LEBANON, 400,000 BCE–2026 By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.

From Phoenician Partnership and Mediterranean Exchange to Imperial Conquest, Sectarian Rivalry, and the Continuing Struggle for Cooperation

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, U.C.L.A.)

LEBANON: CROSSROADS IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF ISRAEL AND IRAN

Along the eastern Mediterranean shore, mountains rise behind a narrow coastal plain. Cedar forests once covered much of the high country. Natural harbors opened the coast to Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, Greece, Mesopotamia, and the wider Mediterranean. This geography brought opportunity, migration, trade, cultural exchange—and repeated invasion.

The Way Back Story

NIBIRU

Lebanon was part of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world after the Denisovan people withdrew to Turkey. Anu, the giant Homo sapiens King of the planet NIBIRU, sent his two rival sons, Enki and Enlil, and their sister Ninmah with crews and volunteers to Earth to mine gold. Refine it to ingots and rocket it to me, he told them.  The scientists will reduce the ingots to powdered monoatomic gold, which will float into the hole in our atmosphere.

Bronze Age Background

BAALBEK

On Earth, the Royal siblings (later called the Anunnaki [descendants of dynasty-founder An] built a landing platform for their spacecraft at Baalbek, the Land of the Cedars that we now call Lebanon.

The Anunnaki Royals on Earth built stations, stations grew to cities, and cities developed into satraps. Lebanon’s location made it a nexus over which people exchanged timber, metals, dyes, writing, beliefs, and ideas.

Lebanon became a prize for successive domination-driven Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, and European imperial powers. It became both a meeting place and a battleground, a place where cooperative commerce and destructive wars of domination alternated.  Lebanon demonstrates both what people create when they exchange knowledge as partners—and what they destroy when rulers treat cities and populations as possessions.

RULERS, devotees of Princes Enlil and Marduk, programmed to the Domination Consciousness of the Nibiran Royalty, repeatedly told their generals, This coast commands the trade routes. Whoever controls the ports controls the people.  Seize the harbors, forests, taxes, and ships.

PEACENIKS, adherents of Anunnaki Princess Ninmah, with a commitment to partnership with each other and with Earth’s ecology, said, The cedars will not survive if every ruler takes without replanting. Cooperating merchants added, Ports prosper when travelers arrive as customers and guests, not conquerors. Village elders taught children, Trade brings enduring wealth. Conquest brings resistance, graves, and ruins.”

3000 BCE:  BYBLOS, SIDON, AND TYRE DEVELOPED AS MEDITERRANEAN TRADING CITIES

Long before Phoenician sailors dominated Mediterranean commerce, partnership-oriented societies developed elsewhere around the same sea.

CRETE

Beginning around 6000 BCE, migrants from Anatolia carried Goddess-centered traditions to Crete. Over the following millennia, Cretan communities developed the society now called Minoan. Minoan Crete preserved a female-male partnership pattern while warrior kings and male-dominated religions gained power across much of Eurasia.

Cretans traced descent through women, gave priestesses central ritual roles, honored nature, and built cities whose art emphasized procession, music, craft, athletics, and ceremony more than military conquest. Knossos developed paved and drained streets, multistory houses, extensive trade, and public ceremonies in which women and men participated. Crete’s cities lacked the massive fortifications typical of many contemporary warrior states. Its ships connected Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, and the Aegean. Crete preserved aspects of Ninmah’s partnership orientation: respect for nature, active roles for women, cultural exchange, and cooperation among peoples of different origins.

PHOENICIANS

Crete’s development overlapped with that of the coastal cities of Canaan that became Lebanon. Mediterranean travel brought them into the same widening Phoenician system of exchange in which goods, artistic forms, technologies, beliefs, and customs moved between the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.

Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre (modern Ṣūr) grew into powerful coastal city-states.

