It’s Time to Either Fix Lebanon—Or Break It Up | Opinion

Imagine two diplomats in smoke-filled rooms in wartime London and Paris, poring over maps of the Ottoman Empire. Mark Sykes, representing Britain, and François Georges-Picot, were not renowned cartographers nor great experts on the Middle East. But the clandestine map they signed in 1916, together with some agreements in the years that followed, created the unhelpful map of the Middle East today.
In essentially divided up the region into British and French protectorates (Russia, the other element in the Great War’s “Triple Entente,” imploded in civil war and lost its chance to control Istanbul). There was little concern for the realities on the ground—the tribes, religious communities, and ethnic groups that had been lorded over by the Ottomans.
The lines they sketched lumped diverse populations into hastily imagined nations. This is how we ended up with Iraq, a melding of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds who hate each other. That is why we have Syria, similarly a fake country which blew up in a ruinous civil war. Imperial machinations are why Jordan even exists—that had to do with offering compensation to a tribe that did not get handed Saudi Arabia.
There are some countries in the region that have a viable case and robust history. Egypt is one—a major civilization that always flowered along the Nile. Iran is another—Persia is as old as the Bible. Israel, despite the complications of the Jews’ exile and controversial return, is a real thing—and Christian Lebanon could have been the same.
The Maronites, an ancient Christian ethno-religious group with roots in the Phoenician and Hellenized communities of the Levant, ended up on the French side of the Sykes-Picot line, they were offered a chance to set the foundation for a small, manageable state in the Mount Lebanon region. But their leadership, driven by a vision of “Greater Lebanon,” sought to expand the borders to include the Bekaa Valley, Tripoli, and the southern coastal areas. In doing so, they greedily and stupidly absorbed Muslim-majority regions into the new state.
The hope was that the Maronites’ wealth, education, and connections with Europe would allow them to maintain control over a larger and more diverse country. Instead, this sowed the seeds of Lebanon’s descent into a dangerously failed state.
For a time, Lebanon made its case for being the coolest Arab country—a place of nightlife, energy, and cuisine that drew European tourists to the beaches and boulevards of the “Paris of the Middle East.” But the Maronites lost their demographic majority, and the delicate balance of power between Lebanon’s many religious and ethnic groups began to unravel. The Muslim population, initially willing to accept Maronite leadership, gradually became resentful as the political system heavily favored Christians. This resentment exploded into civil war in 1975, a conflict that would last 15 years and devastate the country.
Many Christians emigrated, being the more mobile and cosmopolitan population, and those who remain now form perhaps a quarter of the population. More than a million Muslim refugees of Syria’s civil war had arrived.
The biggest group is the Shiites with perhaps 40 percent of the population—and they spawned, with Iranian connivance, the Hezbollah militia that has taken over much of the country. Every now and then it sparks a war with Israel, because that’s what Islamic radicals backed by Iran just do, which brings us to this day.
Everyone knows the situation with Hezbollah is insane—but somehow, it drags on.
UN Security Council Resolution 1559 from 2004 calls “for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and for “the strict respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and political independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon. Two years later Resolution 1701 reaffirmed this, setting the goal as “disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon” and “no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”
Lebanon has failed to implement this because Hezbollah has become much stronger than the national army due to funding, arming and training from the aggressive Islamist theocracy that has hijacked Iran—including guided rockets whose sole purpose is to reach Israel’s cities (or, if need be, Europe’s).
The story Hezbollah tries to sell idiots is that it is a “resistance movement” protecting Lebanon from Israel, even though Israel has zero demands of Lebanon except that it not be attacked. Hezbollah is actually there to allow Iran to control a territory on Israel’s border, from which to deter Israel from, let’s say, bombing its nuclear weapons factories before a nuclear weapon is achieved—with which to threaten Israel.
Which brings us to the present day.
Hezbollah has been rocketing and shelling Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Gaza-based Hamas invaded southern Israel, massacred 1,200 people, and carted off about 250 people back to Gaza as hostages. After almost a year, in which 60,000 Israelis were forced to flee their homes, it is clear Israel has had enough—yet instead of applauding, critics in Europe and elsewhere have been urging Israel not to “escalate.”
Would any of them had tolerated a year of rocket attacks? Would any of them have been sanguine about the likes of Hezbollah being arrayed on its borders at all—in violation of explicit UN Security Council resolutions? The hypocrisy is astonishing even to those who know history brims with bad behavior (and perhaps a soupson of antisemitism?).
In recent weeks Israel has assassinated most of Hezbollah’s leadership, including top dog Hassan Nasrallah, has significantly degraded its rocket arsenal, and has now sent troops into southern Lebanon to clean out the weapons depots in garages, the tunnels, the bases. And you know who’s happy? Most of the Lebanese. Though they’ve been scared into silence, they no more want to be run by an Iranian-proxy mafia than the reader does.
They may have a chance to reclaim the country. With Hezbollah currently weakened, Lebanon has a unique opportunity to push forward and demand of the West and the Arab world whatever help is needed to implement the UN Security Council resolutions.
Indeed, in an important move in this direction, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in recent days that Lebanon is prepared to implement 1701. Whether this is as yet realistic is less important, in a way, than the mere fact that he mustered up the courage to say it.
Now is the time to press for the appointment of a president (Lebanon has not had one for two years), to shift the Shiite political representation from Hezbollah to the homegrown Amal group, and to initiate a new constitutional process that creates a democratic country that does not hand out positions by an ethnic key.
Engaging France and the European Union, as well as the Gulf Arab countries, through reconstruction funds would solidify international involvement, and it is crucial to signal to Iran that its influence is no longer welcome in Lebanon’s internal affairs, and that any violation of this would be an act of war.
But if these initiatives fail, it may be time to rethink everything. If I was a Christian Lebanese, I would be thinking that the experiment at a multi-ethnic country, which now has a Muslim majority, might be reversible. I’d be thinking of correcting the mistake of a century ago and trying to carve out a Christian statelet around Beirut, including parts of Mount Lebanon and coastal towns like Jounieh and Byblos.
Such a scenario, hypothetical though it may be, raises numerous questions regarding the rest of Lebanon’s territory, with its significant Muslim populations—and also, of course, about defending the Christian state.
This statelet might initially function as part of a confederation. But it might also dream of independence, with non-Christian areas eventually merging with a post-war Syria or a future multiethnic country in the region. Beirut would remain as the center of a peaceful, smaller Lebanon, ethnically more homogeneous, not fighting with Israel, reclaiming its quasi-European culture, freed of jihadist nonsense.
Carving out a “Petit Liban” (a smaller, predominantly Christian Lebanon) would be a dramatic and highly controversial geopolitical scenario. But it would underscore wider lessons that should be rather obvious by now. Multi-ethnic countries require populations that embrace multiculturalism—and that is rare. And irrational territorial ambitions, like those that begat “Greater Lebanon,” can lead to great disaster.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former Chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and the author of two books. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.