A season of tumult is currently prevailing over Lebanon and is known as the battle to topple the international tribunal. While the commotion is mind-paralyzing and the biggest concern revolves around the toppling of the country of coexistence, politics are retreating again in the face of the flow of accusations and insults. The muscles are thus buffed up and the tongues are unbridled, while the Lebanese are threatened of becoming “charred” (and turning into the color of coal) for seeking the truth, but on high-tension lines. It is a new tumultuous round like no other in the bitter conflict between “two movements” and two projects, each of which enjoys its own visions and goals, while it is now certain that everything that was done by the dialogue table could not bridge that gap. The return to point zero this time around simply means to Hezbollah's team the following: Whoever is not with us is not only against us, but is also with the American-Israeli project and its “tool,” i.e. the tribunal. So, let the pens stop invoking the tribunal and requesting the truth that was hijacked by those who assassinated martyr Rafik al-Hariri and his companions… Let the minds stop thinking, because thinking is up to the others who divided the Lebanese into two camps, thus placing them all in trenches. As for the gray area, it is that same Israeli-American project which no sooner disappears following the settlement of some crisis, that it emerges again like a sword. In this round, the meanings of the forced classification which eradicates the wills of the people may appear in its most dangerous forms, with the contribution – of course- of the collective procession behind the wishes, voice, image and rhetoric of the leader, even if he were to commit a sin… As for “blasphemy” itself, it resides in the words uttered by the leader of the opponents. And because this conflict requires new terminology whenever it becomes more heated, political language drops to the level of insults and the use of muscles and the country of tourism and services turns into the country of coal and strife. In Lebanon, the country which hosted the promoters of Arab nationalism before its rise and suffered for decades alone along the advanced front with Israel, the accusation of collaboration and espionage has become a dagger used in the duel with the rival in a way that was never witnessed in any other Arab country. It is easy for whoever resorts to it to forget his praise of national unity following a dialogue round or a ministerial statement, as it was easier for everyone to forget – following the wounds of May 7 – the reality of the transitory phase which was instated by the Doha agreement and which placed one of Lebanon's feet in the oasis of the Taef agreement and the other… in the unknown. All the sides are facing a wall, whether the tribunal or the country. In the “literature” of the politicians and the debates based on curses and accusations affecting consciences and values, threats become very common in what used to be called the laboratory of coexistence between eighteen sects. Today, the utmost ambition is the acceptance of the equation of parity between Lebanon's fate and the cohabitation of two movements. The acceptance of the other is no longer a necessary pillar to uphold nationalism, just like democracy can be a slogan behind which the agents are infiltrating! In reality, most of us could be subjected to accusations after “nationalism” brought down all the protection shields, even if one were to belong to a specific sect or follow a specific ideology. Therefore, a Lebanese can no longer be with the court and against Israel at the same time, or with the court and against the false witnesses… He can no longer be with the international court and the resistance at the same time, ever since Hezbollah anticipated the indictment, perceiving the first as being a “conspiracy” to kill the second. Did it not simply say “forget Rafik al-Hariri” to uphold Lebanon's unity in the face of strife which is after the head of the resistance? But if what the country is witnessing today is not strife, then what is? Politics is no longer politics ever since the only, real and absolute rhetoric prevailed, alongside the muscles of the arms and the tongues, the cutting of hands and the dissection of intentions, the bombardment of virtues, defamation, the cloning of accusations of collaboration, the concealment of the implicit with screams, the coercion of the symbols (and they are great symbols) by force to question the others, and the depletion of the people's hopes of seeing a tomorrow that is not threatened with eternal wars. As for the media, it is no longer serving democracy and the truth, ever since the politicians' voice hijacked its own voice and image. It has thus become a platform for the exchange of “messages” and the leaking of scenarios of power and test balloons... Moreover, the mind is no longer conscious ever since Lebanon's politicians started believing they could lead it whichever way they want, while the world will come to the rescue every time they drag the country to the brink of the abyss. If the current goal is to topple the tribunal and then the government - maybe even the political system – and change the country's identity, those with pessimistic inclinations believe that Lebanon is not under the threat of two choices: Gaza and Mogadishu or Mogadishu and Gaza.
