Lebanon is the country of political settlements, and settlements between "constituents" have allowed for the establishment of the state. This has been its history ever since Greater Lebanon was declared, and it had the four districts joined to Mount Lebanon – and in fact even since the reign of Fakhreddine the Great of the Maan dynasty. Agreement between two sects forces the third to accept reality. Any demographic change within a sect disrupts the balance. Any disruption of the balance results in civil war. The sects are bound to foreign powers, near and far, regional and international. When the sponsors of its sects quarrel, Lebanon stands on the edge of the abyss. And it is alright for those in power to bring in foreign armies to separate the combatants. This is what happened in 1958, when half of the Lebanese stood with Nasserist Egypt and the other half against it. And this is what happened in 1975, when half of them stood with the Palestinian revolution and the others against it. Some of them resorted to seeking the assistance of the Syrian army. Others saw no reason not to seek the help of Israel's "Defense Forces" to give them the upper hand. Damascus triumphed in Beirut. It was slow to put the situation in order, and thus there was the Taif Agreement, which restored some balance to the "constituents", but divided the country vertically. Part of it stood with Syria, finding strength in its army and gaining the lion's share of power. The other half of the country stood against Syria, but remained silent, being oppressed by the force of Syrian tutelage, or having been abandoned by their foreign sponsors and having handed over management of their affairs to Damascus through understandings and mutual acceptance. The Lebanese did not rise up against Syria until the United States decided to "liberate" their country from its tutelage and had Resolution 1559 issued. This was accompanied by the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The "Cedar Revolution" triumphed; the Syrian army withdrew; division increased. The Lebanese reached the threshold of civil war. But the victors discovered that the weapons facing them were stronger, and that liberating the South earlier had given these weapons local and Arab legitimacy. There have been ceaseless attempts to take away these weapons. When Israel waged its war in 2006, the powerless among the Lebanese hoped that it would succeed to destroy Hezbollah's arsenal. But Hezbollah, with help from Iran and Syria, was able to withstand the assault. The need of the Damascus-Tehran axis for it increased. The danger it represented for the opposing axis increased. Militias were formed to confront it. Yet despite the sponsorship they enjoyed, they remained mere fragments controlling certain neighborhoods in this or that city. They claim to support the armed fighters in Syria, while their real concerns are arms trade and smuggling. Neither are they able to reverse the equation inside Lebanon, nor are they able to truly help the Syrians. Such militias have become a burden for their own Lebanese and non-Lebanese sponsors (perhaps the phenomenon of Ahmed Al-Assir in Sidon best expressed this state of affairs). Throughout this phase, the President of the Republic tried to remain "neutral". He called for dialogue to lay out a defense strategy. The dialogue's participants and their sponsors made him fail. The formula of the army, the people and the resistance is finished. It no longer applies, neither domestically nor at the foreign level. This is what President Michel Suleiman has finally decided. His pretext is that Hezbollah's participation in the war in Syria has made it lose its feature of resistance. It must thus place its weapons at the army's disposal. The fact of the matter is that the issue of legal and illegal weapons is not a new one. But Suleiman relied in making his choice on something beyond that. He saw that changes in official and unofficial Arab stances no longer favored the resistance, and that Europe, after the United States, now considers it a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, Syria drowns in its own wars and is too weak to defend it, and Iran has become the Great Satan in the eyes of the Arabs. This is the analysis made by Suleiman and those around him. He thus decided to side with the more powerful axis. Regional and international circumstances having matured does not at all mean that domestic circumstances have matured as well. And this would perhaps require the sects to fight each other once again. Will the President's stance then contribute to bringing such circumstances to maturity?
