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Sheikh Naim Qassem speaks as if he has authority over what he wants President Joseph Aoun to do. No one knows how someone who seeks to reclaim land can be called a 'traitor' in Hezbollah's discourse, while the one who started a war in support of Iran, which led Israel to erase villages in the south and occupy land up to the Litani, is considered 'victorious' and monopolizes 'patriotism.' There is no sign of embarrassment in rejecting direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under American sponsorship, while insisting on direct negotiations between America and Iran mediated by Pakistan and Qatar. The issue is not about the principle of negotiation itself, as evidenced by the state's demand for indirect rather than direct negotiations, but about where the negotiations lead. The bet is clear.

The success of negotiations on a final agreement based on the 'tripartite framework' depends on a fundamental issue: the disarmament of the 'Islamic Resistance' and the dismantling of its infrastructure. And the success of negotiations on the final status after the 'Memorandum of Understanding' is linked, in Tehran's view and the bets of its proxies, to strengthening the 'resistance front' as part of the sources of power in protecting Iranian national security.

Even the failure of Lebanon's negotiations with Israel and Iran's negotiations with America leads to Hezbollah retaining its weapons, whether Washington and Tel Aviv resume war against Iran or the region remains in a state of neither war nor peace.

There is no need to threaten civil war in defense of weapons. The party accuses its opponents and critics, as well as negotiations with Israel, of causing 'sedition' and triggering a civil war. But there is no civil war that results from a unilateral local choice, nor even from more than one party. What the Lebanese civil war, regional war, and international war taught us is that there is no civil war without strong external parties that have an interest in it, over issues unrelated to anything any Lebanese party wanted, and larger than any Lebanese issue.

Moreover, civil war is not carried out by the people of all political and sectarian orientations, but it is started by an organized group, even if small, then people are driven by the force of events and action-reaction to engage in the war. And 'What is needed to overthrow a system is not a revolutionary organization but an organization of revolutionaries,' as Lenin used to say. Also, the Lebanese war lasted a long time when 'insecurity' in the small nation was in the interest of regional and international security, and when the interests of the major powers changed, the war ended because insecurity in Lebanon no longer served any external goal, and because all local parties became exhausted and unable to continue.

Those who today demand a return to the 'cessation of hostilities' agreement in the fall of 2024 after the war in support of Gaza are the ones who imagined that the difficult circumstances that led Hezbollah to accept it have changed, necessitating a different formula that does not require the removal of weapons from all of Lebanon 'starting from the Litani war.' And those who focus on returning to the 1949 Armistice Agreement know that without the 'Cairo Agreement' and the wars of Palestinian organizations from Lebanese soil, and the wars of Hezbollah linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Armistice Agreement would have remained in effect. The game between America and Iran, whether in war or negotiations, is much larger than the bet on the notion that the second face of the war in support of Iran is supporting Lebanon in negotiations to ensure the full Israeli withdrawal.

As for the 'militarization' of a sect, it is a real problem for the sect itself, for Lebanon, and for the other sects. And as for 'entrenchment' behind a sect in rejecting the state's position, and its virtual separation from the popular and official majority, it is not the path to a national agreement. Nor is an agreement based on the submission of sects to the position of a single sect, even if the connection to Iran is formal. The division is more dangerous than ever, to the extent that the discourse between partners in the homeland sounds like discourse between enemies. There is no use in minimizing the problem; it is big. But the question is: Will the application of President Eisenhower's saying succeed: 'To solve a problem, make it bigger'?

Excerpted from Nidaa al-Watan

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