Can Lebanon keep it together? Government faces Israeli invasion, standoff with Hezbollah

The Lebanese have seen it all: from civil war to the 2019 protests demanding an end to revolving-door politics; from the 2020 Beirut port explosion, which exposed the tragic consequences of nepotism, to Israel’s 2024 operation targeting its longtime foe, Hezbollah. Now Israeli ground forces have returned once again to confront the Tehran-backed group. Lebanon thus finds itself a second front in the month-long war launched against Iran.

We’ll be asking what it means to return to life in wartime: how the country is coping with 1.2 million displaced people, with UN peacekeepers killed or injured, and with the enduring question of how Lebanon can break free from half a century of armed factions acting as laws unto themselves. That outcome will depend in part on how regional powers fare in the current war. For decades, they have treated Lebanon as a vacant lot where scores are settled by proxy.

But it will also depend on the Lebanese themselves—on whether a younger generation can finally move beyond sectarian divisions and clan loyalties, and turn that ambition into lasting change.

 

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.