The apparent scene:

The ongoing discussions, the fear evident in everyone, the opposing rhetoric between those claiming achievements and reforms on one side, and the stalling maneuvers and calls for patience on the other, along with the back-and-forth justifications, all stem from interpretations of “sovereignty” and “national accord.” All of this points to a clear, unifying reality that cuts across all sides: collective captivity within a decayed system, in a moment they believe is the end of the world.

It is not the end of the world. The two camps are locked in a mutual dynamic of complete paralysis, and such paralysis in these circumstances threatens our society. There is an alternative to their false solidarity.

The substance:

Politics is a matter of decisions, risk-taking, and understanding realities; it is not simply a matter of vehement rhetoric and the allocation of roles. Resistance is a tool, not an identity; the state is also a tool, as is the Constitution.

• Resistance arises as a reaction to an enemy’s aggression, but it is also a response to a defeat accepted by the existing system; to end up as an integral part of that system is to squander the sacrifices made.
• The state is a tool that an ‘inside’ equips itself with to deal with all that’s foreign to it, whether allies, neutral actors, adversaries, or enemies. Mobilizing resources and consolidating legitimacy constitute its raison d’être and the justification for its Constitution.

The tools—resistance and state—serve objectives that are defined only in constantly changing contexts.

Our position:

Lebanon is in danger, and choices are both necessary and possible.

• The Zionist project is a real threat, and confronting it is an indispensable choice. The alternative is the disintegration of society. It expands throughout the entire region; killing, displacing, and starving in Palestine, destroying, dividing, and fragmenting in Syria. It uses sects and their formulas of coexistence to dismantle societies, as it began during Lebanon’s civil war, and as it now applies in Syria. Shall we accept using the enemy’s tools to defend society?
• Lebanon is ahead of its neighbors in experience, in a fractured and fading region. It has lived through war, its political arrangements, and the paralysis of those same settlements, for forty to fifty years before Iraq and Syria.
• To confront bankruptcy, mass emigration, and the redrawing of the region’s order through bloodshed and defeat, the tool is the state. And in Lebanon, by its inherited reality, the state can be neither military nor religious. it must be civil, or it will not be at all.
• The policies of encouraging migration to loot deposits, and begging from wherever possible, have brought our society to a state of impotence in dealing with the consequences of regional arrangements.
• The Taef Agreement was intended to end the war and transfer power from the bourgeoisie and notables—in other words, from the majority of those who signed it before disappearing from the scene—to the generation descended from the warlords, under regional sponsorship. It fulfilled this role. Thank you.
• Communities are substitutes for the State, they nullify its operational capacity and legitimacy. The State must protect communities as an inherited social fact; it cannot be constituted by them.

The proposed actions:

A responsible political position does not consist of falling into the reciprocal confinement of two camps equally incapable of facing new and changing realities, a confinement that governs communities, discourses, media, and analyses. It must address the dynamics that govern this reality, and implement the means to influence and change them.

Victories are managed, as are defeats. Losses are precious sacrifices. All resources—human, material, technical, institutional, and financial—must be preserved through realistic management. Our political position is reflected in the following measures:

• Conduct a census of all Lebanese residents and emigrants to understand the reality of their family, age, health, and education, and to determine the actual places of residence and legal status of each individual, with the resulting practical implications.
• Establish compulsory civil and military service for all, and mobilize all available capacities, to enable the state to protect society and address the threats that target it.
• Establish an effective financial system to mobilize human, institutional, and productive resources, and not to finance consumption by organizing the emigration of Lebanese people.
• Adopt a system of political representation in which belonging to a community remains the exception and is a matter of individual choice, with the state being the guarantor of the protection of those who adhere to communities, among each other, and even among themselves.
• Generalize basic services to strengthen the legitimacy of the state, particularly in the areas of education and health, and establish a fiscal system that does not contribute to the inflated costs and domestic prices, thus hampering investments and production and encouraging emigration, indebtedness, and begging.
• Confront all theories of fragmentation—racist, religious, or tribal—and promote political alternatives, namely the civil legitimacy of the state, starting in Lebanon, regionally, in torn Syria, and, of course, in Palestine.

Those who want to, but first and foremost those who have the courage, are invited to organize and work to end the imprisonment of roles, fears, and compromises, to capitalize on experiences and sacrifices, and to mobilize all resources in a project that unites Lebanon and can save the region.