All these roles, all this emptiness

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For a third of a century, Lebanon was ruled by Syria, amid Israeli occupation, Iranian resistance, and limited American, European, and Arab roles. During the twenty years after the Syrian military withdrawal in 2005, Tehran’s rule increased, as part of its pride in ruling four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa. After the fall of the Assad regime, the new government, led by the fundamentalist Salafist Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, seemed to have little interest in Lebanon and much preoccupation with America, Europe, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. As for Iran, it has become increasingly attached to its influence here and to the role of Hezbollah and its weapons before, during and after the American and Israeli war against it.

Damascus has decided on one issue, which is to reject military involvement in fighting Hezbollah, as President Donald Trump requested, even during his talks in the White House with President Joseph Aoun. The rest is a position between: something of state-to-state relations, and something of the temptation to return to the traditional Syrian role with the Lebanese parties wishing to do so. Tehran confirmed that the Lebanon war is part of its war against America and Israel and its bombing of the Gulf states and Jordan, and that the “party” under the title of Lebanon is present in any deal with America.

This is all part of the scene of regional and international roles that are being initiated by their owners and those that the Lebanese are demanding. There is no country in the world that searches for roles and almost forgets its role more than Lebanon. There is no people whose political elite has prided itself on ensuring more foreign roles than the Lebanese. The bets on a Syrian role, a Turkish role, an Iranian role, a Saudi role, a Qatari role, an Egyptian role, an American role, a French role, a British role, an Italian role, a German role, and an Israeli role are greater than what the capitals of those countries want or are able to do. Local conversations about foreign roles seem normal, as if they were conversations about the balance of power and interests in Lebanon before the region.

If the Country of the Cedars is a victim of Israeli geographical occupation and Iranian social tyranny, which are practically an expression of geopolitical and strategic projects, then the weights of other powers, even if they are great, will not correct the imbalance in the local balance, nor the weakness in the national weight. The biggest problem is that every internal issue becomes an external issue, and every external conflict becomes an internal conflict.

The arduous and accelerating search for an alternative to the international forces whose mission the Security Council decided to end at the end of this year, 48 years after it was authorized in two phases, is nothing but an expression of the feeling of emptiness and the constant need for the role of the United Nations, in addition to all possible external roles. The timing is confusing and embarrassing, as the Israeli attacks continue and the framework agreement is stalling, before talking about waiting for the parliamentary elections in Israel and the midterm congressional elections in America.

In addition, there is a big difference between the alternative of “UNIFIL” in the stage of conflict with Israel and the state’s inability to restore the decision of war and peace and impose the exclusivity of weapons in its hands, and it in the stage of agreement to “end the state of hostility” or sign a complete peace. UNIFIL itself, assuming that Europe is able to provide the extension required for it locally and in the Arab world, as well as from Russia and China, is not able to fill the power vacuum in the south, where the Israeli occupation and Hezbollah’s weapons are ready to confront the occupation and support Iran in a war that Tehran is threatening and that Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are threatening, and the Lebanese fear of increasing the scope of the occupation and its brutality. Even in a case involving Dar Al-Fatwa and the Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, the search for a solution is knocking on the doors of two Arab countries.

“We live in a world whose problems are global and whose solutions are national,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter. But we are destined to live in a country with national problems and universal solutions.

Quoted from “Call of the Nation”.