Tyre was a maritime Phoenician city associated with Jezebel’s royal family and was part of the Canaanite cultural world. Greek writers later called the people of Tyre Phoenicians, a name associated with the purple-red dye they produced from murex shells. Phoenician sailors and merchants established settlements and commercial stations throughout the Mediterranean, including the city of Carthage in North Africa. Byblos, the center of alphabetic writing (allowing symbols to represent sounds rather than just concepts, maintained extensive relations with Egypt. Sidon became known for maritime commerce, glassmaking, craftsmanship, and purple dye. Phoenician vessels carried cedar, wine, oil, crafted goods, metalwork, textiles, and purple cloth. They conveyed stories, techniques, religious concepts, artistic designs, measurements, words, and writing systems between distant populations.

Around 1200–1150 BCE, the eastern Mediterranean suffered the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Drought, crop failure, migration, rebellion, palace destruction, changing warfare, and maritime raiding disrupted older powers. Groups collectively remembered as the Sea Peoples moved through the Eastern Mediterranean region; some Mycenaean Greeks joined these migrations and raided coastal towns, while others settled in places such as Cyprus. The disruption weakened the older, established empires and commercial systems, and Phoenician cities expanded their maritime networks in the centuries that followed, connecting populations across a changed Mediterranean world.

The Phoenician networks preserved elements of the cooperative Mediterranean world associated with Ninmah: travel rather than isolation, exchange rather than seizure, and mutual benefit rather than total domination. Commerce did not eliminate exploitation, class distinctions, or conflict. Yet negotiated exchange offered an alternative to the conqueror’s demand: Submit or die.*

1200–539 BCE: PHOENICIAN CITY-STATES EXPANDED TRADE AND SPREAD ALPHABETIC WRITING

The Phoenician writing system contained twenty-two consonantal signs. Compared with large collections of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform signs, alphabetic writing offered a compact system that merchants, administrators, craftspeople, and travelers could learn and adapt. Earlier alphabetic experiments had appeared in the eastern Mediterranean and Sinai. Phoenician communities refined, standardized, and spread a highly influential consonantal alphabet through their commercial networks. Greek writers adapted the system and added vowel signs. Later alphabets developed through Greek, Etruscan, and Latin transmission. Letters used by much of the modern world descend in part from innovations transmitted through Phoenician ports. The alphabet weakened the exclusive control of literacy by royal, priestly, and scribal elites. Reading and writing remained limited, but a simpler system made commercial records, agreements, ownership marks, dedications, and correspondence accessible to a wider circle. UNESCO directly associates Byblos with the history and diffusion of the Phoenician alphabet.

Domination devotees, such as palace officials and scribes, insisted that knowledge belongs inside the palace. Complex writing protects our authority. When ordinary people cannot read the laws, rulers may interpret them as they please. Partnership’s advocates, merchants, craftspeople, and teachers disagreed; they said, Give people letters they can learn, and they can record their own agreements. Written contracts protect both workers and the ruler. Phoenician teachers taught, Knowledge grows when people share it.”

539–332 BCE: PERSIA RULED LEBANON UNTIL ALEXANDER AND MACEDON TOOK IT

Lebanon’s cedar forests provided durable, aromatic timber prized throughout the ancient Near East. Egyptian rulers imported cedar for ships, buildings, furniture, and funerary objects. The cedar trade produced wealth, but imperial rulers repeatedly sought to control the forests and ports. Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Lebanese authorities incorporated Phoenician cities into larger imperial systems while often allowing local merchants and rulers to continue maritime operations. Anunnaki Prince Marduk sent his son, Nabu, to Persia to proselytize the Persians and their satraps, such as Lebanon, to worship him as Ahura Mazda and marshal the Persians against the Greeks, who worshipped Marduk in his guise as Zeus. With his two apparently opposed “gods” warring with each other, they were distracted, IMHO, from seeing that it was the same Anunnaki, Marduk, playing Earthling powers against each other and failing to see they were both directed by Marduk, just as Trump’s wars with Venezuela and Iran distract American factions from examining the Epstein files and realizing Russia controlled both Trump and Epstein.

