In current geo-political circumstances, it will be a long time before Lebanon recovers its political, economic and social health. The present war in which it was embroiled, and the disproportionate Israeli response, have deepened the great internal Lebanese divisions, and moved them from a stage of traditional disputes to a stage of great political and social rupture that is not easy to jump over with ease.
Before testing the seriousness of the ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran, and its applicability to Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged to US President Donald Trump that “linking the various arenas together is unacceptable,” and that Israel “will not accept any Iranian dictates regarding Lebanon.”
Therefore, it is not expected that Israel will withdraw from the vast areas it occupied in southern Lebanon, or even cease its violations of Lebanese sovereignty, because it simply wants to translate this invasion into something palpable with the official Lebanese government, which continues to grip to political negotiations as the only option for ending the war.
In all cases, there is an urgent need to get together the internal Lebanese reality as quickly as possible, in order to limit the tendency of the pro-Iranian forces to “take revenge” on the Lebanese who oppose it after the end of the war, as some of its voices have repeatedly threatened, and also to dampen the penchant of the conservative team to rush towards “normalization” with Israel. While some Lebanese are inclined to avoid being misled by illusions of a peace that will never come, others are disposed to have the courage to redefine the concept of victory in accordance with reality, not with fantasies or wishful thinking.
While emphasizing the importance of resilience, it alone is not enough to secure the future or to think of new formulas to maintain stability, especially since the concept of “balance of deterrence” has fallen after the first war that began in October 2023 with the assassination of senior leaders in “Hezbollah”, headed by the two general secretaries Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, and the operation of blowing up the “pager” devices.
It seems necessary to reiterate here that the situation in Lebanon has shifted from a completely liberated territory (without any conditions, peace agreements, or security arrangements) to a widespread occupation extending to the Litani River. Therefore, regardless of the calculations and considerations—whether ideological, political, or otherwise—these successive losses cannot be called "victories."
From here, apart from the paths of conflict with Israel, which are clearly likely to continue for a long time and in different forms and patterns, Lebanon needs to return to the logic of the idea of a state that does not share its sovereign functions with any of its components.
The greatest fear is that a new regional trajectory will emerge, its primary objective being de-escalation of the Iranian-Israeli conflict under American auspices and pressure, transforming Lebanon into the battleground for this conflict and the exchange of explosive messages, serving the interests of all parties involved except Lebanon itself. In that scenario, the region will neither achieve complete stability, while the bloodshed will continue unabated in southern Lebanon. This would only exacerbate Lebanese divisions and deepen the fractures within society.