Peace with Israel is the single most terrifying word in Lebanese politics, not because it threatens Lebanon, but because it threatens every faction that has built its empire on the permanent absence of it.
Bechara Gerges, Christian Lebanese political analyst, commentator -- I have watched this country for decades, and I will tell you what no one on a podium has the courage to say: the people who oppose peace are not protecting Lebanon; they are protecting their own relevance.
Hezbollah cannot exist without the “enemy” at the gate. Iran cannot justify its corridor to the Mediterranean without a front line that never closes. And every warlord turned statesman who laundered a militia past into a cabinet future needs permanent instability the way a parasite needs a host.
That is why they prefer death over peace. Not Lebanese death, which has never cost them a single sleepless night, but the death of the system that feeds them. Christians watched their presidency hollowed into a rubber stamp issued from Dahiyeh. Sunnis watched Rafik Hariri assassinated and his political heirs forced to coexist with the architecture of his assassination. The Druze watched their autonomy reduced to a phone call from a handler. Every community outside Hezbollah’s orbit has been living under undeclared occupation disguised as national unity, and the absence of peace is the lock on the cage.