Opinion | Now Is the Time to Reimagine Lebanon

I hadn’t been to Syria in 14 years. After the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, I couldn’t wait to make the two-hour drive from Beirut to Damascus and witness the end of this 54-year dictatorship. When I arrived five days after his ouster, I saw the elation of thousands of Syrians celebrating freedom in the largest square in Damascus and the anguished panic of those looking for missing loved ones at the infamous Sednaya prison.

The rebel victory hit home for me, too. It brought an end to a regime that had occupied my own country, Lebanon, for three decades until 2005, as well as the collapse of the Iranian axis that had effectively held us hostage since then through Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that was Tehran’s most powerful proxy militia.

Now the Lebanese face a historic opportunity for their country to stop being a battleground and finally become common ground — a united, functioning, sovereign nation. No matter how enormous the challenges, and no matter how critical foreign support will be, I am convinced Lebanon’s fate is largely in our own hands. Our first major step will be the election of a president in parliamentary voting scheduled for Thursday after two years of vacancy because of political paralysis.

Syria under Mr. Assad and before him his father, Hafez al-Assad, never considered Lebanon to be an independent country. As an occupier starting in 1976, it meddled in our elections, undermined our chosen governments, fostered corruption and threatened, detained and, many suspect, assassinated Lebanese opponents.

When the Syrians finally left 20 years ago, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite movement that emerged from resistance to Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon, gradually replaced the Assads as the main power broker in Lebanon. The group became an essential pillar of the Iranian axis of influence that included the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and militants in Iraq, and enabled a land bridge between Tehran and Beirut, using Syria as a backyard to channel weapons and drugs.

The fall of the Assad government opens the door to establishing our relations with Syria on an equal footing. It would allow a new Lebanese government to finally ease the nation’s refugee crisis: Today an estimated 1.5 million Syrians live in Lebanon, making up a quarter of the nation’s population, who now finally face the possibility of return. The unraveling of the Iranian axis is also likely to help release Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanese politics.

Yet Lebanon faces truly daunting problems: recovering from the destruction inflicted by Israel’s war with Hezbollah while enforcing a fragile cease-fire agreement; reclaiming its sovereignty while reviving stalled institutions weakened by corruption, clientelism and a devastating economic crisis; and overcoming sectarianism in a society still polarized by the 1975-90 civil war.

Tackling these issues will require a new generation of political leaders untethered to the conflicts of the past and strong support from the international community, starting with the United States. If the new Trump administration’s priority is peace and stability in the Middle East, then it has to shift from a vision guided solely by security — its own and Israel’s — toward one that supports democracy, self-determination and sovereignty, including for the Palestinians.

Over the years, Lebanese attitudes toward Hezbollah have changed. For a long time, many viewed Hezbollah’s weapons as necessary for legitimate resistance against Israel’s occupation until its withdrawal in 2000. But over the past two decades, the group has mostly resisted the desire among many Lebanese for peace and reform.

Three Hezbollah operatives were convicted in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, and the group is believed to be behind the killings of a number of opponents, although it denies involvement. The group has involved Lebanon in devastating wars with Israel and has repeatedly asserted its dominance on national politics by force, crippling the country’s ability to form a functioning government.

Our country has also paid an exorbitant price for Hezbollah’s erosion. Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the group began launching missile attacks on Israeli bases, opening what it called a “support front” for Gaza. Israel’s recent retaliation against Hezbollah was brutal, killing more than 4,000 people, displacing more than a million, destroying agriculture and damaging about 100,000 homes.

The World Bank put the economic damage to an already staggering economy at a minimum of $8.5 billion. More than a 160 paramedics and rescue workers have been killed, as well as a dozen members of the press. People are enraged at the death and destruction, and Israeli troops have warned residents to stay out of more than 60 villages in the south. The prospects for the troops’ withdrawal and Hezbollah’s surrender of its arsenal, as called for by the cease-fire and U.N. resolutions, are in question.

The only way forward is to obtain a full-fledged Israeli withdrawal, while disbanding all militias in Lebanon. The past years have taught us that a strong Hezbollah means a weak Lebanon, not a weak Israel.

Rebuilding our country is an urgent need. Restructuring our barely functioning banking sector and our bankrupt state finances will be necessary, along with reforming our judiciary. “Accountability” has to be the key word of the next phase. We owe it to the victims of the 2020 port explosion that destroyed swaths of the city and killed at least 235 people. We owe it to those who have been assassinated or disappeared over the years and to all those who lost their savings in recent history’s largest banking meltdown.

The most crucial challenge is deeper: Our long civil war left us saddled with a divided society, communities dominated by fear of one another and a system in which control is shared along religious lines that has served warlords’ appetites for power rather than inclusive representation.

We now have the chance to overcome our divisions and set an example for what democracy really means in a region dominated by powerful and largely ethnically or religiously homogeneous states like Israel, Turkey and Iran surrounding the culturally varied and fractured Arab Levant. We can do that by establishing a modern state embracing diversity and protecting freedom — a model that we experienced with relative success between the founding of modern Lebanon in 1920 and the outbreak of civil war in 1975. We ought to reimagine that country today.

Shortly before his assassination in 2005, the Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir wrote: “When the Arab spring blooms in Beirut, it heralds the time of roses in Damascus.” What I witnessed in Syria’s capital last month made me think his words were finally materializing, though the other way round.

Roses are starting to bloom in Damascus. Maybe they are calling for spring in Beirut.

Michel Helou is secretary general of the Lebanese National Bloc, a secular and reformist political party, and a former candidate in the Lebanese parliamentary elections. He was previously executive director of L’Orient-Le Jour, a leading Lebanese publication.

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