Talk of a federal system has once again returned loudly in Lebanon. In other words, an undeclared partition. The campaign is now being led by men of considerable refinement and integrity. But everyone knows that federalism, decentralization, and other such labels are attempts to soften the unpleasant feeling triggered by the idea itself.
Those who want to escape from one another are reluctant to admit it. A hundred years have shown that the country's wars far outnumber its periods of unity. Some call it a failed model of coexistence.
Others say divorce is better than fighting. A separation with affection is a thousand times better than a marriage built on hatred.
As a Lebanese citizen, I am against partition. It will not work. It will not last. Nothing can work in a country of 10,000 square kilometers that has experienced more forms of government than Germany.
When I first went to Berlin, it was not a capital but a forbidden city. Its eastern half was an enemy of its western half, and a wall stood between them like the Great Wall of China. The capital of West Germany was a small city called Bonn. Germany was two Germanies, one communist in the East and the other capitalist in the West. On my next trip to Germany, unity had returned, Berlin had once again become the capital, the wall had fallen, and the Germans had revived Konrad Adenauer's famous slogan: No more experiments.
We once knew an East Beirut and a West Beirut in Lebanon. We would meet secretly behind the "front lines." And we would fight one another. And celebrate, like the Germans.
Why are we looking today for another experiment and another label? Leave it as it is. Less than partition and worse than unity. Welcome, federalism.
