Opinion

This country—ours, after all—deserves better than your “resistance”! But what curse hangs over us, in this Orient given over to the whims of warmongers and would-be martyrs? Every time Arab leaders indulged in incendiary rhetoric and were swept into wars, we were headed for disaster. Thus, on the eve of June 1967, the provocations of the Syrian Baath regime in Damascus dragged Egypt and Jordan into a six-day war. On one side, Egypt lost the Sinai, control of the Gaza Strip, and mastery of the Suez Canal; on the other, Syria lost the Golan, while the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was stripped of the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem (1). To this day, neither Damascus nor Amman has recovered from that misstep; the territories Israel had “taken” from them were never to be regained.

A young teenager proudly returns home and announces to his parents that he passed his exam, handing them his paper with a grade of 3/20 written on it. A failing grade, certainly, but for the student, it's a victory! And why not, really? Hezbollah proclaimed its own victory, in a psychologically charged moment, this Friday, April 17th, in a festive atmosphere, where its supporters let their joy erupt, along with the shells of B7s and RPGs; bursts of fire from their tracer-bullet machine guns lit up the sky for more than forty minutes. A veritable sound and light show over the capital, declared a demilitarized zone just a few hours earlier at a conference…

In seeking to understand what is happening to us, to understand myself and to recover some equilibrium in the face of what we are living through, I turn to books and novels about peoples who have known the ravages of war as we know them. Japan, with what it endured during the Second World War and in the aftermath of the atomic bombings, offers in this regard a model that may help us locate our own pain. Let us note, in passing, that the quantity of weapons poured onto Lebanon over the years now amounts to more than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Two works stand out here, Urashimasō and The Silent Cry . The first was written from within the event itself; its author witnessed the ruins with his own eyes, bearing testimony and describing the tragedies, the mutilations and the wandering he observed. The second was written after Japan’s defeat, and bears witness to the inner devastation of the human being. Comparing what they describe with what we live through, I found that the Lebanese situation brings together both sufferings simultaneously, with no separation between them and no temporal interval of any kind.

During the last Council of Ministers, last Thursday, it was enough for Nawaf Salam to mention the demilitarization of the capital for the Ministers of Health and Labor (representing Hezbollah) to step up and oppose it. Irony and aberration. The irony is that the ministerial portfolios granted to Hezbollah are those directly concerned by the dramatic consequences of a war: strikes indeed cause market stagnation and an increase in the number of injured and dead. The aberration is that ministers of a government refuse to allow the State to have full sovereignty, at a minimum , in its capital, and prefer the rule of chaos and paramilitary groups to that of public institutions.

Lebanon can no longer afford the luxury of ambiguities. In a context of generalized collapse — economic, institutional, and social on the one hand, and of merciless war on our country — one truth imposes itself with absolute urgency: there can be no recovery, nor any affirmation of the state's role, without the full and complete restoration of its authority. On this essential point, a major step forward has already been taken: the clear decision to affirm the illegality of Hezbollah's military formation and to concentrate arms in the hands of the legitimate armed forces. This decision is just. It is necessary. It is vital.

For a resounding victory, it was anything but! Donald Trump, wary of getting drawn into the Persian Gulf, found a way out by scaling back his ambitions. No more talk of changing the regime of wilayat al-faqih, nor of putting a definitive end to Iran’s nuclear program (1). With the Islamabad Agreement of April 7, he will have to settle for a consolation prize: the reopening of communication routes and free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz “in coordination with the Iranian armed forces.” Does that make it a victory for the ayatollahs? Certainly not! Javad Zarif and Foreign Affairs While Iran has shown resilience, its forces are nevertheless exhausted and its country drained. Moreover, its negotiators in Islamabad seem ready to abandon their Lebanese proxy to its fate. Tehran will not formally admit this, but Javad Zarif hinted as much in an article in Foreign Affairs (2). The former Iranian foreign minister used the opportunity of an academic contribution (?) to propose a roadmap to end the raging regional conflict: he advocated reciprocal concessions between the belligerents, de-escalation, and diplomatic normalization.

Ten minutes were enough for Beirut and the other regions to endure the most ferocious Israeli attacks they had ever witnessed. The toll was hundreds dead and thousands wounded. All of this came to pass after the conclusion of the opaque agreement between America and Iran on a ceasefire. Israel, led by a Netanyahu unwilling to accept any agreement that would return him to the difficult domestic reality of Israeli politics, sought to convey to all parties that Iran's declaration of including Lebanon in that agreement was null and void. Iran repudiates it verbally, while continuing on its side to observe the agreement. As for Hezbollah, dispersed across every corner of the country and intermingled with the civilian population, it declared its adherence to the ceasefire and has, until now, refrained from retaliating against Israel beyond a handful of rockets fired at Kiryat Shmoneh.

Ten minutes were enough for Beirut and the other regions to endure the most ferocious Israeli attacks they had ever witnessed. The toll was hundreds dead and thousands wounded. All of this came to pass after the conclusion of the opaque agreement between America and Iran on a ceasefire. Israel, led by a Netanyahu unwilling to accept any agreement that would return him to the difficult domestic reality of Israeli politics, sought to convey to all parties that Iran's declaration of including Lebanon in that agreement was null and void. Iran repudiates it verbally, while continuing on its side to observe the agreement. As for Hezbollah, dispersed across every corner of the country and intermingled with the civilian population, it declared its adherence to the ceasefire and has, until now, refrained from retaliating against Israel beyond a handful of rockets fired at Kiryat Shmoneh!

“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.

“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.