt. Images of village women weeping in churches on Good Friday, listening to the chant “Wa habibi” or “I Am the Sorrowful Mother,” came naturally to mind. But those rituals remain anchored in their spiritual dimension, not in the precise time, place, and circumstances of the event itself, unlike the Ashura commemorations and the days associated with them, among which figures “the captivity of the Prophet’s women.”

It is a hangover that the Shiite community is experiencing—a real bout of intoxication’s aftermath. The Hezbollah–Amal tandem had elevated it to the height of its power: having penetrated the deep state, this community had entrenched itself there while positioning itself as a regional interlocutor after centuries of marginalization and discrimination. Then, starting in September 2024, the house of cards began to collapse under repeated Israeli blows. And in the end, thousands of families were displaced. Heartbreaking were those lines of cars that, having headed south following the announcement of the April 17 ceasefire, immediately turned back. A human tragedy that has been ongoing for weeks, affecting a confessional group and its members, who are at times stigmatized by their fellow Lebanese citizens.

Division in Lebanon is no longer a consequence of war; it has become one of its instruments. What we are witnessing today might be described as an economy of division — hatred converted into raw material, produced daily, manufactured, distributed and consumed, serving several parties at once, even when those parties appear to be in open enmity. The conflict has migrated from military violence to symbolic violence. When an elderly man rises to insult the head of government in abject language, when another attacks the president and reminds him of Sadat's fate, when children are trained in invective and the glorification of militarisation extends even to a shoe, the matter no longer concerns the individuals targeted but what they represent: a circumvention of felt anxiety and fear, a deliberate intent to embed in popular consciousness the image of a collapsing state, to normalise insult as a mode of political expression, shifting the conflict from a critique of power to its degradation and accusation of treason. This goes well beyond moral decline or uncontrolled rage; it is, at its core, the sign of a far graver mutation — striking the image of the state in the collective consciousness and replacing public deliberation with defamation.