Lebanon at Crossroads Of Containment and Crisis
Nassif Hitti asks whether Lebanon has learned from its history or if it will invest itself into yet another destructive and difficult crisis.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati's resignation reminds us that certain regional critical junctures or political crises in Lebanon could immediately turn into a national one.
The settlement, or the containment, of a major Lebanese crisis has always been done through an external understanding among key foreign powers brokering a fragile, even temporary, reconciliation between their Lebanese allies or “clients.”
The latter is a major lesson in Lebanese politics. Lebanese are tremendously divided, to the extent of going to war over external issues and alliances.
Good examples of that phenomenon were the policy vis-a-vis the Egyptian regional leadership of Nasser in 1958, the Palestinian revolution in 1975 and the Syrian crisis in 2011. Most of the time, the differences among the Lebanese are defined as identity issues with a persistent sectarian polarization.
