According to the records of the Imperial War Museums, Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet convened 115 times in the Cabinet War Rooms beneath the government headquarters at Whitehall during the World War II, particularly throughout the bombing of London and the subsequent German rocket attacks.
There, in the underground bunkers near the seat of government and Parliament, ministers, military commanders, and planners continued their work. Maps, intelligence briefings, and strategy meetings became the nerve center of Britain’s wartime operations. Despite the relentless bombardment, the machinery of government remained active around the clock until the war’s end.
This comparison may seem unfair when viewed through the lens of present-day Lebanon, which is enduring a brutal Israeli war. No one is asking the Lebanese government to be Britain, nor its ministers to direct a world war from fortified underground bunkers. We understand the country’s limitations, the fragility of its institutions, and the stark imbalance of power with Israel. We also know that Hezbollah monopolized decisions of war and peace for decades, drawing Lebanon into a deadly equation.
What cannot be understood or justified, however, is the apparent absence of the state at a moment when southern Lebanon is collapsing. What is unacceptable is for officials to behave as though the war is something that can be monitored from abroad, or as though a holiday break remains a normal priority while the historic city of Tyre is under attack, Nabatieh edges closer to devastation, villages are being erased, and people search for a state willing to speak to them, only to be met with silence or confused messages on social media.
Political circles have been circulating reports that 13 Lebanese ministers left the country for the Eid al-Adha holiday. Under the circumstances of a devastating war, can such news be considered normal while thousands of Lebanese people are left without anyone from the state addressing them? Can the Lebanese state really afford to take a holiday from war?
Some may dispute the number, downplay it, or attempt to explain it away by arguing that certain ministers are on official business, that communications remain ongoing, or that their phones are still on. But the scandal goes far beyond the number itself.
The real scandal lies in the political and moral mindset that allows ministers in a government, while part of their country is being destroyed, occupied, and depopulated, to regard travel as business as usual. It reflects a sense of detachment that treats the war as something happening elsewhere, as though southern Lebanon were not under fire.
As though Tyre were not a Lebanese city. As though Nabatieh were not in imminent danger. As though the people being killed in their homes were not citizens whom this government is supposed to protect.
No one is asking for grand gestures or performative displays of heroism. Nor is anyone expecting the Lebanese government to suddenly acquire military or political capabilities it simply does not possess. But there is a minimum standard that must be met: presence. A minimum standard called responsibility. A minimum standard called speaking to the people.
At the very least, people in the South, and Lebanese citizens more broadly, should feel that there is a state that knows they exist and recognizes their suffering. A state that does more than issue sterile statements and hastily drafted remarks. A state that does not hide behind its own limitations or turn helplessness into official policy.
Many of us firmly believe that there can be no solution outside the framework of the state, and that the weapons of Hezbollah have led Lebanon into a devastating existential crisis. We believe, too, that the group’s continued use of drones and military attacks, despite Israel’s advancing campaign and the immense cost borne by people and communities, is part of the disaster itself.
Those who insist on waging war outside the authority of the state, without a broad national mandate, and in the face of an overwhelming military imbalance, are effectively dragging an entire country into the jaws of destruction.
Many of us argue that diplomacy and negotiation are the only viable path to halting the country’s collapse, and that the state remains the only framework through which Lebanon can hope to survive.
But how can we persuade people to return to the state when the state itself appears absent from their lives? How can we tell the people of southern Lebanon to turn away from Hezbollah and place their trust in state institutions, when those same institutions do not even seem compelled to address them on a daily basis? When they see no political or administrative state of emergency, no continuous government, parliamentary, or security meetings in response to the crisis?
How can we ask people to place their faith in an institution that does not even make the effort to show that it stands with them?
The government should have been in continuous session. Parliament should have been meeting in open-ended emergency sittings. The three presidents, Joseph Aoun, Nabih Berri, and Nawaf Salam, should have been addressing the nation every day with a clear and direct message.
Not the usual rhetoric about “upholding sovereignty,” “condemning aggression,” or “maintaining diplomatic contacts,” but concrete answers to urgent questions: What is the state doing? What does it know? What is it asking of the international community? How does it intend to make Beirut a weapons-free city as a first step toward restoring the state’s exclusive authority over military decisions? How will it protect displaced people? Document war crimes? Coordinate with municipalities? Manage relief efforts? Support threatened towns and cities? Hold the international community accountable?
In moments like these, politics is not only about major decisions. It is also about presence. About a daily message that reassures people they have not been abandoned.
