On the morning of March 2, Beirut was jolted awake by sirens, and tens of thousands of people from South Lebanon are already taking the road into exile under a relentless barrage of shells and missiles. In that moment, we, the Lebanese people, realise that our fate has slipped once again out of our hands. [1]
In the shadow of global preoccupations, when all eyes turn towards Tel Aviv, Washington, and Tehran, Lebanon, our little slice of paradise nestled in the heart of the Levant, which for so many years has been trapped in hell, has once again become the battleground for other people’s wars.
Wars in which it has nothing to gain, and everything to lose.
Desolation, blasts, deaths, destruction… And in the distance, the spectre of civil war, as terrifying as it is persistent.
Despite, in spite of, and against every demand, every warning, every threat, every plea, on March 2, at one o’clock, a handful of rockets and missiles crossed the Blue Line to strike Israeli territory. [2]
Claimed an hour and a half later by Hezbollah itself, to protest the death of their supreme leader Ali Khamenei, this attack marked not only the definitive separation of the Party of God’s interests from Lebanon’s, but also the beginning of a massive and deadly retaliation by Israel. [3]
Southern Lebanon and Beirut are pounded and the civilian death toll and the number of wounded keep rising. The displacement of populations, the possibility of losing territory, and above all the instability already here, foreshadow a long crisis: demographic, economic, political, social. Another ordeal we never asked for, and from which we do not know whether we will ever rise again from, if, by some chance, we were even standing in the first place.
And yet this is not the first time the pen that writes the rest of our history has fallen from our hands. From our very creation, we escaped the grip of the Ottoman Sublime Porte only to find ourselves under French tutelage, the very power that drew our borders and, in the same stroke, sealed our fate.
In its haste, it brought together within a single country various communities and faiths, so that our only common ground as citizens lay in our attachment to our precious land of the Levant.
But quickly, we learned how to shine, and how to make our diversity a strength, raising ourselves up as the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’.
Lebanon established itself as the capital of intellect, the meeting place of elites, the haven of free expression, the icon of culture, a master of trade, a model of education, and chiefly, the undisputed king of resilience and joie de vivre.
How beautiful it was, and how promising its future seemed, this country open, wholly, to East and West alike, where faiths mingled and united to make room for the beauty of music, song, cinema, writing, nature, political ferment, intellectual ascent: like a gentle melody accompanying, day and night, our constant feasts and celebrations, which we know how to hold in Lebanon like nowhere else.
And yet this tenacious, ever-present hum of destiny never left us, and made it so that cohesion, kindness, emulation, solidarity, all of it left us, leaving us with nothing but sectarianism, clan loyalties, selfishness, corruption.
Instead of placing our future in our own hands, rising tensions led a number of communities to seek the backing of great powers — regional or global — which gradually implanted their designs in our home, turning our country into the arena of their rivalries.
In 1958, the direct intervention of American troops (Operation Blue Bat) during the Lebanese Crisis allowed the United States to win a showdown against the USSR, by ensuring an end to the ardour of Sunni Muslims who sought to join the United Arab Republic (Syria and Egypt) under Nasser’s socialist banner. [4]
In 1969, the Cairo Agreement authorised the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to operate militarily from South Lebanon against Israel [5], which ultimately led to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut in 1982 (Operation Peace for Galilee) in order to drive it out. [6]
The 1980s also saw the creation of Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored proxy. Years later with the help of its maker, the ‘Party of God’ became more powerful and influential economically, militarily, socially, than the Lebanese State itself. [7]
Then came the Taif Agreement, sponsored by Riyadh and supported by Washington and Damascus, officially ended the civil war that stretched painfully from 1975 to 1990, while maintaining a Syrian military presence in Lebanon. [8]
There followed a time when the presence of our dear neighbour felt particularly invasive, even to the point of threatening to swallow us whole. Fortunately, external powers once again had another design for us. In 2005, Rafic Hariri, a prominent Lebanese statesman committed to the after-war reconstruction, sometimes regarded as the “leader of the Sunnis”, but also with many good international relations, was assassinated. Amid tears and outrage, but mainly thanks to intervention by France and the United States, the Cedar Revolution broke out, leading to the departure of Syrian troops.[9]
We were thus able to see what foreign countries could accomplish on our land in a few months, where we had been failing for twenty-five years.
But our neighbours’ destinies were not done being tied to ours.
After waging the thirty-three-day war against Israel in 2006 [10], Hezbollah also became militarily involved alongside the Assad regime in Syria in 2013 [11]. The Syrian civil war then produced a massive influx of Syrian refugees onto Lebanese soil, today amounting to a quarter of our population, and stoking tensions between Sunnis and Shias. [12]
Finally, in 2019, the country entered an inflationary economic crisis that was rooted in decades of domestic mismanagement and corruption, but was further exacerbated by American pressure. As a result, the Lebanese not only saw their currency collapse — with wages and savings effectively losing more than ninety-five percent of their value — but also lost the ability to access the fruits of their labour, whether in Lebanese pounds or in dollars, now largely frozen, and perhaps permanently trapped, in their bank accounts. [13]
And once again today, we are drawn into a war that neither the people nor the State ever chose.