GREEK RULERS HELENIZED THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTS

In 332 BCE, Alexander of Macedon demanded entry into the island city of Tyre. When Tire resisted and did not seek to communicate or negotiate access. Alexander required public submission. Tyre’s refusal became an affront to his rank, and thousands paid for one conqueror’s demand to display invincibility. Tyre resisted. The Macedonians built a causeway to Tyre, brought siege machinery within range, breached the city, and inflicted mass death, enslavement, and destruction. The siege illustrated a consciousness of domination in concentrated form.

Alexander proclaimed, No city may deny me entrance. Their refusal challenges my supremacy. Turn the sea into a road and make Tyre an example, but Tyrian mother, embracing partnership values, muttered, Alexander’s wounded pride does not justify the deaths of our children. Dockworkers told each other, A king like Alexander who destroys a prosperous city proves his power—and his poverty of spirit; No victory compensates for a civilization burned to satisfy his obsession to rule.

36 CE: ROME, THEN BYZANTIUM RULED LEBANON

Roman conquerors subjugated the Greek settlements bordering the Mediterranean Sea.  Rome made Berytus—modern Beirut—Roman, a hub of law and education.  Beirut’s law school-trained jurists served throughout the Empire.

Romans enlarged the monumental religious complex at Baalbek, now called Heliopolis, where local religious traditions merged with Greek and Roman forms. At Heliopolis, gigantic temples touted engineering skill, artistic achievement, state wealth, and imperial power, and reinforced the domination of Roman gods, emperors, and officials over ordinary people.

Christian communities developed under Roman and Byzantine rule. Arab Muslim armies entered the region during the seventh century CE, and refugees fled to communities that maintained distinct religious identities, including Maronite Christians, Druze, Orthodox Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims.

Diversity created opportunities for exchange and mutual enrichment. Rulers, foreign powers, and local elites could also manipulate religious differences in struggles for land, taxation, status, and political control.

Imperial Governors said, Let each community fear the others. Then each will seek our protection. Division keeps ordinary people from recognizing their common interests. Partnership devotees of community sharing whispered to each other, My neighbor’s prayer does not diminish mine. We all share the same mountain, water, roads, and market. If we are to survive, the Romans must protect our differences without turning difference into rank.

1516–1918: OTTOMAN RULE, WORLD WAR I, REPRESSION, AND FAMINE

Lebanon remained under Ottoman rule for more than four centuries after 1516.
Local families and religious communities often exercised substantial autonomy, but competition over land, taxation, patronage, and foreign protection contributed to recurring conflict.

Violence between Druze and Maronite communities reached a crisis in 1860.
The French Emperor Napoleon III sent troops that forced an international settlement, and Ottoman action helped end the immediate violence. 

The European intervention helped produce the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate in 1861, creating an autonomous district within the Ottoman Empire.
In 1861, the Ottoman government and European powers established the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.
An Ottoman-appointed Christian governor who came from outside Lebanon governed the Mutasarrifate, and French troops then departed.
The arrangement reduced some conflict but deepened foreign powers’ practice of treating Lebanese communities as clients in their regional competition.

During World War I, the Ottomans repressed the Lebanese, drafted their men, and disrupted trade.
Lebanese endured crop failures, inflation, food requisitioning, blockade, and a devastating locust infestation.
Ottoman authorities under Jamal Pasha executed Arab nationalists and suppressed opponents.

The wartime crisis culminated in the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon that killed one-third of the Lebanese, who cut their forests for fuel.
Families sold possessions for food. Disease spread. Emigration separated families.
War, imperial policy, blockade, disrupted agriculture, profiteering, and ecological damage. 

Ottoman rulers, like bosses in most societies,  placed military objectives above civilian survival.  This strategy in Lebanon coalesced to kill one-third of the Lebanese.

Ottoman Commanders told the starving civilians, The army gets food first. Complain, and we’ll jail or kill you.

But Lebanese civilians cried, No military objective makes a child’s starvation acceptable.

Share the grain, protect the wells, and feed those who cannot pay.

Security that sacrifices the population protects nothing worth preserving.

