On the eve of the launch of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations under full US auspices and, we might add, with US “engineering” of the launching and management of the negotiation track, Lebanon was facing three possible scenarios amid both vertical - in terms of firepower - and horizontal - with the Israeli war expanding across Lebanese geography - escalation on the ground.
The first of these scenarios is a trajectory of attrition: management of the explosive and open military conflict. This conflict could witness escalation, de-escalation, and truces in different forms and formulas, all of them remaining fragile and vulnerable to collapse, with constant renewed efforts to regulate or contain the ongoing war, offering what is known as a warrior’s respite with the specter of open war remaining on the horizon.
In this scenario, Lebanon becomes a forgotten cause, apart from the diplomacy of ineffective appeals and pleas on the margins. One of the greatest threats of this trajectory is its implications for Lebanon’s economic and society; the country cannot withstand or resist a war of this kind, which would lead to multiple and successive collapses at every level of society and the state. This would render Lebanon into a glaring case of a failed state.
The second scenario would be to halt the collapse, or contain it, through a settlement among the regional and international forces confronting or contending over Lebanon. Such an understanding would translate into political coexistence and a direct or indirect division of the spoils of influence through their allies. This, in turn, would also pressure Israel to indirectly accept a formula of coexistence or political understanding among the parties competing for influence in Lebanon, so long as its security interests are taken into account.
The situation that prevailed after the 2006 war and the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which established “UNIFIL 2.0,” follows this model. Despite its importance, the status quo it created remained fragile whenever one of the parties to the conflict on the ground decided to bring it down in the service of a strategic goal at a particular moment. This is what happened with the “support war” that Hezbollah waged for regional strategic reasons within a “power game” that goes beyond Lebanon. Lebanon thus returned to its role as a stage for other people’s wars, or as a “mailbox” in the competition among regional powers.
This war has provided Israel with a golden opportunity to launch its war against Lebanon as part of the confrontation with Iran in the inflamed strategic stage of the Levant, amid change in Syria, the Israeli war in Gaza and the West Bank, and the growing importance of the Lebanese stage following the shifts in broader Levant. It bears recalling that in the conflicts of the recent and distant past, even when the players and the names of the game changed, Lebanon was always an arena for other people’s wars and conflicts, even if the labels of those wars changed.
The third scenario was to move toward direct negotiations under full US sponsorship despite the challenges facing this track. This also entails Lebanon strengthening its contacts with Arab states and other friendly countries to strengthen the Lebanese position in the negotiation process.
This scenario aligns with the return to the state in Lebanon, a course that enjoys broad support in Lebanese society. It is not an easy path and does not offer rapid progress in concrete and practical terms. It faces many different challenges that reflect the nature and balance of the conflict with Israel; challenges that have taken root and become entrenched over time in reality and practice.
The process of recovering Lebanon and preventing the country from being used as a bargaining chip in the regional game of nations in the region - though under guise of grandiose and slogans always used the parties involved - and restoring it to the role of a state is a fundamental challenge to the state’s return to its natural role in all areas of national responsibility.
Naturally, among the most important of these responsibilities, or challenges, is genuine rather than merely formal negotiation over issues related to national security in all its aspects and dimensions, as is currently the case. Nor can we overlook the enormous challenges facing this path in the context of the conflict with Israel: first, achieving a full ceasefire, despite attempts to introduce a gradualist logic in this regard; then successfully and effectively dealing with the proposed formulas; securing the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon; and consolidating the 1949 Armistice Agreement, which was drawn along Lebanon’s internationally recognized borders, with the need to demarcate these borders because of the existence of certain disputed points.
The Lebanese approach is based on a gradual, interconnected, and realistic strategy that takes, before any talk of peace, the complete end of the Israeli occupation and Lebanese authorities’ retention of decisions of war and peace, as its starting point. It must also always be recalled that Lebanon remains committed to the Arab Peace Initiative adopted in Beirut in 2002 concerning comprehensive, permanent, and just peace. Its provisions, along with the relevant Security Council resolutions, remain at the heart of Lebanon’s negotiating frame of reference, which helps provide the additional support Lebanon needs from its Arab family.
In sum, Lebanon faces a challenge that I would call existential. It can no longer remain an arena for other people’s wars, as though this were its fate, at the expense of the role that is required and more than necessary: rebuilding the state of institutions, a state that embraces everyone, and that strengthens, in deed and in practice, the concepts of citizenship and national unity at the expense of the statelets of sects and de facto powers in politics, society, the economy, and all aspects of national life.
