Some thoughts on the mechanism that is the Middle East - some experimental, some blasphemous, none held tightly.
Palestinian identity
There continues to be a tension, a taught string, among the Palestinian refugees of the world. To defuse that tension, requires the successful easement of the Palestinian identity. I don’t know what that would require, or even look like. Perhaps the only successful cases I know of re-identity making, are immigrants to America and immigrants to Israel. The Americans embrace a new identity and culture, which fades out the old. The Israelis feel little kinship to their old worlds, now painted over with the brush of antisemitism.
Lebanon has been fighting someone or itself forever
The more I learn about the history of the Middle East, and specifically Lebanon, the more I feel that Israel was merely adopted (wrong word, I know) into a world of vicious wars and conflicts. In that sense, not much changed before or after Israel became a country in 1948. Lebanon had the Maronite Druze civil war in the 1860s. Rebellions against the Ottomans. Rebellions against the French. More in-fighting against each other. They’ve been lucky to have twenty peaceful years in a row, for at least the last two hundred. None of that was caused by the nation of Israel, it is just the default state of the people of that region.
Lebanon’s lie, and the census
Peter Thiel has a line on predicting revolutions: “Revolutions happen when everyone knows that everyone knows it’s based on a lie.” I wonder if Lebanon’s lie is, and has always been, a Maronite majority (at least relative to the other sects). I wonder if a census - even an informal one - would change that balance. It would be the first census since 1932.
The lie of international meddling
A common belief among Lebanese people, and many journalists, is that Lebanon is a victim of the conflicts of international powers. I strongly disagree with this, for several reasons. First, every intervention was prompted by a local invite: the Maronites asked for French help in the 1880s, the Druze for British, the Sunnis for Ottoman, the Maronites again for French in the 1930s, the Sunnis for Syrian help, the Phalangists for Israeli help in the 1980s, etc. Even today, Saudi and Iran might be regional rivals using Lebanon as a proxy battleground, but they can do that only because various Lebanese factions have chosen to ally themselves with each respective power (this goes for Saudi and the US vs. Iran and Russia as well). Second, many of the Western interventions have been in the face of internal carnage, horrible civil wars and massacres, making their interventions much more about pity and restoring a civil balance than any colonial drive for power. Lebanon has little significance otherwise, with no real natural resources or geographic significance otherwise. Third, the world is full of small countries. But many small countries are doing just fine - therefore it would be foolish to blame Lebanon’s turmoil on its size and powerlessness. The judgement of a small country rests not on its size, but how it goes about things in the face of its size. In that sense, Lebanon is fully responsible for what happens to it, as are the people of Lebanon. That sense of lack of responsibility is one of the greater failings of the Lebanese people.