1920: FRANCE CREATED GREATER LEBANON—LEBANESE PEOPLE CREATED INDEPENDENCE

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Lebanese Christians, Arab nationalists, French imperial officials, British policymakers, and local Muslim and Druze leaders promoted competing plans for the region.
Some Maronite leaders sought an enlarged Lebanese state under French protection.
Arab nationalists associated with Faisal ibn Hussein envisioned a larger Syrian kingdom that would unite Arabic-speaking communities.
Britain and France pursued the imperial divisions outlined in the Sykes–Picot arrangements.

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau explored compromise with Faisal. His successor, Alexandre Millerand, supported a harder colonial policy.
French forces defeated the Syrian Arab army at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920.
On September 1, 1920, General Henri Gouraud proclaimed the State of Greater Lebanon, incorporating Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, the Bekaa Valley, Akkar, and southern districts into the former Mount Lebanon territory.
The new borders increased Lebanon’s agricultural and commercial resources, but they also incorporated large Sunni, Shia, Druze, and other populations into a state initially promoted by Maronite leaders and French authorities.

The president would be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the parliamentary speaker a Shia Muslim.
This system prevented one community from formally monopolizing the state, but it also institutionalized religious identity as the principal route to political office.
Leaders hoped a broader national identity would eventually reduce dependence on confessional allocation.
But when French authorities arrested Lebanon’s president and other leaders in 1943, Lebanese citizens from several religious communities united in opposition.

Colonial officials told the Lebanese, What we say goes.
Lebanese civilians said, No way. France must recognize Lebanese independence. The Lebanese told each other, No foreign empire owns our future.
No religious community can build a functioning nation alone; power-sharing must protect citizens—not preserve permanent political castes.

After independence, Beirut became a major financial, educational, publishing, and cultural center.
Lebanon’s universities, newspapers, artists, merchants, and far-reaching diaspora connected the Arab world with Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
But prosperity concealed an unequal political economy and a confessional system that distributed public power through communal elites.

PALESTINIANS MIGRATED TO LEBANON; LEBANESE UNITY FORCED FRANCE TO RECOGNIZE INDEPENDENCE

In 1946, the last French troops left Lebanon.
After 1948, Palestinian refugees and their armed anti-Israeli organizations, whom the Arab–Israeli conflict agitated and whom Iran financed, exacerbated economic inequality and competition among Lebanese parties.
Lebanon has hosted Palestinian refugees since 1948. Lebanon’s politicians armed their factions and sought help from foreign patrons.

INDEPENDENCE BROUGHT PROSPERITY—BUT REGIONAL CONFLICT ARMED LEBANON’S DIVISIONS

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War brought large numbers of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon. Lebanon’s people did not cause their displacement, yet the country lacked the institutions, land, and political agreement needed to integrate them.
Many refugees remained in camps, while Lebanese leaders feared that naturalization would alter the country’s religious and political balance. Lebanon has hosted Palestinian refugees since 1948.

In 1958, conflict over President CAMILE CHAMOUN, Arab nationalism, Western influence, and Lebanon’s regional alignment produced an armed internal crisis. Chamoun requested foreign assistance, and the United States landed troops near Beirut.
The immediate crisis ended after Parliament elected army commander Fuad Chehab president, but foreign intervention demonstrated how Lebanon’s internal disputes had become connected to wider international rivalries.

President CHEHAB expanded state institutions and attempted to bring neglected regions into national life. Nevertheless, wealth and government services remained concentrated around Beirut and established elites.
Many residents of southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and crowded urban districts continued to lack political influence, security, and public investment.

The 1967 Arab–Israeli War sent additional Palestinian refugees and armed resistance activity toward Lebanon. In 1969, the Cairo Agreement between Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organization granted Palestinian organizations substantial authority within refugee camps and permitted armed operations from parts of southern Lebanon. Lebanese sovereignty weakened as armed groups established power outside the national army.

After fighting with Jordan’s government in 1970–1971, PLO leaders and fighters transferred much of their political and military base to Lebanon. Israel responded to attacks from Lebanese territory with raids and bombardment.

