Nearly one hundred thousand Lebanese who have not returned to their destroyed villages along the border with Israel deserve the candor of being told that their return is not imminent, and that a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel has effectively become a reality.
This “buffer zone” lies outside the diplomatic attempts to prevent the resumption of a war that looms in the near future. When states speak of the need to disarm Hezbollah—or else Lebanon should brace for a new military campaign—they do not mean that disarmament will lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the five Lebanese points Israel occupies, nor to an end of the de facto and aerial occupation exercised by its warplanes and drones over Lebanese airspace.
Those hopes are now behind us. Benjamin Netanyahu is living a euphoria of victory in which he feels the Levant has become like malleable dough in his hands. He has discovered the fragility of all the defenses the “Axis” had led us to believe in, and no one stands in the way of his ambitions except—ironically—Donald Trump, who is restraining him for reasons of his own, not out of concern for the tragedy endured by the hundred thousand Lebanese along the frontier.
The defeat is profound, and it must be kept out of Lebanon’s petty sectarian bickering. Benjamin Netanyahu is a crisis far too large to be shoved into our small confessional quarrels. We are speaking of a geographic and social expanse on the verge of being almost permanently cut away from the 10,452 square kilometers that make up this formidable Lebanon. This is happening while the country lives in denial: between those who insist that “the resistance is fine,” and those who, from behind the defeat, seek to push through an era of ruinous corruption parallel to the era of arms—by diverting attention from the “theft of the century” and narrowing blame to the era of weapons alone.
The story goes far beyond Hezbollah’s weapons. It is about what Benjamin Netanyahu believes to be a rare achievement—one he may never again have such a perfect chance to realize. A historic accomplishment tied to the very model of the Israeli state, after the right-wing succeeded in defeating the founding fathers’ vision. What is alarming is that reversing this shift would require profound transformations within Israel; transformations that are, at present, entirely absent.
As for us, we remain trapped in our pettiness. Have you ever heard of a law designed to prevent citizens from voting? Is that not a historical precedent we should add to the largest financial collapse in history and the second-largest explosion of the century?
Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s new Secretary-General, continues to act as if he rules Lebanon by decree. He refuses to hand over the group’s weapons, rejects the right of Lebanese expatriates to vote in elections, and distributes certificates of patriotism and treason in every direction, labeling some as “true sovereigntists” and others as “fake.” The second half of this ruling duo, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, is fighting a desperate last battle to prevent expatriates from voting—an absurd confrontation that belongs to a pre-defeat era, when the dominance of arms was at its height, unshaken even by a scandal as grave as preventing Lebanese citizens—particularly those who make up the country’s only remaining economic lifeline—from casting their votes.
Among those Hezbollah prevents us from thinking about are the one hundred thousand Lebanese whose villages have become a “buffer zone.” To acknowledge this reality is to acknowledge defeat—the futility of weapons and proxy wars—and to recognize that this “resistance war” handed Israel the pretext it had long awaited to build its separation wall with Lebanon, expanding the border from a mere barbed wire fence into a fortified barrier.
Politics and war are not matters of prophecy, as the rhetoricians of the “axis” would have us believe. What we did not know about Israel’s power became the very foundation of policies whose consequences all Lebanese, especially those hundred thousand along the border, are paying today. Their homes and villages were destroyed, their children killed, because of that ignorance. They are now too weak to demand accountability, but our duty is to work for their return to what remains of their towns—and that will not be achieved by repeating the same mistakes.
Hezbollah claims that those displaced from the south have entrusted it with their fate, and that most of them will vote for the party—and that is likely true. Yet the “buffer zone” is not Hezbollah’s issue alone; it is a Lebanese issue. The fate of a hundred thousand citizens is to be decided by all of Lebanon. The land that has been taken is a loss for Lebanon, and Hezbollah has proven an unworthy custodian of it. Moreover, any attempt to negotiate its future in Tehran, if traded for lifting sanctions, would only bury the dream of return.
What has happened is beyond the imagination of those tasked with addressing it. It is not merely a battlefield defeat; it marks the birth of a different Israel, parallel to a profound transformation that has also reshaped America. Netanyahu now resembles this new “America” more than he does the Israel of the past—he is a product of this new culture and masters it even more than his counterpart in the White House.
Amid this transformation, we have lost both the war and the border.
