I hadn’t been to Syria in 14 years. After the autumn of President Bashar al-Assad, I couldn’t wait to make the two-hour drive from Beirut to Damascus and witness the tip of this 54-year dictatorship. After I arrived 5 days after his ouster, I noticed the elation of hundreds of Syrians celebrating freedom within the largest sq. in Damascus and the anguished panic of these on the lookout for lacking family members on the notorious Sednaya jail.
The insurgent victory hit dwelling for me, too. It introduced an finish to a regime that had occupied my very own nation, Lebanon, for 3 a long time till 2005, in addition to the collapse of the Iranian axis that had successfully held us hostage since then by means of Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that was Tehran’s strongest proxy militia.
Now the Lebanese face a historic alternative for his or her nation to cease being a battleground and eventually change into frequent floor — a united, functioning, sovereign nation. Irrespective of how huge the challenges, and regardless of how vital international help shall be, I’m satisfied Lebanon’s destiny is essentially in our personal arms. Our first main step would be the election of a president in parliamentary voting scheduled for Thursday after two years of emptiness due to political paralysis.
Syria beneath Mr. Assad and earlier than him his father, Hafez al-Assad, by no means thought of Lebanon to be an unbiased nation. As an occupier beginning in 1976, it meddled in our elections, undermined our chosen governments, fostered corruption and threatened, detained and, many suspect, assassinated Lebanese opponents.
When the Syrians lastly left 20 years in the past, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite motion that emerged from resistance to Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon, steadily changed the Assads as the principle energy dealer in Lebanon. The group turned a necessary pillar of the Iranian axis of affect that included the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and militants in Iraq, and enabled a land bridge between Tehran and Beirut, utilizing Syria as a yard to channel weapons and medicines.
The autumn of the Assad authorities opens the door to establishing our relationships with Syria on an equal footing. It might enable a brand new Lebanese authorities to lastly ease the nation’s refugee disaster: In the present day an estimated 1.5 million Syrians stay in Lebanon, making up 1 / 4 of the nation’s inhabitants, who now lastly face the opportunity of return. The unraveling of the Iranian axis can also be probably to assist launch Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanese politics.
But Lebanon faces really daunting issues: recovering from the destruction inflicted by Israel’s warfare with Hezbollah whereas implementing a fragile cease-fire settlement; reclaiming its sovereignty whereas reviving stalled establishments weakened by corruption, clientelism and a devastating financial disaster; and overcoming sectarianism in a society nonetheless polarized by the 1975-90 civil warfare.
Tackling these points would require a brand new era of political leaders untethered to the conflicts of the previous and powerful help from the worldwide group, beginning with the USA. If the brand new Trump administration’s precedence is peace and stability within the Center East, then it has to shift from a imaginative and prescient guided solely by safety — its personal and Israel’s — towards one which helps democracy, self-determination and sovereignty, together with for the Palestinians.
Over time, Lebanese attitudes towards Hezbollah have modified. For a very long time, many seen Hezbollah’s weapons as needed for authentic resistance in opposition to Israel’s occupation till its withdrawal in 2000. However over the previous twenty years, the group has principally resisted the will amongst many Lebanese for peace and reform.
Three Hezbollah operatives had been convicted within the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, and the group is believed to be behind the killings of a variety of opponents, though it denies involvement. The group has concerned Lebanon in devastating wars with Israel and has repeatedly asserted its dominance on nationwide politics by power, crippling the nation’s capacity to kind a functioning authorities.
Our nation has additionally paid an exorbitant worth for Hezbollah’s erosion. Following the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel, the group started launching missile assaults on Israeli bases, opening what it known as a “help entrance” for Gaza. Israel’s current retaliation in opposition to Hezbollah was brutal, killing greater than 4,000 individuals, displacing greater than 1,000,000, destroying agriculture and damaging about 100,000 houses.
The World Financial institution put the financial injury to an already staggering economic system at a minimal of $8.5 billion. Greater than a 160 paramedics and rescue employees have been killed, in addition to a dozen members of the press. Persons are enraged on the dying and destruction, and Israeli troops have warned residents to remain out of greater than 60 villages within the south. The prospects for the troops’ withdrawal and Hezbollah’s give up of its arsenal, as known as for by the cease-fire and U.N. resolutions, are in query.
The one manner ahead is to acquire a full-fledged Israeli withdrawal, whereas disbanding all militias in Lebanon. The previous years have taught us {that a} robust Hezbollah means a weak Lebanon, not a weak Israel.
Rebuilding our nation is an pressing want. Restructuring our barely functioning banking sector and our bankrupt state funds shall be needed, together with reforming our judiciary. “Accountability” must be the important thing phrase of the subsequent section. We owe it to the victims of the 2020 port explosion that destroyed swaths of the town and killed at the least 235 individuals. We owe it to those that have been assassinated or disappeared over time and to all those that misplaced their financial savings in current historical past’s largest banking meltdown.
Essentially the most essential problem is deeper: Our lengthy civil warfare left us saddled with a divided society, communities dominated by concern of each other and a system during which management is shared alongside spiritual strains that has served warlords’ appetites for energy moderately than inclusive illustration.
We now have the prospect to beat our divisions and set an instance for what democracy actually means in a area dominated by highly effective and largely ethnically or religiously homogeneous states like Israel, Turkey and Iran surrounding the culturally assorted and fractured Arab Levant. We are able to try this by establishing a contemporary state embracing variety and defending freedom — a mannequin that we skilled with relative success between the founding of contemporary Lebanon in 1920 and the outbreak of civil warfare in 1975. We should reimagine that nation right now.
Shortly earlier than his assassination in 2005, the Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir wrote: “When the Arab spring blooms in Beirut, it heralds the time of roses in Damascus.” What I witnessed in Syria’s capital final month made me assume his phrases had been lastly materializing, although the opposite manner spherical.
Roses are beginning to bloom in Damascus. Perhaps they’re calling for spring in Beirut.
Michel Helou is secretary common of the Lebanese Nationwide Bloc, a secular and reformist political occasion, and a former candidate within the Lebanese parliamentary elections. He was beforehand government director of L’Orient-Le Jour, a number one Lebanese publication.
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