Lebanese militias armed themselves, foreign governments supplied competing factions, and the national government lost control over increasing portions of the country. By 1975, Lebanon’s civil war had many interconnected causes: a rigid sectarian political structure, unequal development, Palestinian dispossession, armed organizations outside state authority, Israeli retaliation, foreign intervention, and Lebanese elites who mobilized communities through fear. No single religious community or refugee population caused the catastrophe. Lebanon became the battlefield on which internal grievances and regional struggles collided.

PARTNERSHIP REQUIRED A GOVERNMENT THAT SERVED EVERY COMMUNITY, NOT MORE DOMINATION THAT TURNED IDENTITY INTO AN ARMED STRUGGLE FOR POWER

The Lebanese Civil War erupted in 1975. Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze, Palestinian, leftist, nationalist, and other forces fought one another and sometimes their former partners.

Syria intervened in 1976. Israel invaded in 1978 and again in 1982.

Militias, armies, assassinations, kidnappings, massacres, shelling, and displacement tore communities apart. Ordinary Lebanese people paid for struggles pursued by local warlords and regional powers.

The 1989 Taif Agreement adjusted the balance of political power, reduced the Maronite presidency’s authority, divided parliamentary representation equally between Christians and Muslims, and called for militias to disarm. Syrian forces remained dominant in Lebanon until 2005. Israel withdrew from most of southern Lebanon in 2000. Postwar reconstruction revived parts of Beirut but relied on debt, patronage, fragile banks, and political networks that protected established leaders.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri in 2005 triggered mass demonstrations and helped force Syria’s military withdrawal. Yet Lebanon’s factional system endured. 

By 2019, citizens from several communities protested corruption, failing services, inequality, and the entire sectarian political class. A financial collapse destroyed savings, impoverished families, and drove another generation to emigrate.

On August 4, 2020, improperly stored ammonium nitrate exploded at Beirut’s port, killing more than 200 people, injuring thousands, and devastating large parts of the capital. The disaster embodied the cost of a system in which officials evade responsibility while citizens absorb the consequences.

Militia bosses warned the Lebanese, Your community survives only if you obey us and fear the others. Europeans sold arms to every faction, bribed officials for contracts they sought, and tolerated politicians who toadied to them. Lebanese who embraced cooperation countered that every faction promised protection. Their weapons destroyed our homes. We reject a system that divides us so its leaders can remain beyond accountability. When the state failed after the explosion, neighbors rescued, fed, treated, and sheltered one another; we must pursue inclusiveness, kindness, mutual assistance, and compassion for one another.

HEZBOLLAH—IRAN’S ARMY INSIDE LEBANON THREATENED ISRAEL’S NORTH

Many Americans do not grasp the danger Israel faces along its northern border. Hezbollah does not function as a small band of militants. Iran financed, armed, trained, and developed Hezbollah into a political organization, social-services network, and powerful military force embedded inside Lebanon.

Hezbollah emerged among Lebanon’s historically marginalized Shiite population after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. It drew recruits from Shiite communities in the Bekaa Valley, southern Lebanon, and southern Beirut. Iranian money, weapons, training, and logistical assistance transformed the organization into Iran’s strongest military proxy. The United States designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Hezbollah nevertheless gained seats in Lebanon’s Parliament, positions in coalition governments, influence over ministries, and enough armed power to challenge the Lebanese state. It became what analysts call “a state within a state.”

HEZBOLLAH KEPT THE ARMY THAT LEBANON’S OTHER MILITIAS SURRENDERED

Lebanon’s civil war ended with an agreement that required the country’s militias to disarm. Hezbollah became the principal exception. It claimed that it needed its weapons to resist Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. Hezbollah then kept and enlarged its arsenal.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted after the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War, called for the disarmament of armed groups and for the area between Israel’s border and the Litani River to contain no armed forces except the Lebanese Army and United Nations peacekeepers. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel fulfilled every provision. Hezbollah retained fighters, weapons, launchers, and military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, while Lebanon continued to accuse Israel of territorial and airspace violations.

Hezbollah’s independent army deprived Lebanon’s elected government of the sovereign power to decide when the country went to war. Hezbollah could attack Israel, provoke Israeli retaliation, and expose Lebanese civilians to destruction without first obtaining the Lebanese government’s consent.

