The ideas in circulation in Lebanon focus on the pressing present moment- the "now" - in a manner untouched by the slightest concern for "tomorrow," or for the effect that dealing with the "now" is bound to leave on tomorrow’s challenges.
And because the immediacy of the "now" resembles the contingency of a military mission more than it resembles political thought, a military approach dominates the way things are handled, so that everything appears besieged by a single question: do we hold on to Hezbollah's weapons, or do we strip them away and confine them?
The dominance of the "now" may be understandable, given the pivotal position of the weapons in settling many vital matters, among them the Israeli withdrawal. But what exposes the deficiency of this dominance is the extent and depth of the division cleaving Lebanese society, not over the weapons alone, but over everything that moves on the ground. This is without ignoring the fact that the great disputes, especially the dispute over the weapons, are an extension of a long and radical civil contention, before they are a pretext for drawing in outside interventions.
The present circumstance is bound up with the affairs of tomorrow in a way that deserves attention it does not receive. Disarmament, for all its importance and urgency, automatically affects the coexistence of the Lebanese and puts to the test the question of their continuation as a single national community, yet it is met with a verbal glibness that is likewise of wartime origin. Thus, there is talk of subjecting the state to those who carry the weapons, as though they were merely an isolated gang, and on the other side of subjecting those who carry the weapons to those who reject them, as though nothing had happened since 2023.
This logic, in both its faces, is often coupled with dismissing any possible civil tension: the weapons' supporters boast of a power that "those cowards" cannot confront, while the weapons' opponents boast of a power of the state and its allies that works miracles. And where the former attribute Hezbollah's hesitation to settle matters to "the magnanimity of the resistance" or its preoccupation with the Israelis, the latter attribute the authorities' hesitation and the army's stumbling to personal - and sometimes psychological - traits in the official figures.
The truth is that the two contending theories branch from a single intellectual root: the first holds that conflict with Israel and the US is the road to the future, while the second holds that adaptation to Israel and America is that road.
There is no doubt that one of the supports of both theories is the emptiness of the home front at present, represented by the poverty of political life, economic collapse, and cultural decline, and hence the barrenness of this home front as a source of useful cards, whether for war, according to the first theory, or for peace, according to the second. But what is beyond doubt is that it is the first theory whose flourishing and whose fraying cancel each other out, as has been revealed since the "support war," while the second theory - less harmful and less costly - remains lame and wide open to relapse.
That theory, the theory of "all power to the outside, not only now but tomorrow as well," reached its culmination in the Iraqi experience after the US occupation. A great achievement was realized then, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein; but no sooner was the matter of completion left to local society than ruin descended, as civil war and then a peace haunted by civil war. And when one adds the volatility and capriciousness marking the international situation today, the reasons for anxiety multiply - anxiety born of the inertia of the domestic situation and the refusal to think about it.
This talk is not a call to fold away the question of the weapons, nor a challenge to the vital need of confining them to the hands of the legitimate authority; it is, rather, the expression of an approach that ties their confinement to the effect that this confinement will leave on the fragile national fabric and on the image of civil peace.
On the one hand, a community that clings to the weapons will not submit to their removal. Even if the legitimate power and its allies manage to achieve this goal, the future of the relationship among the Lebanese will be clouded by hostility and hatred, and no one will be able to guarantee that the victors will practice just, un-haughty policies toward the vanquished that dispel their resentment.
On the other hand, the readiness of the anti-weapons community to submit to the weapons becomes, naturally, less than before. It rightly understands that the party's retention of a considerable part of its military power means the utter crushing of its opponents - those who are currently being vilified and subjected to character assassination.
In both cases we will be facing a state of coercion and vengeance, and a poisoned society that no one is glad to belong to. Whoever knows his people and his society, without embellishment or ornamentation, is not reassured by speeches about the "brotherhood" of the Lebanese and the justice of their state, or by the peddling of illusions about turning a blood-stained page slipped into a glorious book.
It might be said that every major situation - the opening of a war or the ending of one - brings about social and political consequences within the country concerned. But the self-evidence of this statement does not cancel the need to reflect on its consequences case by case, and on the particularity of each one. What is particular about Lebanon is that the launching of a war leads to an internal explosion, which we see today, clear and explicit, yet what is feared is that the closing of the war may lead to a similar result, unless it is contained through a review of our national coexistence and an interrogation of its system.
Let us, then, discuss Lebanese unity as we speak of the weapons that ought to be confined to the hands of the state; and let us take up the conditions for coexistence, or non-coexistence, among the Lebanese, and the possibilities of each, especially if the question of Hezbollah's weapons, and the Israeli occupation it gave rise to, is resolved.