As these implacable events followed one after another, an overwhelming weariness took root in us, compounded by a sense of powerlessness and an absolute loss of control over our destiny, and over our supposed choices.
This feeling has taken root in the heart of all Lebanese, and even, I think, in that of so many across the Arab world. It is the sense that our fate has already been negotiated, weighed, argued, and finally decided by bodies that are not ours, forces that far surpass us: that it is they who decide wealth or poverty, calm or storm, war or peace.
In the heart of this “powder keg” as some call it, what is the point of wondering, of fighting, or even resisting, when we carry within us the intimate conviction that everything will end, inexorably, in the crash of fire and blood?
How painful it is for us emigrants or children of emigrants, to watch from afar the suffering and despair of our own. How do I speak of the bitterness of witnessing from a distance the ceaseless downfall of a country where I have never lived, and yet cannot help but hold as mine? How do I find the words to express the despair born of the contrast between dreams and admiration, reduced to ash under missiles and indoctrination?
How do I still evoke disappointed hopes, betrayed expectations, accumulated renunciations, and, more crushing than all, the general indifference?
Thus, is it possible that the country of our cultural icons Fairuz and Ziad Rahbani will perish?
Is this the promised end for the country of renowned writers Amin Maalouf and Khalil Gibran?
No, I cannot believe it. It cannot be so.
And yet I do not lose hope. For if Lebanon’s fate seems written, its soul will always remain, equal to the flame of the Levant.
Has Lebanon now reached breaking point, or will it know how, once more, to arm itself with patience, with hope, with resilience, to be reborn from its ashes? Will it know how to rekindle this flame of culture, intelligence, plurality, fervour, life, which once lit up the Levant and, dare I say it, far beyond, all over the world ?
Edited by Maxime Pierre.
References
[1, 2, 3] L’Orient-Le Jour. (2026, March 2). Tirs du Hezbollah, riposte israélienne : ce que l’on sait de la nuit d’escalade au Liban [Hezbollah fire, Israeli retaliation: What we know about the night of escalation in Lebanon]. https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1451234/tirs-du-hezbollah-riposte-israelienne-ce-que-lon-sait-de-la-nuit-descalade-au-liban.html
[4] L’Orient-Le Jour. (2023, July 15). La guerre libanaise de 1958, un conflit aux multiples facettes [The 1958 Lebanese war, a multi-faceted conflict]. https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1343456/la-guerre-libanaise-de-1958-un-conflit-aux-multiples-facettes.html
[5] Le Monde. (1970, April 22). Un journal de Beyrouth publie le “texte intégral” des accords du Caire entre le Liban et les fedayin [A Beirut newspaper publishes the “full text” of the Cairo agreements between Lebanon and the fedayeen]. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1970/04/22/un-journal-de-beyrouth-publie-le-texte-integral-des-accords-du-caire-entre-le-liban-et-les-fedayin_2651421_1819218.html
[6] Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (n.d.). The Lebanon War: Operation Peace for Galilee (1982). https://www.gov.il/en/pages/lebanon-war-operation-peace-for-galilee
[7] BBC News Afrique. (2023, October 24). Hezbollah : Comprendre le mouvement au Liban [Hezbollah: Understanding the movement in Lebanon]. https://www.bbc.com/afrique/articles/c16z1z7z1z1o
[8] United Nations. (1989). The Taif Agreement. UN Peacemaker. https://peacemaker.un.org/lebanon-taifagreement89
[9] Le Monde Diplomatique. (2005, March). The road to Damascus. https://mondediplo.com/2005/03/02lebanon
[10] Saab, T.-F. (2020, December). Israël-Liban, un conflit de 33 jours [Israel-Lebanon, a 33-day conflict]. Le Monde Diplomatique. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2020/12/SAAB/62544
[11] Center for Strategic and International Studies. (n.d.). Assessing the consequences of Hezbollah’s necessary war of choice in Syria. https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-consequences-hezbollahs-necessary-war-choice-syria
[12] UNHCR. (2024, July). UNHCR Lebanon: Fact sheet, July 2024. ReliefWeb. https://reliefweb.int/report/lebanon/unhcr-lebanon-fact-sheet-july-2024
[13] Salame, R. (2023, August 24). US sanctions in Lebanon reach a 20-year high. L’Orient Today. https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1347285/us-sanctions-in-lebanon-reach-a-20-year-high.html
[Cover Image] Pexels. (s. d.). An aerial photography of city buildings [Photographie]. https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-aerial-photography-of-city-buildings-5054947/
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