Will the Lebanese people ever see their country become stable?

Arab writers discuss the political situation in Lebanon, saying that it's extremely unlikely that the country goes back to peace and stability.

Lebanon is one of the countries that is most affected by the continuing turmoil in Syria.

What happened in Lebanon was expected, wrote Ali Harb in the Dubai-based daily Al Bayan.

“The presidential void is not unprecedented. This is the third time it has occurred and it results from a situation that has evolved over decades,” Harb wrote.

“One immutable fact remains. Lebanon is the hostage of projects and strategies that threaten its fragile national unity, as well as its civil society and democratic model.”

He added that positions might have softened for tactical reasons or political purposes, but convictions have not changed.

There are two options: either one supports Hizbollah, its allies and their motto “resistance is a priority”, or one will be accused of betrayal and threatened accordingly.

The civil war has spelt doom for this motto, remarked Harb.

“Defining resistance as the title of national identity led to this situation, where the motto has become a source of danger for the country and its people.

“Resistance is temporary, not sacred. When a social power become stronger than society itself and turns into a priority, it mutates and becomes a power practising control and authoritarianism”.

Nowadays, Lebanon is experiencing a “surreptitious” challenge with Hizbollah and Beshara Al Rahi, the Maronite patriarch, emerging as the key actors, according to Hassan Hayder in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

He observed that “the recent visit of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to the patriarch helped remove the hindrances of spiritual and political representation of Christians in Lebanon, and even generate favour for the first over the latter, following the presidential void induced by Hizbollah and Michel Aoun, who keep sabotaging the parliament’s electoral sessions”.

Al Rahi is trying to unify his ranks, added Hayder.

“That will only be possible if the local and regional Christian communities can take independent decisions by refusing to submit to the concept of ‘nationalism’ that Hizbollah tried to impose upon Sunnis as well.

“Such confrontation with Hizbollah will not be easy, especially as, Iran and Syria are by its side,” he concluded.

“Lebanon today is similar to Baudelaire’s albatross.

“It is unable to open its wings and fly freely in the open sky, which is its real home,” wrote Octavia Nasr, in the Lebanese daily Annahar.

“It finds itself grounded clumsily and turned into a source of trouble and inconvenience for ignorant people and villains. They ridicule it and mock it as it lies injured”.

For so long, Lebanon was compared to an invincible phoenix that keeps on rising from its ashes. “Perhaps that is because people think that anything or anyone can destroy Lebanon. We therefore always imagine it getting over its pains and agonies and returning to its former glory,” she wrote.

“Time, however, taught us that the Lebanon that we know and yearn for is no longer possible. It has ceased to exist long ago, even though some of us desperately cling to our hopes and convictions that the phoenix will rise again.”

Translated by Carla Mirza