Afrasianet - Wissam Ismail - The real problem facing the concept of sovereignty in Lebanon is more related to the constitutional reality, which has remained a prisoner of the transitional period enshrined in the Taif Agreement.
None of the observers can claim that the Lebanese political system based on the Taif Agreement and the National Charter of 1943 has the ability to meet the aspirations of the various Lebanese spectrums, as the balances established by the transitional period in the Taif Agreement are no longer compatible with the demographic reality on the one hand, in addition to the disagreement that has emerged about the future vision of Lebanon that the Taif Agreement aims to achieve.
Through what emerged in the last two sessions of the government of President Nawaf Salam, whose topic was centered on a single item entitled the approval of the goals imposed by the American envoy Thomas Barrack, the fig leaf that since 1992 has been able to cover up the distortions of the current system has fallen and the fact that the Lebanese political and constitutional system has failed to reproduce itself in accordance with the requirements of the current stage or with what was imposed by the conditions of the country and the region, at least after the liberation of 2000 and the subsequent security and political shocks The assassination of President Rafik Hariri in 2005 was a prelude to it.
Some may think that the President of the Republic's retreat from the foundations laid out in the agreement between the three presidents to manage the negotiation process with the United States is a major reason for the situation in Lebanon today, as it has become clear that great pressure was exerted on the President of the Republic that pushed him to turn the pages of this agreement and oblige him to adopt the Barak Paper as it is, without any scrutiny of the extent to which it is compatible with the necessities of civil peace and Lebanon's sovereignty or the extent to which it achieves the Lebanese interest. In terms of form, it embodied a blatant attack on the mechanisms of constitutional work, which assumes that dropping a foreign condition paper on the agenda of the Council and obliging it to study it in order to adopt it as if it were an inevitable fate, is incompatible with the sovereign constitutional principles that limit the right to raise the issues to be studied in the Council of Ministers to the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Ministers exclusively.
Some may assume that the essence of the sovereignty problem that Lebanon is suffering from today is exclusively related to the issue of the weapons of the resistance, and therefore it is possible to build a real state capable of exercising its sovereignty through its removal. Of course, this assumption does not find any support in Lebanese history, as the reality that followed the establishment of the Israeli entity did not prove internal reasons that were exclusively preventing the establishment of the state.
The Lebanese state, before the emergence of the idea of popular resistance in Lebanon, in the early stages after 1948, agreed to play the role of a bystander to the violations of its sovereignty by the Israeli entity, and later agreed to reduce its sovereignty, as it considered that the Israeli aggressions on Lebanon were linked to the existence of the Palestinian resistance, which was legitimized by the Cairo Agreement of 1969, and the peak of its abandonment of its sovereign and protective role for its people was the signing of the agreement of May 17, 1983 with the Israeli entity sovereign under Israeli domination.
Of course, the post-Taif period, which ended the civil war, was not better off for the sovereign reality of the state, as it did not exercise its role in the liberation of the south and left this task to the people of the land, under the pretext that it did not have the ability to confront, and only complained to the Security Council and adopted the slogan that the eye does not resist the machete.
In this context, it should be noted that the real problem facing the concept of sovereignty in Lebanon is more related to the constitutional reality, which remained a prisoner of the transitional period enshrined in the Taif Agreement.
More than 33 years after its adoption, the Lebanese authorities have not made a real or even formal effort to move beyond the transitional phase, which can be called quotas, towards the stage of building a real and just state capable of representing segments of Lebanese society as a group of citizens instead of dealing with them on the basis of considering them as sectarian groups that can easily tickle and exploit their instincts.
According to this path, it is possible to analyze the reasons that were and continue to lead to the formation of the PA in accordance with understandings that transcend the borders of the country and constitute a reflection of regional and even international understandings. In every constitutional entitlement, the path agreed to be adopted was at least formal, and it is unable to reproduce power if there are no external factors that help it.
Of course, the current era, i.e., the election of the current president of the republic and the formation of the current government, cannot be considered as an exception to this reality. Thus, it is understandable that he is referring to discussing a dictates paper approved by a foreign power and pressed for its ratification, without being considered an agreement that binds the other party and constitutes a gateway to mutual rights and duties.
Therefore, apart from the problematic concept of sovereignty and its link, according to the current government's approach, to the issue of the weapon of resistance, which arose as a natural result of the state's inability to protect its citizens and its failure to preserve its sovereignty over its entire territory, it can be estimated that the magnitude of the current crisis in Lebanon is not only related to the behavior of the current government, noting that it constitutes a model of an authority that has lost its origin, as real power is supposed to be a reflection of sovereignty in the sense of the ability to make and implement decisions without external interference, but rather It is linked to a structural crisis that can be defined as the refusal to develop and fortify the political system so that it is able to build a state that aims to accumulate power and fortify its sovereignty in the face of any external interference or internal favoritism.
Through an in-depth reading of the orientations of the internal political forces that pushed the president of the republic to appear weak and retreating under the pressure of external pressures pushing for the passage of the Barak paper, it can be seen that the keenness shown by these forces on the exclusivity of arms and its connection to the sovereignty of the state was not reflected in the keenness on this same sovereignty in other issues, as while none of them sought to abolish political sectarianism, adopt a fair election law, or fight corruption that has been rampant for decades, without forgetting Its indifference to the weakness of the army and security institutions governed by American aid, some of which were begging for foreign support in the face of some internal forces, and justified the aggression of some regional powers against Lebanese political figures, such as the detention of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Saudi Arabia.
We should not forget how some have played the role of instigators of the Israeli entity and the United States and encouraged the targeting of an environment that is an essential part of Lebanon through assassinations or through sieges, sanctions and preventing the reconstruction of destroyed villages, which shows the essence of the political tensions in Lebanon as not governed by national constitutional rules, but rather as an expression of a conflict between forces that are competing in an entity that does not agree on the ultimate goals of its existence.
Therefore, it can be said that the government's decision to adopt the goals of the Barak Paper will only be the spark that may ignite the accumulation of many years of failure or lack of intention to build a strong and capable citizen state. The resistance's adherence to its weapons is not only aimed at preserving weapons for the sake of weapons, but also at preserving the essence of Lebanon, that is, this weapon is a complementary force capable of preserving an entity that Barak has declared may not be final and that it may be annexed to the Levant, and on the other hand, the Israeli does not hide its ambitions to expand towards the Litani and then towards the Awli River.