More than 4,000 Lebanese killed by Israel since March 2026 have barely been laid to rest. Yet on June 26, Lebanon and “Israel” struck a trilateral framework agreement in Washington to “proceed in good faith until a full and lasting peace is achieved.”
Let’s call it what it is: capitulation.
The agreement conditions an end to Israel’s occupation on Hezbollah’s disarmament, a demand Lebanon cannot meet without risking civil war. Clause 13 also shuts the door on accountability, barring Lebanon from pursuing Israel for its war crimes in any international forum. It even establishes a security mechanism for the Lebanese Army to coordinate with the IOF in implementing the agreement. As if that were not enough, “Happy 4th of July” billboards appeared across Lebanese highways and inside Beirut airport just last night.
How can a state normalize such contradictions? How can it commemorate another country’s Independence Day while simultaneously being bombed with munitions produced by that very same country? How does it accept terms that effectively legitimize an ongoing occupation and place the fate of the South in the hands of the very entity occupying it? In fact, how does it even sit at the same table in the first place?
The answer lies in looking more deeply at this political crisis, one that made the South expendable long before June 26.
The Making of an Internal Other
The June 26 agreement unfolded against the backdrop of decades of alienation, marginalization, and growing indifference toward southern Lebanon. We have seen it in mainstream media, heard it from political officials, and watched it permeate public discourse.
References to southern Lebanese as people who “do not look like us,” claims that “we can no longer live with them,” the eviction of displaced families from rented homes because they “look suspicious,” and calls for heightened surveillance have all become disturbingly common in recent years. At times, attacks on the South have even been casually celebrated on television. Equally telling is the recurring refrain, “I want to drink a beer in Tel Aviv,” reflecting a segment of society eager to cultivate closer ties with Israel.
To be clear, this is not true of everyone. Many have shown remarkable solidarity, welcoming displaced families and rejecting the language of exclusion. Yet too often, it is the voices that sow division rather than those that foster unity that dominate.
Every country experiences polarization, Lebanon is not unique in that regard. Yet when a nation comes under attack by a foreign power, societies typically rally together. Imagine the United States under attack, with either Democrats or Republicans cheering the assault simply because of who it targeted. It would seem inconceivable.
In Lebanon, however, the fact that some can shake hands with a foreign entity that continues to violate the country’s sovereignty, occupy its territory, and impose its will - reflects fractures rooted in a long history of sectarianism.
This is the point: Israel’s expansionism does not operate along sectarian lines, it targets Lebanon as a whole. Internal divisions are what allow that violence be framed as though it concerns only one community.
The Political Order Behind the Crisis
Sectarian fragmentation in our region predates the Lebanese state itself. It is the product of a long historical process shaped by the convergence of theological developments, governing structures that institutionalize sectarian division, and geopolitical rivalries that exploit and reinforce these fractures. A comprehensive account of how these forces interact to produce the sectarian foundations of our society cannot be captured within a single article. But given the precarious crossroads at which the country now stands, it is important to outline key underlying principles.
Colonialism has long thrived in our region by exploiting sectarian identities. Ottoman and European powers, and more recently the US and Israel, have kept the country fractured by drawing each community into patronage networks that advance their geopolitical interests. A religiously diverse country capable of coexistence does not serve the interests of an ethnoreligious state built on separation and domination just across its border.
A fractured Lebanon, one resembling the trajectories of Iraq or Syria, serves those interests far better.
However, this is not to suggest that colonialism created these divisions - it certainly did not. Although colonialism has consistently excelled at deepening the divide, the roots of the problem are our own. Recognizing how external powers manipulate these fractures should not absolve us of confronting the internal dynamics that have allowed them to persist.
The June 26 framework is first and foremost an indictment of the Lebanese political order itself, and more specifically of the president and prime minister who endorsed it, rather than of Trump or Netanyahu. It is the Lebanese people themselves who continue to accept a confessional power sharing system, presided over by a comprador elite that does not treat them as citizens with a shared political destiny, but as constituents of separate sectarian communities with separate foreign allegiances.
By organizing society around sectarian affiliations rather than a shared civic identity, this system continues to weaken the development of a collective national project.
Sectarianism is Not a Destiny
Sectarianism is so deeply entrenched in Lebanon that it often feels inescapable, as though it were an intrinsic feature of the country’s social and political fabric. Yet there is nothing natural about it. It has been constructed, instrumentalized, and continually sustained by both local and external actors whose interests are served by maintaining these divisions and preventing the emergence of a shared sense of identity capable of sustaining a cohesive nation.
It is therefore not a fixed condition of collective pathology. It is neither static nor beyond transformation. It is a historical and political arrangement that has evolved over time and can therefore be transformed.
If sectarianism has been continually reproduced, then other forms of belonging can be cultivated as well, forms that draw us closer to one another rather than drive us further apart.
The question, then, becomes: upon what foundation should those forms of belonging rest if we are to dismantle the very structures that produced such an agreement?
Another Basis for Belonging
The land offers another story of who we are, one that invites us to root our sense of belonging in it, rather than any religion or sect. That story is urgent now, at a moment when a segment of the Lebanese population is being annihilated while others look away.
As Leyla Feghali (2024) writes in her book The Land in our Bones, “Belonging is a practice, a cultivated relationship that deepens through presence and repetition, and is illuminated by the accumulation of time and care.”
The practices that cultivate this relationship are accessible to everyone: joining a community garden, planting native species, attending a bioremediation workshop, joining animal rescue groups, defending threatened habitats and protesting their destruction. These are a few of the practices I have engaged in myself lately, among so many others that can inspire us to commune with the land and living world that surrounds us. Such acts of stewardship that nurtures care toward Lebanon’s rivers, forests, coastlines, mountains and various species can revolutionize how we relate to place and one another. “Israel” fully understands the power of this. That is why it targets the guardians of the land, such as Mona Khalil, who first discovered the presence of sea turtles on Al Mansouri Beach in southern Lebanon and dedicated her life to protecting them.
Let us not forget that our cultural heritage, the food we eat, the music we listen to, and our national dances, are products of our enduring relationship with the land. The most basic examples are familiar to us all, without exception: we all eat tabbouleh, listen to Fairuz, and dance the dabke. Tabbouleh reflects the native crops that have nourished generations and the way we have interacted with the land through the ages. Fairuz’s music is a celebration of Lebanon’s landscapes, seasons, and rural life, forming part of Lebanon’s collective memory. Dabke was born from communal life and collective agricultural labor. Together, these traditions that we all practice sustain and protect a way of life that transcends sectarian identities and reminds us that our strongest common bond is the land.
None of this is a substitute for the right to armed resistance against occupation. Grounding ourselves in cultural and ecological belonging can, however, provide the foundation for a collective identity and the basis upon which we can reimagine what binds us together, not as members of competing sects, but as people united by a shared relationship with the land. This offers a more solid foundation for collective identity than sect ever has.