Lebanon’s Opponents: “Where is the State?” 

By Hicham Bou Nassif | Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

A central contradiction permeates our national life. Since the establishment of the Lebanese Republic, no force has been more determined to thwart its evolution into a true state than the very environment that protests its existence. Yet, at the same time, that same environment bemoans the state’s absence more loudly than anyone else.

Consider the latest rhetoric from groups that vowed to eliminate Israel—even though they failed to dislodge its forces from Lebanon’s border in the recent war—and you encounter a paradox that might have been laughable under less dire circumstances. On one hand, the Shiite narrative demands that the state rebuild and protect the South. On the other, it clings to an illicit, fundamentalist arsenal that effectively negates the state’s very foundation. By what logic can this be reconciled?

With little hope of swaying the steadfast, hardline elites, I remind you of the events of 1967: Egypt lost the Sinai, Jordan lost the West Bank, and Syria lost the Golan Heights. Egypt’s reclaiming of its territory came only at the cost of signing a peace treaty with Israel, whereas Syria and Jordan lost theirs permanently. Notably, Lebanon was the only nation in the region that did not lose its land at that time — largely because the Maronite political class (the very entity so detested by Shiite consciousness) dismissed Nasserite propaganda and rejected Ahmed Sa’id’s boastful claims about Arabs’ ability to “throw the Jews into the sea.” In those days, Lebanon functioned as a true state, sovereign in decision-making and uniquely endowed with a monopoly on arms. Since then, however, Lebanon has endured three successive occupations that stripped it of its right to independent national governance: first, by armed Palestinian factions; next, by the Syrian occupation; and finally, by Iranian hegemony through its proxies.

One must ask: Should the Shiite rhetoric, which so fervently demands “the state,” acknowledge the self-destructive role played by core Shiite forces in colluding with these occupiers to dismantle the very state they now decry? What I mean to say is this: The Palestinians once relied on “national” parties to dominate Lebanon — and one of their prominent fighters was a Shiite. Later, Hafez al-Assad’s regime employed the Amal Movement, while the Iranians later mobilized Hezbollah — two unequivocally Shiite entities.

Although the Palestinians, Syrians, and Iranians had their disagreements, they converged on channeling Israeli violence into the South and on exploiting that violence as a regional propaganda tool at the expense of its people. When Shiite forces assisted in this process, their own society eventually paid the price. So, who is ultimately responsible for the degradation of the South? Is it “the state,” or is it those who, in cahoots with regional power brokers, have further sabotaged it?

In truth, the notion that the state of the First Republic abandoned the South is nothing more than myth. The Ottomans long harbored a disdain for Mount Amel on sectarian grounds — well before the Lebanese Republic was even established. Moreover, following the collapse of the state in 1975, the Palestinians, Syrians, and Iranians exploited the South repeatedly. If there was ever a period of relative reprieve for the South, it was during the decades between 1920 and 1975. Yet, modern Shiite consciousness — innately hostile to the Maronite establishment — refuses to acknowledge that period, for it was the era of Maronite political ascendancy, a fact that this consciousness despises.

Furthermore, few would concede that the Maronite protected the South when they deliberately avoided embroiling Lebanon in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Nor would anyone acknowledge that the Maronite inherited a deprived Mount Amel from the Ottoman era, and that the rapid social ascent of the Shiites, achieved in less than fifty years, brought forth an educated, prosperous middle class after four centuries of repression under the “High Table.” If poverty and deprivation still plague the South, it is because overcoming four centuries of enduring misery in Mount Amel demanded time, calm, stability, and a detachment from volatile regional dynamics — conditions that the modern Shiite forces have consistently rejected, from the days of the sectarian left and Mahdi Aamil to the era of Hezbollah (may God have mercy, by the way, on Kamal al-Asaad and Kazem al-Khalil).

I fully recognize that today’s Shiite circles are in crisis, and I ardently hope for their recovery. I am acutely aware of the suffering endured by the South over five successive decades — more severe than in any other region in Lebanon. No one deserves such an unremitting series of calamities, culminating in the most recent disaster. I can only hope that the people of the South eventually come to realize that the forces that have undermined them grew from within, and that a century of alignment with those who have dismantled the Lebanese state has brought them nothing but anguish. A dose of sincere self-criticism might be the only remedy. This, of course, applies equally to everyone in Lebanon — but that is a matter for another article.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watana on 5 May  2025. The original can be found here.

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