Israel is the bearer of our failure

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Israel is the peg on which the people of power and political forces in Lebanon hang their failures. Present in approaches, positions and discourses. A ready excuse to evade responsibility.

When we hold Israel responsible for the failure of the framework agreement, while we are unable to carry out our duties to disarm Hezbollah, we have turned Israel into a fig leaf that covers up our inability to address the root of the problem.

When we ignore the essence of the crisis, namely Hezbollah's weapons that brought destruction and occupation to Lebanon, and content ourselves with asking the Americans to pressure Israel to stop its military operations and bulldozing of villages, without taking responsibility for a radical solution to the weapons problem, then we are also facing an attempt to cover up our failure, not a serious approach to saving the country.

When we invoke Israel at every opportunity, rightly or wrongly, but we are unable to explicitly name “Hezbollah” in the case of the explosives truck, despite its declaration of ownership of it, we are faced with an authority that is looking for ways out and pretexts, instead of taking the necessary measures to restore its prestige, impose its sovereignty, and protect the people.

When we receive a delegation from representatives of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, and then announce projects worth 70 million US dollars in the south before the end of 2026, we are faced with an authority that does not want to build a direct relationship with the members of the Shiite sect on the basis of citizenship and the authority of the state, but rather enshrines the rule that the Shiite relationship with the state and its institutions passes exclusively through the “Shiite duo.”

When we agree to extend the term for the president of the Lebanese University, and appoint a governor for Nabatieh in response to the logic of imposition perpetuated by President Nabih Berri, we are faced with an authority that works to appease Berri and perpetuates the logic of nepotism and clientelism at the expense of building institutions based on efficiency and independence.

When talking about Israel, its responsibility, and its operations becomes daily material for political discourses, while we do not see a single corrupt person behind bars, and there are no achievements in basic services, such as electricity, water, communications, the Internet, medicine, roads, and waste management, we are faced with a state that has failed in its most basic duties towards its citizens.

Nearly two years after the election of President Joseph Aoun and the formation of Nawaf Salam's government, it is not possible to announce tangible achievements that affect the daily lives of citizens, while they do not stop denouncing Israeli violations. Imposing the most basic aspect of public order, i.e. the prestige of a policeman walking in the street, has failed to be achieved.

Corruption is not limited to putting public money into private pockets. Another corruption is the mismanagement of public money, wasting it without productivity, harnessing it to serve partisan and personal interests, or allowing those responsible for waste and failure to remain in their positions without accountability.

The basic problem is that we have become accustomed to evading our responsibilities and have failed to translate our promise to build a state of sovereignty, law and institutions into reality. Rather, we have turned Israel into a permanent excuse to suspend all internal debate, disarm, disrupt accountability, postpone reform, and evade addressing the reasons that brought Lebanon to the ranks of the “failed state.”

We fail at managing our country, but we are good at pinning our failure on Israel. When dissent becomes our only achievement, the question is no longer what Israel is doing to Lebanon, but rather what we are doing to ourselves.

The beginning of our exit from the “failed state” cannot happen before dropping the principle of “pity Israel” from our political dictionary.