With each passing day, the depth of Lebanon’s predicament becomes clearer. Israel is nibbling away at territory after uprooting and displacing its entire population, while Iran, through the Quds Force, is meddling in the country and remains intent on eroding Lebanese sovereignty and decision-making.
The Israeli-Iranian war imposed on the country has placed all citizens under the weight of the harshest collective punishment. It has enabled Israel to reduce a vast region to ruin and to reimpose occupation stretching from the Mediterranean in the west to Mount Hermon in the east, linked to occupied southern Syria, as part of Israel’s aggressive “forward defense” strategy deep inside Lebanese territory, extending across all areas north of the Litani up to the eastern mountain range and the last hills of Hermel.
At the same time, the clerical regime has folded up the banner of “resistance,” after cheapening its role in the region and in wars waged from Lebanon as its proxy. From the moment it launched its rockets, Hezbollah became a burnt card, with no standing outside the Iranian ceiling - evidenced by the ease with which Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf described this war as one “to defend Iran”.
For a moment, it seemed as though the clerical regime considered it among its “rights” to use Lebanon as a theater for its projects, even if the price was erasing 61 southern villages from the map and displacing two million people, while the Israeli enemy declares there will be no return for those people, though they are the people of the land and its spirit.
This terrifying scene is what prompted the authorities - the presidency and the government - to take the initiative by declaring the option of direct negotiations with Israel, in order to halt defeat at the point it has reached and demand the occupier’s withdrawal once its attacks on Lebanon cease. In such a situation, negotiation is not a crime; the crime lies in the occupation resulting from the catastrophic and destructive choices adopted by Hezbollah in submitting to the schemes of its handlers in Tehran, decisions over which Lebanon has no influence.
The authorities paired this initiative with announcing a ban on Hezbollah’s military and security activity, as well as a decision to expel members of the Revolutionary Guard, whom Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said were responsible for “the attack on Cyprus” and who “run military operations.” He revealed they had acquired forged passports and that their presence in Lebanon is illegal. In this context, the presence of the Revolutionary Guard, including its Lebanese legion, “the party”, has become an Iranian assault on Lebanon.
The days of the fragile truce, as well as the two preliminary rounds of negotiations, which produced the extraordinary impression that the Lebanese issue ranks among President Trump’s priorities, together with Beirut’s breaking of the taboo on direct negotiations, may still fail to secure the Lebanese state’s demands. True, the negotiation track has become detached from the Iranian file, but realities on the ground are different.
Hezbollah, after being reinforced by groups from the Quds Force, could launch more rockets toward positions newly established by the Israeli enemy in the occupied south. And the youths left amid the rubble, including boys aged fourteen to sixteen, with no path of retreat left open to them, will fight to the last breath. That would raise the death toll, deepen the destruction, and strengthen the Israeli enemy’s insistence on maintaining the occupation. Thus, a mutually reinforcing dynamic emerges: the occupation grants legitimacy to illegal arms, and illegal arms in turn legitimize occupation, increasing Lebanon’s losses and the prices demanded of it.
Amid this landscape, Lebanon is taking a larger step with President Joseph Aoun’s declaration of an intention “to adopt any means capable of ending war and destruction.” He revealed that the proposed negotiating path begins from “the principle of ending the state of war with Israel.”
But an atmosphere of tension and branding the authorities traitorous has not helped Lebanon formulate what serves the national interest. Instead, an alarming condition prevails: some parties rushed to promote what they immediately called the “peace of the south,” and denounced the presidency’s reservation about a handshake between Aoun and Netanyahu while the land remains occupied and extermination has not ceased; while other parties insist on indirect negotiations and say the ceiling should be a return to the 1949 Armistice Agreement.
Here it is worth noting that while “peace” is being promoted on one side and reviving the Armistice Agreement proposed on the other, Lebanon - facing a challenge of such gravity and delicacy - ought to formulate middle-ground arrangements, such as an “Armistice Plus” agreement. Time has moved beyond proposals that limit matters merely to a cessation of hostilities, which was central at the time under the Security Council resolution issued under Chapter VII.
That was the basis of the Armistice Agreement, but it also carried Israeli recognition of Lebanon’s historic borders as established by the League of Nations in 1924. Such an approach could secure Lebanon greater positive distinction in the American stance toward it, and more support from brothers and friends, especially from Saudi Arabia, which has devoted sustained attention to preserving internal stability.
Entering negotiations - a sovereign decision grounded in constitutional legitimacy - is no picnic, nor is the road to it rosy. Yet it is an existential necessity, the only option left to the country, imposed by the need to confront responsibly the horrors to which this imposed war has brought us, and the horrors witnessed by those who managed to visit the south as strangers and were appalled by what they saw.