IRAN BUILT HEZBOLLAH TO HOLD NORTHERN ISRAEL HOSTAGE

Iran built Hezbollah only to deter Israel from attacking Iran.

Hezbollah developed rockets, precision missiles, drones, antitank units, Radwan commando forces, command-and-control networks, weapons depots, and fortified tunnels. It placed much of this system within or near Lebanon’s civilian villages and neighborhoods. Iran’s strategy was to surround Israel with allied armed organizations operating from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. Hezbollah formed the “crown jewel” of that network. Its intended warning remained clear: Attack Iran, and Hezbollah will set northern Israel on fire.

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah began sustained cross-border attacks from Lebanon. It said it would continue until Israel ended its Gaza campaign. Hezbollah’s fire drove tens of thousands of Israelis from northern communities and damaged homes, farms, businesses, and public infrastructure. Israel answered with attacks that killed Hezbollah commanders and fighters but also devastated Lebanese communities and killed civilians.

ISRAEL DISMANTLED MUCH OF HEZBOLLAH’S COMMAND SYSTEM

Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah during 2024. It struck Hezbollah’s communications, weapons, launchers, commanders, and underground installations. An Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024. Israeli forces then entered southern Lebanon. The conflict inflicted enormous losses on Hezbollah, but it did not eliminate the organization or its capacity to rebuild. The November 2024 ceasefire again required Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani River, the Lebanese Army’s deployment in the south, and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory. That ceasefire collapsed in March 2026 after Hezbollah fired rockets and drones at Israel in response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Hezbollah thus demonstrated the problem at the center of Lebanon’s crisis: it used Lebanese territory to retaliate for an event involving Iran, although Lebanon’s government had not chosen war.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam responded by banning Hezbollah’s military and security activities. His government declared that only the Lebanese state could decide questions of war and peace and directed the Lebanese Army to establish state control over weapons. This marked an unprecedented Lebanese challenge to Hezbollah’s independent military power.

TUNNELS AND MISSILES DO NOT DISAPPEAR WHEN DIPLOMATS SIGN AN AGREEMENT

In his TBN Israel report, Yair Pinto described Israeli forces operating against a fortified Hezbollah underground compound in southern Lebanon while Hezbollah fired rockets toward them. He argued that control of such compounds determines whether Hezbollah can move fighters, command operations, conceal weapons, launch missiles, and reconstruct its military system near Israel.

Pinto also identified a gap between Washington and Jerusalem. Washington, Pinto says, seeks agreements that can stop regional escalation, reopen shipping routes, reduce economic damage, and restrain Iran. Israel looks across its border at Hezbollah’s tunnels, launchers, drones, antitank weapons, and Radwan commandos. Israeli families in Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Shlomi, and other communities in the Galilee want more than a signed document. They want evidence that Hezbollah cannot again mass forces across the border and attack their homes. Pinto says, A tunnel does not disappear because diplomats declare a ceasefire. A missile launcher does not cease functioning because Washington wants quiet. International pressure that stops Israel’s operations before Hezbollah loses its border infrastructure could give Hezbollah time to rescue fighters, train recruits, restore communications, move weapons, and return Radwan forces to southern Lebanon.

LEBANON MUST CONTROL ITS OWN ARMY AND ITS OWN FUTURE

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam now face the central test of Lebanese sovereignty. Either the elected state controls the country’s weapons and decisions of war and peace, or an Iran-supported organization retains enough military power to drag Lebanon into Iran’s regional campaigns.

Disarming Hezbollah will require more than a government declaration. Lebanon needs a national army capable of controlling its territory, defending its borders, protecting every religious community, preventing a return to militia rule, and resisting foreign domination. A sovereign Lebanon should neither serve as Iran’s forward military base nor remain an Israeli battlefield. It should belong to the Lebanese people—Shiite, Sunni, Christian, Druze, and others—under one government and one nationally accountable army.

