Drones are once again flying low over Beirut. But for those who still haven’t gotten the message, U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack spelled it out clearly. In short, if you don’t disarm Hezbollah, Israel will handle it.
In other words, no one takes the Lebanese authorities’ desire to achieve this goal seriously, and no one will prevent Israel from intensifying its strikes in Lebanon. Second, your only salvation is normalization. In other words, this may involve security and then political negotiations, indirect and then direct, but Beirut will not receive a dollar and will not even exist in the eyes of the Trump administration — except for the issue of Hezbollah — until normalization becomes a reality.
This is where we stand, nearly a year after the “cease-fire” with Israel. External pressure will mount for Beirut to disarm Hezbollah and join the Abraham Accords. Although historic, the decisions the Cabinet took in August and September are not enough to convince Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv of the Lebanese authorities’ seriousness. Their position is understandable.
On this issue, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam seems isolated, caught between the escalating demands of some and the caution, if not compromise, of others. The strategy is unclear, and the results are meager for the moment. The following equation governs the way we are approaching this issue: either a civil war or a new Israeli campaign.
A strong containment policy accompanied by a few powerful symbols and a genuine diplomatic strategy would enable us to regain the initiative without throwing ourselves into the lion’s den.
However, this requires that the president and premier be perfectly aligned on this issue, and that Riyadh and Washington agree to support this approach both politically and financially. In other words, they must understand that their current policy of giving nothing to Lebanon until it completely rids itself of Hezbollah is counterproductive.
It deprives those who attempt to move in this direction of leverage and instead reinforces the rhetoric of their political opponents. This is not about ignoring the incompetence, corruption and shaky compromises to which the Lebanese side has accustomed us, but rather about being able to move forward despite these characteristics, which — as recent years have shown once again — are still firmly entrenched at all levels of the state.
Can the issue of disarming Hezbollah — which most Lebanese support — be separated from normalization with Israel, which is pushed by foreign powers and lacks local consensus?
It would have been in Beirut's interest for the two issues not to be closely linked. But because it has not done enough on the first issue, it has lost much of its latitude to address the second calmly. The less progress is made on the first issue, the more the second will overshadow all other issues.
The Trump administration wants its diplomatic victory. Regardless of the situation in Lebanon and the terms of the agreement, the U.S. president wants to expand the list of signatories to the Abraham Accords. For Israel, the issue is framed somewhat differently. The agreement is a goal, but above all, it must reflect Israel's military superiority and address its security concerns (disarmament and the creation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon).
The problem is that, as usual, Lebanon itself does not know what it wants. Salam is the most committed to the standoff with Hezbollah, but also the most reluctant to open negotiations with Israel. President Joseph Aoun favors dialogue with Hezbollah but leaves the door open to discussions with Israel.
As for Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, he knows full well that he will play a key role if these negotiations take place, but that his room for maneuver is limited by his ally. Beirut will probably try to limit the discussions to security issues in an indirect format. But will Tel Aviv and Washington be satisfied with that?
Won’t they push, at the very least, for direct talks, similar to those taking place between Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Israeli Minister Ron Dermer?
In short, we are once again putting up with the situation, hoping to negotiate a few red lines on the margins rather than defining our interests and trying to defend them. This is not only due to Hezbollah’s crushing defeat last year, but also to our chronic inability to regain credibility as a diplomatic player, as the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also demonstrate.
For too long, debate has been forbidden. It has even been poisoned by ideological posturing and false pretenses. And unfortunately, we are still not out of the woods. It should not be reduced to being for or against normalization, for reasons that, in either case, have little to do with the substance of the issue.
The issue deserves to be addressed calmly, by asking only the essential questions: is it in Lebanon’s interest to normalize relations with Israel? What would be the effects of such normalization, both domestically and regionally?
In the meantime, continuing with this futile exercise will only work out to our detriment.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour and was translated by Joelle El Khoury.
