The Airport Scene or Sovereignty as a Perspective

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watan on 18 February 2025. The original can be found here.

By Hicham Bou Nassif

Many commentators mocked the claim made by supporters of the Shiite duo, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, last week that they were demonstrating on the airport road in defense of Lebanon’s sovereignty. Once again, social media was flooded with expressions such as “the Iranian community,” “Iran’s lackeys,” “Iranian occupation,” and the like. From the standpoint of complete rejection of everything the Shiite duo represents in Lebanon’s politics and society, I believe their supporters who declared a few days ago that they were defending Lebanon’s sovereignty.

It is true that their fervor for sovereignty did not stir against Iran, even though it has turned us for years into a missile platform serving its interests on Israel’s border. However, defending sovereignty is directed against an enemy; and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is my enemy, is not the enemy of the duo’s supporters. This is because the deep-seated identity that drives me is not their identity, and vice versa. Consequently, my value compass (Western liberal democracies) is their devil, while their compass (the Islamic Republic) is my devil.

That is why I believe them when they say they are defending Lebanon’s sovereignty, which I understand as a viewpoint directly linked to sectarian identity. Since their identity is not mine, it is only natural that their concept of sovereignty differs from mine. To me, things are that clear.

This perspective may provoke resentment among the duo’s opponents, particularly within the Christian community, which has traditionally viewed itself as the defender of the country’s sovereignty. However, the equation that applies to the duo’s sovereignists equally applies to their adversaries.

A reminder: in the conflict between Émile Eddé and Bechara El Khoury, most Christians sided with the former, even though he remained, until the very last moment, a supporter of the French mandate over Lebanon. In the 1950s, Camille Chamoun became the civil patriarch of the Christians, despite having invited American military intervention in 1958. Later, Bachir Gemayel became a Christian political icon, and remains one to this day. The circumstances of his election in 1982 were anything but sovereign, yet this did not trouble his sovereignty-minded supporters. Today, the majority of Christians feel at ease with the new political era, even though the direct international intervention that enabled it is no secret.

One might ask: What kind of sovereign stance is this that aligns itself with one foreign intervention after another? The answer is that the Christian sense of sovereignty is activated when the foreign intervention in Lebanese politics comes from an Islamic party, whether Iran, Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, or Nasser’s Egypt. In contrast, when the intervention is Western, Christian sensitivity to sovereignty diminishes. Why? Because Christians are not treated as second-class subjects in the West, whereas they remain so in the Islamic world to this day.

Lebanese Christians look at the conditions of their brethren in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq and loudly reject the prospect of becoming second-class citizens in a region where hostility toward “Nasara” (Christians) is rooted in foundational religious texts and an ancient cultural legacy. What the general Christian consciousness perceives as a sovereign Lebanese stance is, in reality, a Christian struggle for survival. I believe this struggle is necessary. But it does not negate the equation I previously posed: sovereignty in Lebanon is a matter of perspective defined by sectarian identity.

In short, yes, the Shiites protesting what they perceive as American-Israeli tutelage over Lebanon are sovereignists, according to their own understanding of sovereignty. And the Christians who despise Iran’s regime and welcome the devil’s intervention in Lebanon’s affairs if it rids them of fundamentalist weapons are sovereignists in their own right, from a Christian perspective. What holds true for the Christian and Shiite communities also applies to the Sunnis and Druze.

Our choices, after a hundred years of the Lebanese Republic’s existence, are clear: we can either persist in attempting to impose our identities and their political ramifications on one another, thus perpetuating rounds of our civil war, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, but always ongoing, or we can recognize that our identities are not a mere misunderstanding that can be resolved with more poetic rhetoric about Lebanon’s supposed meaning and mission.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.