As of July 2026, Lebanon and Israel are negotiating a framework that links Hezbollah’s disarmament, Lebanese Army deployments, and phased Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah opposes the plan, while Israel says it will not withdraw fully while Hezbollah remains armed. That conflict between Lebanese sovereignty, Hezbollah’s weapons, and Israel’s security now stands at the heart of Lebanon’s future.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards say Lebanon gives us a forward army against Israel without exposing Iran first. Hezbollah Commanders say, Our weapons decide when Lebanon enters war, whether its elected government agrees or not.

Northern Israeli Parents contend, We need more than promises while armed commandos, tunnels, and missiles remain across our border.

Lebanese Citizens say, Iran will henceforth suffer direct retaliation whenever Hezbollah attacks us; we shall not confine ourselves to hitting Hezbollah; instead, we’ll retaliate for any attack Hezbollah mounts against us by hitting Iran, Hezbollah’s boss, ten times as hard as Hezbollah hits us.

Lebanese Soldiers say, Our sovereign state requires an accountable national army. Arm, finance, and train us to defend our country against Iran’s Hezbollah terrorists.

CONCLUSION: LEBANON’S CHOICE—SECTARIAN DOMINATION OR PARTNERSHIP

Lebanon became one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in pluralistic government. Its people maintained multiple religious identities while attempting to participate in one national system.

Power sharing helped prevent formal monopoly by one group. Yet sectarian political structures also encouraged leaders to present themselves as protectors of their communities, distribute resources through patronage, and maintain loyalty through fear of rival groups. This pattern reflects domination consciousness. Leaders tell people, You need us because the others threaten you.

Partnership consciousness asks a different question:  What institutions allow every community to flourish without ranking, excluding, or controlling the others?

Lebanon’s ancient ports demonstrate the creative power of connection. Its alphabet spread communication. Its sailors joined distant societies. Its scholars, artists, writers, merchants, educators, migrants, and craftspeople enriched cultures far beyond Lebanon. Its wars and famines demonstrate the opposite. Foreign rulers, military commanders, colonial negotiators, sectarian elites, and foreign-supported militias repeatedly placed power above life.

The World Bank describes Lebanon as confronting overlapping crises while reconstruction programs emphasize social protection, transparency, inclusion, accountability, and economic recovery. These goals require institutions that serve citizens rather than factions. Enlil and Marduk’s system of domination survives in Lebanon and most of the Earth. The domination obsession the Anunnaki inculcated in most elites lets rulers manufacture enemies, demand obedience, and concentrate wealth. Ninmah’s partnership and Enki’s partnership orientation appear whenever people exchange knowledge, protect diversity, restore damaged land, share responsibility, and cooperate for the common good.

Lebanon still presents humanity with a choice. People can preserve cultural and religious identity without conflating it with caste. They can share authority without surrendering individuality. They can replace patronage with public service, rivalry with accountability, and obedience with participation.

Lebanon must free its government from foreign control and free its citizens from permanent dependence on sectarian bosses. Its national army must protect the entire country. Israel’s northern families must live without missiles, tunnels, and commandos poised across the border. Lebanese families must live without foreign forces, retaliatory bombardment, militia rule, or wars chosen for them by Iran.

The cedar survives through many branches joined to one trunk. Lebanon can do the same.

## REFERENCES

– *Empires Revisited*, Lebanon history video and closed-caption transcript supplied for this article.
– Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hezbollah”: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hezbollah
– UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Byblos”: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/295/
– UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Tyre”: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/299/
– UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Baalbek”: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/294/
– United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701: https://unsco.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/s_res_17012006.pdf
– U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, “Hizballah”: https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/hizballah.html
– Reuters, “Lebanon bans Hezbollah military actions after attack on Israel,” March 2026: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-projectiles-were-fired-lebanon-2026-03-01/
– Reuters, “Lebanon, Israel hold U.S.-brokered talks in Rome,” July 2026: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lebanon-israel-hold-us-brokered-talks-rome-implement-framework-deal-2026-07-14/
– TBN Israel, Yair Pinto, *Boots on the Ground* transcript supplied for the Hezbollah section.
– World Bank, Lebanon country overview and recovery programs: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/lebanon
– Riane Eisler, *The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future*. Harper & Row, 1987.

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