The ministers of health, social affairs, interior, defense, foreign affairs, and information should have been operating in a permanent state of crisis, not waiting on the sidelines. There should have been an official media center, daily press briefings, clear maps, accurate figures, a displacement response plan, emergency coordination mechanisms, regular communication with journalists and municipalities, and systematic documentation of every attack, every casualty, and every act of displacement.
The government should have transformed itself into a political and humanitarian operations room, not a body that issues occasional statements while leaving Lebanese citizens to learn about their fate from television screens, Israeli military announcements, and the party’s declarations of “victories” that now reportedly reach as far as Haifa.
As for Nabih Berri, who occupies one of the most sensitive positions at the moment, he has largely retreated into silence, or what many would describe as political withdrawal. A figure who spent decades as one of the principal architects of Lebanon’s political balance and a pillar of the system that enabled Hezbollah to expand both within and beyond the state now appears to treat silence as a position in itself.
But at a moment like this, silence is not wisdom. It is abdication. It sends a message to the people of the South that they are alone in facing the bombs and alone in bearing the consequences of the political calculations that helped bring about this reality.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has remained sparing in both his appearances and his public statements, far more restrained than the moment demands. A handful of brief posts and comments, as though they were written out of obligation rather than in response to a national catastrophe. It is not enough for the government’s position to be correct in principle. It is not enough to point out that the government faces attacks from Hezbollah, accusations of betrayal from its supporters, and pressure from its allies. All of that may be true, but it does not absolve the government of its basic responsibilities. In politics, especially during wartime, presentation is part of substance, and communication is part of action.
As for President Joseph Aoun, his public presence has likewise fallen short of the gravity of the moment. In a country facing the prospect of an expanding occupation, it is not enough for the president to serve as a distant symbol, a silent guarantor, or an observer behind closed doors. He must address the nation, not as an orator but as head of state. He must clearly explain the limits of what is possible, the risks ahead, and what the state is actually doing. People are not asking for miracles. They are asking to see those who claim to represent the state act as though the state truly exists.
Lebanon’s predicament today is both severe and deeply paradoxical. On one hand, Hezbollah continues a military confrontation whose costs are borne overwhelmingly by the people of southern Lebanon and by the country as a whole, as though the meaning of “steadfastness” were measured by the number of homes destroyed, villages emptied, and bodies pulled from beneath the rubble. On the other hand, the state, which is supposed to offer an alternative, appears to be waiting for the outcome of the battle before deciding how to act, watching from a distance to see who prevails rather than asking how those still trapped in the conflict can be saved.
This is where the deeper scandal lies. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the political class has played a central role in entrenching Hezbollah’s dominance. It did so through electoral bargains, political appointments, corruption, vested interests, and successive compromises that sold off the very idea of the state piece by piece. Those who needed the party’s votes remained silent. Those who benefited from its weapons made accommodations. Those who sought its alliance looked the other way. Even many of its public opponents often met it elsewhere within the same system of mutual interests.
As a result, Lebanon’s Shiite community, and southern Lebanon in particular, were left trapped in a formula that reduced their representation to a single armed party, while the state remembered them only when it wanted them to return to its fold.
If we truly want to tell people that the state is their refuge, then the state must begin acting like one. The government must offer something other than paralysis. If diplomacy is to be presented as the solution, then diplomacy must appear as a daily effort rather than a hollow slogan. And if Lebanon is not merely an arena for Tehran and Tel Aviv, then its authorities must behave like the government of a sovereign country rather than an administration waiting for events to unfold.
What is needed now is not heroic rhetoric. The demand is far more modest and far more difficult: that people do not feel abandoned.
That those in the South do not feel their deaths have become passing headlines on a public holiday.
That Tyre does not watch its history crumble while government ministers are abroad.
That Nabatieh does not see danger drawing ever closer while those in power look on from a distance.
Israel may not take a holiday from war, but what is far more alarming is the impression that the Lebanese state has taken a holiday from its responsibilities.
In a country whose south is burning, this is not a mere protocol lapse or a political miscalculation. It is a national scandal. A state that disappears in moments of danger cannot later ask its citizens to trust it. And a state that fails to show up when its citizens are dying has no right to be surprised when those same citizens, however mistaken, misled, or pressured they may be, turn instead to another force that tells them: we see you.
Caught between an Israeli war that shows no mercy and the weapons of Hezbollah, whose decisions are made without asking ordinary people to bear their costs, the Lebanese state now faces its most basic test: simply being present.
So far, the message reaching southern Lebanon is not a message from the state. It is a message of absence.
And perhaps, before demanding that the people of the South return to the state, we should first wait for the ministers to return from their holiday.
