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A feeling of déjà vu, or almost! Those who experienced the Lebanese crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the ensuing war that started in 1975, may experience a sense of déjà vu regarding the Lebanese-Palestinian dispute today. This gloomy chapter in Lebanon’s history displays troubling similarities with the current situation, even though the geopolitical context of these two periods, separated by half a century, is evidently extremely diverse.

It would be undoubtedly valuable to explore the atmosphere of the early 1970s to highlight this disconcerting parallel between the two situations. In 1969, the Lebanese State entered into a disastrous official agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), commonly referred to as the Cairo Agreement. The aforementioned provision granted armed Palestinian organizations the liberty to operate within a specific region of South Lebanon, specifically in the region of Arkoub, which was subsequently designated as “Fateh-land” (Fateh Territory)!

The objective of this agreement was to enable Palestinian Fedayeen combatants to freely engage in attacks against Israel while simultaneously launching Katyusha-type rockets into Israeli territory. As a result, frequent retaliatory raids against villages in southern Lebanon ensued, causing various consequences such as destabilizing the country and perpetuating a persistent conflictual atmosphere. Over time, the PLO gradually undermined the central State, infiltrated and corrupted a segment of the political class, and, most importantly, extensively encroached upon national sovereignty. It occurred nearly 50 years ago, and the resemblance to the current situation speaks for itself…

In response to this reality, imposed by the Palestinian Central Authority, then-President Sleiman Frangieh, in 1973, instructed the army to quell the excesses of the PLO. Despite their prior close personal connections, he was compelled to retrace his steps under the impetus of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

Frangieh was forced to announce the failure of his initiative to the sovereigntist parties (referred to as Christians). In response, these parties initiated a comprehensive campaign and mobilized their forces to counter the constant violations of sovereignty, which were the root cause of a persistent state of instability.

That tug-of-war eventually led to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in April 1975, and the rest is history…

The most striking aspect of this “retrospective” is that individuals who opposed the infringement of sovereignty, both politically and militarily, were subjected to stigmatization and vilification by a segment of the political class, particularly by leftist movements. While claiming to support the noble Palestinian cause, these parties got actually engaged in the game of regional powers whose objective was not to defend the Palestinians but to drag Lebanon into a state of persistent conflicts, exploiting the Lebanese arena for their broader regional maneuvers.

The adherents of these leftist movements reveled in populist slogans, demonstrating their inability to distinguish between steadfast support for the Palestinian cause on the one hand, and the imperative to confront the destabilization process and incursions into the country’s sovereignty on the part of certain regional powers with hegemonic ambitions on the other.

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The same political scenario applies to the current situation, especially in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Those who are campaigning to denounce the hardships faced by the population of Gaza and who, indiscriminately, position themselves as standard-bearers of the Palestinian cause, also fail to establish the distinction—akin to the situation in the 1970s—between two radically different attitudes: on the one hand, the adoption of a principled moral stance (which is often detached from objective realities); and, on the other, the necessity to squarely confront the strategy of deconstructing Lebanese structures and transforming Lebanon into a mere pawn manipulated by a regional power.

The factions and officials who, driven by humanism (bordering on naivety) and a lack of lucidity, align themselves with the rhetoric of the Iranian camp fail to realize that they are becoming accomplices to factions that, through their sterile military ventures, condemn the Lebanese populace to relive the prolonged agony of the bleakest periods of the 1970s and 1980s, which ultimately led to the current widespread collapse.

The Lebanese people have endured enough as victims of shenanigans, maneuvers, and plots orchestrated by various regional forces for over half a century.

It is high time for them to get together, learn to establish mutual acquaintance, set their Lebanese house in order and lead a decent life. That is when lessons in humanism and morality will find their proper place.