Lebanon Must Relearn Democracy, Debate Peace with Israel

Instead of grasping the opportunity of Hezbollah’s weakness to revive the 1983 peace deal with Israel, Lebanon seems to be dragging its feet

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

Druze lawmaker Wael Abou-Faour said that U.S. officials have broached the subject of peace between Lebanon and Israel with top Lebanese leaders, but argued that peace would spark clashes and civil strife, and therefore, his bloc thinks that truce with the Hebrew state was the most that Lebanon could accept. The merits of peace aside, Lebanon needs to relearn democracy.

Liberal democracies have no topics that are off limits to discuss or vote into policies. The stateguarantees freedom of expression so that any citizen can present any idea, no matter how outrageous it is to the majority, without fear for their safety or of civil war. Lebanon is not there yet and opinions, when deemed non-mainstream or controversial, are muted and dissenters either bullied, prosecuted, or even assassinated.

From Abou-Faour’s statement, we infer that, on her last trip to Beirut and in her meetings with President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, U.S. Deputy Envoy for Middle East Morgan Ortagus did invite Lebanon to consider signing a bilateral peace deal with Israel, just like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Morocco did, a few years back.

Respectful of the privacy of the conversation, Ortagus did not include this bit of her conversation in her stakeout after the meetings. Weeks later, U.S. Envoy to the Middle East Steven Witkoff said exactly that: Lebanon and Syria should join the Abraham Accords.

Lebanon has traditionally switched between four policies on Israel:

1- When Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was still alive and acting as the country’s de facto autocrat, Lebanon would never recognize Israel or sign peace with it but would rather join the battle for its destruction and replacement with a Palestinian state, from the “river to the sea.”

2- To avert war, the opposition to Hezbollah’s maximalist position called for the revival of the 1949 truce, a permanent situation of “no war, no peace,” in which Lebanon pretendedthat Israel did not exist.

3- Under Aoun and Salam, Lebanon’s policy on the Jewish state has become more reasonable and now toes the Arab League position, which stipulates that the league’s member states will normalize relations with Israel if Palestinians establish their state on 1967 territory.

The impossibility of the Arab Peace Initiative aside, by endorsing it, Beirut has signaled that, in theory, it was willing to recognize Israel and enter into a peace deal with it, but only as part of the Arab collective and not in a bilateral Lebanon-Israel fashion.

4- The fourth Lebanese policy has been to sign a bilateral peace treaty with the Hebrew state, regardless of the Palestinian situation or the Arab League position. If Beirut were ever to repeat such a move, it could explain it as a “sovereign decision” designed to serve the national interests of Lebanon, the same reasoning employed by the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco in what came to be called the Abraham Accords. On May 17, 1983, Lebanon became the second Arab country after Egypt whose Parliament voted on a peace agreement with Israel, but Syrian President Hafez Assad bullied his Lebanese counterpart Amine Gemayel and forced him not to sign the treaty into law.

Between 1949 and 1969, the truce between the Lebanese and the Israelis held strong, allowing Lebanon to witness the biggest economic expansion in its history. That was the time when the country won its moniker “Switzerland of the Middle East.”

In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan lost in war to Israel. To vent popular anger, Egypt’s Gamal Abdul-Nasser encouraged asymmetric war. Palestinians organized themselves into armed militias, in Jordan, and launched attacks across the border with Israel. Palestinians also used their newfound power to try to topple the government in Amman.

The Jordanian monarchy prevailed and ejected the Palestinian militias, who relocated to Lebanon. Nasser had impressed on Beirut to concede its sovereignty to the Palestinians, who ran amok in the country and launched cross border attacks that invited destructive Israeli reprisals.

After Israel invaded Lebanon and ejected the Palestinian militias, in 1982, Beirut never regained its sovereignty. Lebanese fighters with the Palestinian militias stayed behind and formed Hezbollah, which fought several wars with Israel, until the Hebrew state decapitated it in September.

Instead of grasping the opportunity of Hezbollah’s weakness to revive the 1983 peace deal with Israel, Lebanon seems to be dragging its feet, hanging on to a half-baked arrangement that couples a truce with the unicorn Arab Peace Initiative.

Wael is a friend from our days at the American University of Beirut (AUB). However, come 2026 election, I will take the side of candidates running against him and promising full, unconditional and immediate peace with Israel.

Lebanon’s peace camp might win only a few seats in Parliament or none at all. But when Lebanon’s peace camp loses, it will not start a civil war. It will prepare for the election that follows and continue to pitch its peace plan and convert the Lebanese to its cause, until the time comes when it becomes a majority and its opinion wins, leading to a peace treaty with Israel.

This is how democracy works. Wael, and the Lebanese political scene in general, can do Lebanon a great service if they stop threatening the Lebanese with civil war every time they fear an opinion that they disagree with might prevail.