In a region dominated by the struggles of sects and confessions, and the wars of minorities and majorities, a region characteristically gifted at bringing down the results of elections through various political ploys to serve plans of confessional hegemony, the words of Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri about considering the system of the fifty-fifty balance between Muslims and Christians to be a permanent rule upon which rests the national equilibrium and the Lebanese formula seem quite exceptional, and in fact historical. Saad Hariri says: “We have stopped counting. We want this country to be shared at fifty-fifty between Christians and Muslims, regardless of the census of the different sects”. Hariri's words do not come out of nothing, as Lebanon is not immune to the sectarian virus that prevails in the region, and their importance does not lie only in the fact that he is the Prime Minister of Lebanon. Indeed, under the pressure of current conflicts inside Lebanon and outside of it, this young Lebanese Sunni man stands to defend the Lebanese formula, considering Lebanon to be “an oasis of integration, moderation, forgiveness and dialogue between religions and cultures”. Had such words been spoken by a Lebanese politician, thinker or writer from another sect or another confession, they would not have had the same impact. Indeed, the leader of the Future Movement and the Lebanon First coalition also speaks from the position of a confessional, political and regional background that cannot be found in Lebanon in many apart from him. The Taif Agreement, which put an end to the civil war in Lebanon, consecrated a historical shift by asserting the sectarian fifty-fifty system within Parliament, and thus within the government cabinet, a move which at the time had been considered to be in compliance with the complaints of Muslims from the political injustice they had been subjected to (as a result of the 6 Christians to 5 Muslims rule). And while doubts are put forth from time to time over the usefulness of maintaining the Taif Agreement as the basis of national concord, doubts that reach up to the fifty-fifty rule and whether a three-thirds system (considering the Shiites to be the third party to the equation alongside Christians and Sunnis) would be a suitable alternative to it, Hariri's stances come to assert yet again that the fifty-fifty principle is not a concession, nor a favor from the Muslims to the Christians, nor a gain for the Christians at the expense of the Muslims. Rather, it is a concession and a gain in the service of maintaining Lebanon as a unique formula of coexistence in the region. Stances such as these represent a response to the calls prevalent today, in whispers and in the open, whether for “numerical democracy” – which in a country like Lebanon only means the supremacy of the sectarian and confessional majority and the marginalization or exclusion of others, with politics or with weapons – or for its equivalent which is referred to by the slogan of “abolishing political sectarianism”, a slogan which only raises doubts, being set forth by politicians whose history of political activity has known only the defense of their sectarian identity and the strengthening of its position. Lebanon has witnessed many political plans in its recent history, plans which have been based on sectarian logic and have used it as a fountainhead for bullying others. Such plans have borne the colors of every sect, and what they have had in common has not just been their making use of the strength of the sect, but their making use of the strength of foreign allies against domestic enemies. The natural result of all these plans has been defeat, because the natural logic on the basis of which Lebanon's independence was established had relied on this unique equilibrium, one of a kind in the region, between what might be called the right of the Christians to protect their particularities and the reasonable approach of the Muslims towards their numerical majority. Without such pairing the Lebanese entity, as we know it, in itself becomes exposed to danger, as took place in its recent experiences.
