In the beginning of January 2020, the UN General Assembly announced that, according to Article 19 of the UN Charter the Lebanon’s right to vote in the General Assembly was suspended for not having paid its financial contribution (to the organization) for the past two years - a total amount of 459,000 USD. The Lebanese foreign minister, Gebran Basil, president Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and leader of the political party Free Patriotic Movement established by the current head of state, rejected any responsibility of his Ministry’s on the matter, which led to a denigrating polemic with his colleague in the Ministry of Finance. The resolution of the international organization and the conflict between the two departing Lebanese ministers was but a tip of the iceberg which hid the state of chaos Lebanon and the Lebanese had been in for these past months. Lebanon was not the only country incapable of paying its contribution to the UN - less than half a million dollars. Lebanon, which in the eyes of its elders still was the “pearl” and the “Switzerland” of the Levant, found itself on the list of UN debtors along with Republic of Central Africa, Tonga, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Lesotho etc.

     For several months now, Lebanon has been shaken by massive protests which were said to have been caused - by leading politicians, especially - by the decision of the minister of telecommunications, Mohammed Shukeir, to introduce a daily tax on social media, usually free. In a country that had been suffering for a some years now from an acute government crisis and from an actual collapse of its infrastructure and services - from public sanitation to electricity, water, the banking system and to the fall of the national currency - the real cause of social distress and for the collapse of the country is merely the result of long, burdening cumulating factors, such as: chronic corruption, the inertia of the political system and of the interest groups, confessional elites hostage of a constitution behind the domestic and global realities; foreign interference and the so called Al-Muwalat (“loyalty”), which defines the orientation of the political, economic and financial interest groups relative to foreign groups and policies having nothing in common with “Lebanon for all Lebanese”.

     The youth who, solidary beyond confession and occupation, have taken it out to the streets are no longer animated by daily needs; in a solidarity unprecedented in Lebanese modern history, they demand the profound and complete change of a fossilised regime and turn down cosmetic changes such as the replacement of the prime minister or a minister. While in the Arab West, engulfed in 2011 by the fever of the “Arab Spring”, the protesters’ slogan was summed up by words such as irhal or degage - in former French colonies such as Tunisia or Algeria, both meaning leave and being aimed at Hosni Mubarak, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, or Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the marginalized of the “Lebanese Spring” claim a global cleansing starting with individuals, institutions, governing policies and systems, to the abolition of confessions and the modernization of the election system and the democratic alternance in power. “All and everyone should leave”, Kullu, which means all and everyone, not just the head of the government or the leader of the parliament. The Lebanese are asking for a Lebanon that belongs, to its very core, to the Lebanese people.

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     It is not less true that this country, whose morphology and history made it different from others in the region, was seriously damaged, following the 15 years old civil war (1975-1990) by an almost continuous series of profound functional and relational difficulties - foreign interferences and occupations, communitarianism and social, political and territorial fragmentation, the presence of armed groups, security and confessional conflicts etc. – which, altogether, represented barriers in the path towards institutional functioning and economic, social and infrastructure development. If we are to take into account the events from the past 40 years we cannot but be surprised by the vivacity, cohesion and solidarity of the current social demonstrations to which the Lebanese leadership showed little interest, refrained from offering real solutions, and instead limited itself to the resignation of the prime minister Saad Hariri, who would only be replaced by a successor coming from Hezbollah affiliated circles and therefore swiftly rejected by the protesters. It had never been about taking real reformative measures.

Source: aljazeera.com

     There were many analysts and commentators who compared the public demonstrations which started last year and continued with the same energy in the new year (2020) to the massive popular movement in 2005, also known as “the Cedar Revolution”, which started as a spontaneous reaction to the death of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. What the two have in common is the magnitude of the mobilization as expression of the will of a single people eager to be the masters of its own destiny and live in dignity, equality and modern democratization. The difference between the two “revolutions” is that the mass protests in 2005 started rather as a demand for national independence and sovereignty and, more precisely as a gesture of condemnation, protest and rejection of the de facto occupation of Lebanon by the Syrian Ba’ath regime. If “the Cedar Revolution” bore the mark of the cleavage that was tearing the Lebanese society in two large political and confessional blocs - the “March 14 Alliance” (Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians) and the “March 8 Alliance” (Shiite Muslims, Armenian Orthodox and other Christians), the current “Lebanese Spring” displays an absolutely new national solidarity, which goes beyond political, confessional and ethnic identities and affiliations of the Lebanese citizens and favours a more intense politicization of the protests and claims, including to vocally move away from those elitist groups and communities which distinguish themselves as entities devoted not to a Lebanese ideal, but rather to foreign policies and interests - as is the case of the pro-Iranian Shiite political parties Hezbollah and Amal.

     The Shiite based movement Hezbollah claims to have not only a Lebanese political dimension, but also one in connection with two coordinates of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, respectively that of avant-garde of “resistance and rejection” (Al-Muqawama and Al-Rafd) with regard to Israel, as well as “US and Western imperialistic hegemony”. Taking into account this doctrine one can understand that to this Shiite group, as well as for its Syrian ally and its Iranian sponsor, taking down and abolishing the Lebanese confessional governing system would be a fully-fledged strategic catastrophe.

From left to right, Ali Khamenei, Hassan Nassrallah and General Qasem Soleimani (Source: thetimesofisrael.com)

      Without a functioning government, which lost its authority when the prime minister Saad Hariri resigned, and with a Hezbollah successor represented by Hassan Diab (former minister of education and higher education, member of Hezbollah), the situation in Lebanon in the beginning of the current year dramatically lacks clear and credible perspectives to get out of ongoing crisis in the foreseeable future. The division of the internal political chessboard was once again deepened by the separation of the existing political blocs, given the sabotage the governance process is subjected to by at least two of the larger political parties that dominate the Lebanese political stage and life. We are referring to the Christians from the “Lebanese Forces” led by Samir Geagea and the influential Progressive Socialist Party of the Druze minority led by the septuagenarian Walid Jumblatt, avid opponents of the leader Gebran Bassil, president Aoun’s son-in-law and undeclared contender to the presidency in Baabda.

From left to right, Walid Jumblatt and Samir Geagea (Source: daylistar.com.lb)

     Lebanon goes through state of conflict between the nation and its government, a government that is neither willing nor capable of getting rid of the crust that covers the deep causes which have been developing for decades, and which no government structure - whether political, political-technocratic, or made of independent “experts”- will be able to overcome as long as the contract between society and leadership is not reformulated and based on the foundation which the citizens are more determined than ever not to give up: a new governing formula deeply and irreversibly separated  from the illusion of the great Lebanon as created by the gentlemen Sykes and Picot 100 years ago and which must be what the protesters ceaselessly ask for - “A Lebanon for all!”