As humans, we are natural storytellers. We tell ourselves narratives that fit our beliefs, especially when fear takes over and we start filling in the blanks.

In Lebanon, where polarization has become almost instinctive, we assume.

We assume that people who want peace are collaborators or traitors. We assume they do not care about their fellow citizens in the South. We assume they only want to “live” at any cost, even if parts of the country remain under Israeli occupation or threat.

But these are assumptions, and they are mostly wrong.

The people often dismissed as collaborators have also paid a price in what was once called resistance. They too have known assassination, martyrdom, displacement, destruction, and loss. Their communities have also been devastated. Their villages and neighborhoods have also been emptied. Their civilians have also been forced to leave their homes.

They know very well the cost that people in the South are paying today, not because their suffering is identical, but because Lebanon’s recent history has repeatedly dragged different communities into wars and political choices they did not fully control.

What was called resistance in earlier decades did not prevent Lebanon from being ruined. And what is called resistance today has not protected the country either. The result has been more destruction, more displacement, and a deeper loss of sovereignty over parts of Lebanon.

This does not absolve Israel of responsibility for its attacks, occupation, destruction, or violations. But it does require us to ask a Lebanese question too: who decides war and peace in this country? Who has the authority to expose people to war? Who is held accountable when entire towns are destroyed and civilians are displaced?

Today, the reality is in front of us. Lebanon is not governed by one coherent state. It is fragmented between competing centers of power: the official state, Hezbollah’s parallel security and political order, and the financial-banking establishment that helped produce one of the worst collapses in modern Lebanese history.

The current government did not create all of this. It inherited a collapsed economy, weakened institutions, a devastated public sector, a broken banking system, a divided political class, and a war-damaged country. But saying this should not turn into blind praise. The government must still be judged by what it delivers: transparency, accountability, reconstruction, protection of citizens, and the recovery of public services.

After the Syrian army left Lebanon, the country went through two decades of dysfunction, paralysis, assassinations, wars, financial collapse, and institutional decay. Hezbollah and its allies were not outside this system. They were part of most governments and major political settlements, especially after May 7, 2008, when the balance of power inside Lebanon was reshaped by force.

So Hezbollah today cannot separate itself from the system it helped build and dominate. Its supporters cannot blame the current state for every disaster while ignoring the years in which Hezbollah and its allies held power, shaped governments, blocked decisions, protected parallel arms, and participated in the very order that produced this failure.

At the same time, those who support restoring the authority of the state should not pretend that the state is already healthy, efficient, or innocent. The Lebanese state has failed its citizens many times. It has been corrupt, sectarian, slow, selective, and often cruelly absent. It must be rebuilt, not romanticized.

The government is now trying, with limited tools, to mitigate damage and begin recovery. It has moved through reconstruction plans, emergency assistance, and attempts to restore roads, water, electricity, health, education, and municipal services. Some international financing has been mobilized, including support for critical infrastructure and emergency recovery. But the needs remain far larger than the resources available, and the process must be monitored carefully to ensure that reconstruction does not become another chapter of clientelism, corruption, or unequal treatment between regions.

That work, if done transparently and fairly, deserves to be recognized as a form of resistance too: resistance through state-building, reconstruction, public accountability, and the protection of citizens. If some insist on calling armed confrontation resistance, then we should also be able to call the effort to repair towns, restore services, keep people on their land, and preserve what remains of the country a form of resistance.

Lebanon cannot survive through the same failed paths. The last wars have shown that slogans alone do not create sovereignty. Independence without functioning institutions, credible diplomacy, modern capabilities, and strong international relations is not real independence. We cannot live in 2026 with the tools, language, and illusions of 2006.

This is not a desire to offer the government gratuitous praise; it is an insistence on restoring the state — however weak it may be — to its rightful place above mini-states, militias, and mafias.

I do not trust the state because it is perfect. I trust the idea of the state because every alternative has failed more dangerously. I trust the state only to the extent that it can be made accountable, transparent, and capable of protecting all citizens equally.

And I trust every political force, civil group, and citizen who rejects both forms of captivity: the captivity of armed mini-states and the captivity of financial impunity.

So let us stop assuming.

Let us stop accusing everyone who wants peace of betrayal.

Let us stop pretending that war without national consent is sovereignty.

And let us stop repeating the same pattern while expecting a different result.