There are many obstacles preventing Lebanon from becoming the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East,' something that the Israeli President Shimon Peres wishes Lebanon would grow to be. Among these obstacles is Israel's insistence on dealing with its northern neighbor as a training area for its air force jets, both night and day. Furthermore, Hezbollah and its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict is only one of many expressions of the dilemmas of this region, its peoples and their rulers vis-a-vis the Israeli political, military and economic challenge. More importantly, [saying that] the party is thwarting the transformation of Lebanon into the Switzerland of the region - as Peres claimed to the students of a Galilee school – is not more dangerous than a number of other obstructions that pertain to the sectarian structure of Lebanon and its political system. In truth, both issues pave the way for the intervention of foreign forces and allow them to compete to use this small country as an arena for their endless wars. Before all this, we should ask about the basis that Peres built his conclusion upon, that the Lebanese desire to see their country becoming the Switzerland of the Middle East. The memory of a large group of our citizens is linked to an ominous feeling whenever they hear anything that promotes Lebanon's touristic features or compares it to Switzerland. This comparison has nothing to do with the similarities that exist between the Lebanese sectarian diversity and the linguistic-ethnic diversity in Switzerland, or the hypothetical “development” in both countries' bank systems and the beauty of nature (the fading and extinct beauty in Lebanon's case). However, the similarity involves a shallow and trivial vision, one that reveals that the Swiss Confederation rests on the bases of deep interest among the three major groups in it and its surrounding countries on the one hand, while our country rests on shaky ground of transient internal and external consensuses and agreements on the other hand. Instead, it is more likely that the Israeli president, who has become an icon and a symbol of opportunism in Israel and abroad, despite his cultural and humanitarian claims - is unaware that a key part of the Lebanese are only concerned these days about thinking of new ways to fight Israel. This is regardless of the serious indications engendered by this, on the social cohesion and political and security-related stability in Lebanon. In fact, Lebanon is in a dire need for a long period of calm to cope with the various disasters it endured in the past five years. Truth be told, the argument that is excessively consumed and reused for propaganda purposes – which Peres enjoys reiterating, causes severe boredom. This latter is in fact all that remains from the simple comparison between the Arab-Israeli conflict's hold on this region of the world and its people, who are subject to various types of oppression and alienation and underdevelopment, away from the requirements of modernity of this era, and the talk about peace and abandoning the “worshipping of missiles.” All what is understood from this talk is that it gives the killer the right to escape the repercussions of his crime, as we have seen in Gaza's tragedy. While Israel and the governments of multifaceted tyranny take turns in providing excuses to push the conflict to new depths amid the muddle of identities, cultures and religions - as well as Benjamin Netanyahu's step that regards the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Tomb of Rachel as part of the Israeli heritage - Peres encourages further fragmentation among the Lebanese by enticing them into restoring their Swiss paradise which Hezbollah has wasted. In truth, regardless of how malicious and clever Peres tries to appear, one could only find a combination of racist arrogance, prejudice, and stereotypic [ideas] in the approach used to learn this region's issues, and which those who lecture about the benefits of peace evoke after a night during which their own warplanes had not left others' airspaces for one moment.
