April 14, 2026 is a day that will go down in infamy as the Lebanese government succumbed to the American demand to enter into direct negotiations with the Zionist entity.
America wants to bring Lebanon back into the government and army restructuring of 1982-1983, when the 1978 “israeli” invasion and 1983 normalization agreement was used as leverage to bring Lebanon completely under the US/Israeli fold.
The brutal normalization attempt, which involved the US restructuring of the Lebanese army from 1982-1984, witnessed the carpet bombing of Dahiyeh by then Lebanese Army commander Ibrahim Tannous or the direct support of “israel” to then SLA leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel.
Though this time gave rise to the fiercest resistance, such as - but not limited to - the SSNP’s Habib Shartouni assassinating the treasonous agent Gemayel in September 1982, the elimination of Zionist soldiers in the Wimpy Cafe in Beirut that same month by Khaled Alwan, the martyrdom operation of Sanaa Mheidly.
Behind the Lebanese government’s traitorous moves, handing the south to Israel through the Zionist-backed SLA gave rise to Hezbollah, the fiercest and most successful resistance organization in the region.
In the honor of the martyrs from Hezbollah and the unified resistance, Lebanese - from Thursday to Saturday - took to the streets in protest before the Government Serail in Downtown Beirut, voicing their opposition to the Vichyist government and the historical betrayal unfolding this week.
This sentiment also intensified by the dishonor and disgrace the commencement of direct talks with the Zionist entity poses as the blood of hundreds of civilian martyrs across Lebanon hasn’t even dried yet after daily nonstop attacks murdering state workers, women and children, paramedics – one infant girl was even murdered at the funeral of her own father.
The massacres that represented “israel” imposing its will on the Lebanese government, however subservient, were defied by the material equation Hezbollah and Iran are setting on the ground.
USIsrael’s incredible pressure on Lebanon represents growing wrath with Iran’s victory and consequent weakening of US hegemony regionally
The more they lose on the ground, the more “israel” has to try to convince the world otherwise that its “Greater Israel” plan is underway.
But no matter how much Smotrich wants to take to the podium and announce it, that doesn’t change the reality on the ground that tells a very different story.
Israel may claim Bint Jbeil is encircled - the same Bint Jbeil that the IOF themselves said in the 2007 Winograd report was a “symbol of the unsuccessful action of IDF throughout the fighting” with a force of 5,000 occupying soldiers defeated by 150 Hezbollah fighters maximum.
This same Bint Jbeil that is right now, with the resistance continuing to hit artillery, Merkava tanks – 120 burning and counting – soldier groupings and occupying army barracks.
Despite the Enemy narrative that they have the town surrounded, any advancement made in the last month and a half was thanks to ordered Lebanese Army withdrawals from Christian villages like Rmeish, Debel, Ain el Ebel, Alma as-Shaab with no Hezbollah presence in them.
“Israel” made the same claims of encirclement and advancement around Khiam a couple weeks back, using its presence there accomplished through ceasefire violations and illegal incursions during the previous 15 months to today as evidence of an advancement that couldn’t even hold as the IOF was forced to withdraw to its occupation point in Hammames hill and to today cannot make any advancements in the Naqoura/Tyre axis, is being fought off in Bint Jbeil, failed miserably in Nabi Sheet at the very start, and has yet to make any progress in Khiam.
So in light of this demonstrated strength by the resistance, the level of comprimization extends mere cowardice – PM Nawaf Salam joined in on Israeli/American framings of a Lebanese ceasefire to be separate from the Iranian ceasefire, despite one of Tehran’s core demands being a cessation of violence in Lebanon.
By saying that “Iran should not negotiate on behalf of Lebanon,” Salam is enabling the US/Israeli shaping of terms, where the Lebanese state, instrumental as a vehicle to invite normalization, can put seemingly ‘independent’ conditions that actually represent American demands aimed at forcibly disarming the resistance.
The same resistance, by the way, that can give Lebanon - as a state - leverage over Israel in negotiations that don’t even have to be direct.
Direct negotiations are completely unnecessary and symbolic means of the US and Israel to pass through symbolic victories amidst losses and blows by Iran and the Hezbollah resistance group in the South of Lebanon.
In 2022, Lebanon was able to force “israel” to accept the country’s maritime rights while refusing its attempts at making even a symbolic victory in the format of a direct negotiation.
So there is both historical precedent, and material logic, regardless of ideology, in leveraging Hezbollah’s strength to safeguard a modicum of sovereignty just as Iran is nullifying US power projection through its resistance.
The current Lebanese government is made up of minds so colonized that they disregard this material equation and internalize their own sense of inferiority, rushing to sell their own country to appease a moribund empire.
This is an unfortunate historical reality in a country like Lebanon caught between a comprador class comprising a compromised subservient state, and a historically revolutionary and strong resistance capable of confronting the Zionist entity while solely demonstrating the political will towards a truly sovereign domestic settlement.
In the face of a historic victory for Hezbollah and Iran, Aoun and Nawaf Shalom decide its a much better idea to literally hand the country over to Satanyahu and Trump. But no matter how much they try to even criminalize the discourse of resistance in the country, they’re simply dishing out the orders of an empire that is witnessing its political leverage weaken in real time.
As Georges Abdallah said upon his release from prison [in an interview with arab-i]: “The one who holds the weapon has the final say” — this isn’t a matter of preference but a dialectic trajectory that reflects the real-time trajectory of power, which since 2000 is increasingly in the hands of the resistance.
The real negotiation that the enemy understands - and that will determine Lebanon and the region’s fate - is taking place not in Washington.
But in Bint Jbeil.