On February 26, Lebanon’s parliament convened on the second day of its deliberations over the policy statement of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s government. Under normal circumstances, the session would have been taken up with political speeches and other minutiae related to matters of governance. Yet, when Samy Gemayel, the leader of the Kataeb Party, took the floor, he ventured into more unsettling territory, talking about the fragmented historical consciousness of the Lebanese and the cycles of violence that continue to consume their country.
Though Gemayel had originally set out to discuss the government’s policy statement, his reflections on the mass funeral of slain Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, broadcast live on February 23, led him to address, instead, what he saw as Lebanon’s existential crisis. Gemayel painted a grim portrait of a country trapped in collective amnesia, one that moved from one calamity to the next without ever confronting any of the root causes of its problems.
The most recent such calamity is, of course, the Hezbollah-Israel conflict last year, which devastated mainly Shia areas of Lebanon. Gemayel is a longtime adversary of Hezbollah, so one might have expected him to present the war’s outcome as a victory for his own political camp. Instead, he took a more nuanced approach, one that, at least rhetorically, aimed to rise above Lebanon’s sectarian divisions and emphasize the state’s responsibility, particularly toward the Shia in their time of need. He spoke not only of the Shia, Sunnis, Christians, and Druze, but also of secular Lebanese, all of whom tend to see their country’s history through a fragmented lens, each group having its own vision of Lebanon, story, heroes, martyrs, and villains.
A majority of the Shia revere figures such as Nasrallah. Many Christians, in turn, longingly remember Bashir Gemayel, who was assassinated in 1982 by allies of Syria. Sunnis look up to Rafiq al-Hariri, the epitome of the community’s connection to the broader Arab world, who was assassinated in February 2005, a crime in which Hezbollah members were implicated. The Druze still honor Kamal Joumblatt, gunned down in 1977, likely on the orders of then Syrian president Hafez al-Assad.
These figures are not mere political symbols; they represent the enduring fault lines that run through Lebanon. Bashir Gemayel led Christian militias that clashed with Muslim Lebanese and Palestinian factions, as well as Syrian forces. Joumblatt fought against Gemayel in the early years of the civil war. Hariri’s assassination inflamed Sunni-Shia tensions. And today, Nasrallah’s legacy and Hezbollah are being rebuked by large segments of the Christian, Sunni, and Druze communities. While these are just a few of Lebanon’s myriad contending narratives, the inescapable truth remains that they remain unresolved.
What Gemayel alluded to, with more subtlety, is that Lebanon’s political system fosters such divisions. It is a system that encourages, even invites, foreign intervention—something each sectarian group has long been willing to leverage in a quest for dominance. Hezbollah engaged in the most recent and blatant example of such behavior, invited Lebanon’s Shia to rely on Iranian backing, building up its arsenal and using force to dominate the domestic political landscape. But the party was hardly alone. Every major Lebanese community has done the same.
Gemayel posed a central question that has been at the heart of Lebanon’s political paralysis: Can the Lebanese communities transcend these myriad stories and forge a common national narrative? Can they reconcile their clashing histories in a way that allows for peace and prosperity for all? Gemayel called for “a national conference of forthrightness and reconciliation” as a first step to break Lebanon’s destructive cycle of violence. Without this reckoning, he warned, history would repeat itself and Lebanon would continue to return to a state of turmoil. A new framework was necessary because history showed that no single faction could dominate the others, no “story” could claim absolute supremacy. For Lebanon to find lasting stability, it had to reckon with all its narratives, however uncomfortable or divisive each might be.
The notion that Lebanon’s conflicts arise from competing historical interpretations and differing outlooks is hardly new. Yet few politicians have had the candor to address it so openly from the parliamentary podium. Since the conclusion of the civil war in 1990, the country has largely avoided confronting its past. There was never a formal process of national reconciliation. Many warlords who once commanded militias—except for Hezbollah, principally—surrendered their weapons, became entrenched in the postwar political order, and saw their former fighters absorbed into the state. The 1989 Taif Accord, which ended the war, remains only partially implemented, with its provisions for political reform and deconfessionalization largely ignored. Gemayel’s speech, in part, called for the unrealized promises of that accord to be implemented. His speech also implied that a new generation of Lebanese leaders could be seeking to incorporate the country’s competing narratives into an accepted, pluralistic national history, unlike their predecessors, who arose during a period of war and profound division.
While Gemayel’s speech may have framed the problem, it also fell short of offering a clear way forward, showing that diagnosis without a prescription is futile. Some have suggested that a federal system is the solution, granting each religious community greater autonomy within a national framework. Yet this idea is far from universally accepted, with critics arguing that it would only entrench sectarian divisions and weaken the state. Nonetheless, there is a growing appeal for some sort of decentralization today, as Lebanon’s history suggests that any attempt to impose a single political will on all from above will face fierce resistance.
Moreover, critics of the speech might argue that it was wholly misplaced and contend that Gemayel failed to include other important issues. From a secular perspective, the primary concerns of Lebanese citizens today are not sectarian historical narratives but tangible issues, for example reconstruction after the recent conflict with Israel, retrieving lost bank deposits, or securing basic services such as electricity and water. In this view, striving for a “common history” is a distraction from more pressing problems. Some might even go further and question the very premise that sectarian identity is the defining axis of Lebanese politics. But such critiques, while not unfounded, risk overlooking the persistent role that sectarian identities continue to play in Lebanese life. These identities are not just fictions imposed from above; they remain deeply embedded in how communities organize, mobilize, and, ultimately, share or contest power.
Gemayel’s speech did indeed raise more questions than it answered. Yet it did not merely address competing versions of history. It was about the future of Lebanon’s political order. His speech was not just a call to revisit the past but to consider how Lebanon’s communities, which remain real political actors, will coexist in the years ahead. Will the country move toward some sort of decentralization? Or will it, once again, encourage the strongest community to impose a single political will on everyone? By raising these questions, Gemayel has forced the Lebanese to confront such uncomfortable truths in their political discourse. Whether this signals a real shift in how Lebanon thinks of itself, or whether old patterns will prevail, remains to be seen.
