Lebanon’s peace debate: Dismantling sterile legacies

Across decades of domination over Lebanon’s political life, Hafez Al-Assad entrenched in the Lebanese political consciousness the notion that Lebanon must be the last Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel. This was not a passing remark, but the expression of a comprehensive strategy that served the interests of the Damascus regime for decades.

First, this approach stemmed from the Assad regime’s view of Lebanon as a polity of incomplete legitimacy. Syria’s ruling Baath Party never concealed its refusal to fully recognize Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty, regarding its very creation as a “historical mistake” that needed to be corrected, either through direct annexation to Syria or, at the very least, by keeping Lebanon under Syrian tutelage and control. From this perspective, Hafez Al-Assad believed that any Lebanese peace agreement with Israel could not precede a Syrian one; it had to come afterward and be subordinate to it, so that Lebanese peace would be framed as a natural by-product of Syrian peace, not as an independent sovereign choice.

Second, Assad treated southern Lebanon as an alternative front to the sealed Golan front. Unable to open a direct confrontation with Israel on the Syrian front, southern Lebanon was transformed into a bargaining chip and a pressure card, used to enhance Damascus’s negotiating position and to assert its regional role as an indispensable actor. For this reason, it was never in the Syrian regime’s interest to close that front through a Lebanese–Israeli peace agreement before Syria had extracted its full political and strategic price.

Today, however, after the fall of the Baath regime with the escape of Assad’s son, and after Hezbollah’s military defeat in the most recent war the same question presses with renewed urgency: why does the formula “Lebanon will be the last Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel” remain so deeply rooted in the Lebanese collective political mind? And what justifies its continued circulation, as if the major transformations the region has undergone had never occurred?

Those who repeat this formula today imply, implicitly or explicitly, that Lebanon will not move toward peace before the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as though the Lebanese decision is still hostage to external trajectories, and as though tutelage has not fallen but merely changed its name.

This approach entails two clear affronts. The first is to Lebanon itself, as it re-entrenches the idea of a state perpetually postponing its decisions, incapable of defining its strategic choices according to its own national interest, and forever bound to the will of others. The second affront is to Saudi Arabia, because it unjustly suggests that its role resembles that of the Assad regime using Lebanon as a bargaining chip to improve its regional standing. Such a description does not align with the facts or with Saudi political conduct.

It is well established, without ambiguity, that Saudi Arabia views Lebanon through the lens of stability, security, and prosperity not through political investment or regional bargaining. It has never treated Lebanon as an arena of conflict or a pressure card, but rather as a state that should recover its sovereignty, institutions, and natural role. From this standpoint, if achieving that objective requires major choices, including the option of peace, Saudi Arabia’s position would be to support whatever the Lebanese themselves decide not to act as a guardian or a decision-maker on their behalf.

Persisting in replicating formulas that collapsed with the regimes that produced them, or replacing a real tutelage with an imagined one, does not reflect concern for Lebanon as much as it reveals an inability to think beyond outdated frameworks. The real debate today must begin with a single question: what serves Lebanon’s interest, sovereignty, and future? Everything else is merely an escape into the past, expressed in new language.

It is time to dismantle these worn-out political idols and to keep pace with regional transformations that open a new window for peace and stability, instead of clinging to sterile legacies that have once again brought us to the brink of war. We are at a historic crossroads: either we muster the courage to be part of the future, or we remain prisoners of the past, with all its contradictions and tragedies.

Hesitation at such a moment is not counted as caution; it is deemed abdication. This is the hour of decision and decision requires the courage of those who make history, not of those who wait for it to pass them by.