We can all agree at least on this: 50 years on, the war is still with us. The war is the Israeli planes and drones that constantly fly over our skies, the missiles fired from south Lebanon into Israel, the fighting between Lebanese clans and the new Syrian authorities on the border between the two countries, the weapons in every community, every clan, every neighborhood, every family. It's the barriers, real or mental, that still separate us from one another. It's the existential anxieties that turn every political issue into a battle for survival. It's the taboos that prevent us from facing history head-on and asking the tough questions. It's more than anything else the deeply ingrained feeling that we are not at peace and that the tipping point towards the worst can occur at any moment.
The war in Lebanon had several dimensions, and getting out of it for good merits dealing with each of them in depth. The most obvious, and paradoxically the simplest, is geopolitical. Our war was not the war of others, but others were major players in it, be they Syrian, Israeli, Palestinian or American. Lebanon will never know peace as long as it is the scene of regional conflicts, as it was only a few months ago between Israel and Iran. Nor will it enjoy peace as long as a party created, armed and organically linked to a foreign country disputes the State's monopoly on legitimate violence.
Until recently, all this was open to debate. It's nearly no longer the case now, even if the question of disarming Hezbollah is far from settled. This step is essential, as is getting Lebanon out from under Iran's thumb, but it is not enough. Nor is proclaiming our neutrality or desire to distance ourselves from external conflicts. We need to think of Lebanon in its regional context. This in no way means, as has too often been written, that the inevitability of history and geography condemns our country to be a sounding board for regional conflicts. But neither does it mean that Lebanon can suddenly become an island and that what happens in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria or the Gulf does not concern us closely. There's a balance to be struck. There's one state of affairs we have no right to ignore: We live under a form of Israeli-American tutelage. As long as this is the case, not only will we not be sovereign, but above all, we will not be able to envisage building a lasting peace. Not only with Israel, but also with ourselves.
This is the second dimension. It's politico-socio-confessional. The war also took place because of a whole host of internal factors that have not completely disappeared, although they are not quite the same. Our social contract no longer works. Our fear of disappearing sometimes corresponds to a demographic reality, sometimes to a feeling of political marginalization. Here, too, the Hezbollah issue has taken up so much space that it has prevented us from tackling the others, which has also done the traditional political class good.
Disarmament must be the starting point for discussion, but it cannot also be the end point. Building peace will, in any case, require a thorough overhaul of our political, social and denominational model. Can Christians continue to be over-represented in institutions in relation to their demographic weight? Should Palestinians, who have lived in Lebanon for decades, forever be treated as sub-citizens? Should the glaring inequalities between Lebanese and between territories be partly corrected by the State? All these questions, and many more that are taboo today, need to be answered. Peace requires the formulation of a new social contract between the Lebanese on the one hand and between the Lebanese and the State on the other. We need to invent a new model of citizenship, one that goes beyond community allegiances without denying them, to enable us to manage more maturely our delicate and natural relationship with otherness.
This is the third dimension, the most subtle and essential. We don't live together. We are this whole. Plurality is not a political construct in Lebanon. It is a dominant component of our DNA. Alongside our aspiration to freedom, it is what makes us Lebanese, whatever our community, and far beyond our borders, our cuisine or even Feiruz. It is our most precious and fragile asset. Geopolitics and politics instrumentalize it, undermine it and sully it. But all these factors are not enough to explain why two neighbors who could have enjoyed extremely warm and friendly relations have ended up killing each other. The incestuous nature of our war is something we haven't yet come to understand and something that building a sovereign state and concluding a new social contract will not be enough to cure. Ultimately, Lebanon is an idea before it is a country. And true 'Lebanon-ization' is not a disease but a cure.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
