Hussein Chokr
When “peace” becomes synonymous with chaos, you can be certain Israel is there. No state in the region has practiced violence and bloodshed in the name of peace as systematically as Israel. Nor has it seen a person more brazen than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who calls for peace through killing and destruction. Within 10 minutes, he unleashes 100 airstrikes on Lebanon, killing more than 300 civilians and wounding over 1,150. The next day, he appears before the world announcing his readiness to enter negotiations with Lebanon for peace and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
However, the real danger lies elsewhere — in how the Lebanese government will respond. The question is whether it possesses the political maturity to navigate this existentially sensitive moment, or whether it will succumb to the kind of recklessness that risks plunging Lebanon into a new phase of chaos.
Why call it recklessness? Because it risks enabling Netanyahu’s strategic cunning to ignite an internal rupture in Lebanon, potentially the most severe since the end of the civil war in 1990.
Across a region where few would wish for anything short of Netanyahu’s political demise, it is striking to see the Lebanese government’s political establishment extending him what amounts to a lifeline, pulling him back from the brink of collapse triggered by the early outcomes of the war on Iran and Lebanon.
On April 8, US President Donald Trump, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a two-week ceasefire meant to pave the way for a broader settlement. Sharif, acting as mediator, explicitly stated that Lebanon was included.
Israel, however, continued its strikes. As pressure mounted on Washington, Netanyahu sought relief by suddenly accepting Lebanon’s earlier call for negotiations, after previously rejecting diplomacy and insisting on imposing a buffer zone by force up to the Litani River. He said the goals were Hezbollah’s disarmament and a “peace process” with Lebanon.
Within minutes, signals emerged from within the Lebanese government indicating a willingness to proceed, culminating in a meeting between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the US in Washington, followed by a declaration from Trump that he would invite the Lebanese president and Netanyahu to conclude a peace deal. Such a move, however, is not merely provocative to a large segment of Lebanese society, particularly the Shiite community, which stands on the front lines of Israeli aggression, but also represents, if aligned with Netanyahu’s objectives, an existential threat.
Why? Because for this segment, Israel is not a conventional adversary but an existential one — one that has systematically oppressed them since 1948. In the absence of a functioning state capable of ensuring their security, they turned to resistance. What began as a leftist national resistance evolved into an Islamic one, embodied in Hezbollah.
Thus, a government decision to pursue negotiations aimed at forcibly disarming Hezbollah, without a credible alternative security framework strips this community of its sense of safety and right to self-defense, especially after they saw the Lebanese army withdrawing from positions during the latest Israeli incursion.
For those familiar with Lebanon, the implications are clear. Advancing such a path without addressing these fears is a near-perfect recipe for internal sectarian conflict echoing the Feb. 6, 1984 intifada, which erupted in response to a peace agreement imposed under Israeli influence and supported by the Lebanese right against other Lebanese factions that viewed Israel as an existential enemy.
Today, history risks repeating itself, rather than serving as a lesson. Nation-building requires an inclusive partnership that accommodates the interests and anxieties of all societal groups. Without this, no sustainable national identity can emerge, and Lebanon remains trapped in cycles of instability.
At its core, Lebanon’s crisis is foundational. It traces back to the very formation of the state — an entity that, were it not for the contingencies of history and the pressures of its time, may never have emerged in its current form. Its founding under the French mandate, and the role of elites who shaped the state to serve their own interests, created a structural imbalance.
These elites accepted the new geography of greater Lebanon incorporating the Bekaa, the south, and the north, but rejected the human demographic reality of these regions. They failed to integrate the fears, aspirations, and expectations of these populations into the national project. The result is a persistent sense of marginalization among these communities, who continue to view themselves as peripheral without voice or rights.
Lebanon today struggles to agree on even the most basic foundations of statehood beyond symbolic formalities. It cannot even define its enemy. Unlike functioning states, there is no unified conception of national security that clearly articulates the country’s interests or the threats it faces. In such a vacuum, decisions of war, peace, and survival are left exposed to fragmentation, improvization, and external manipulation. If this moment passes without a fundamental reckoning, Lebanon will not simply risk another cycle of instability, it will be edging closer to a far more dangerous reality: a state that no longer collapses under pressure, but one that dissolves from within.
Hussein Chokr is a Beirut-based policy expert. X: @HuseinChokr
