Among the many foul odors in Lebanon, there is one that emanates from the stance of the Lebanese vis-à-vis the past, the past of their civil war. Not only does the latter never pass, but it also remains their best project for the future. This is how everyone sees things, each from his or her respective position. This is said with three recent ‘celebrations' in mind, marking three events in 1982: the killing of President-elect Bashir Gemayel; the Sabra and Shatila massacre; and the founding of the National Resistance Front against the Israeli invasion. The assassination of Bashir Gemayel was certainly a painful event, and part of the ongoing efforts of the Syrian regime to prevent the emergence of a central authority in Beirut, and liquidate Lebanese leaders – which began with Kamal Jumblatt and culminated with Rafik Hariri. But this does not invalidate the fact that Gemayel, like other Lebanese leaders, was a sectarian militia leader, who ascended to the presidency during and because of the civil war, and whose ambition could only be realized after the Israeli invasion coerced the fragile Lebanese democracy. This is what the supporters of Bashir in 2013 failed to recall, as they continued to speak as though they were still in 1982. And no doubt, the Sabra and Shatila massacre was one event in modern Lebanese history where murderous brutality coincided with the baseness of assaulting civilians after their fighters had been deported, and with a boundless willingness to collaborate with the Israelis. But there is also no doubt that this massacre was the culmination of a series of massacres that spanned two years, perpetrated by Lebanese against Lebanese and Palestinians, and by Palestinians against Lebanese. Indeed, that massacre came from the world of the insane civil war fought by everyone against everyone else. This much was absent from the minds of those who think they hold a monopoly over the massacre in the two refugee camps. Meanwhile, the emergence of the National Resistance Front could be understood in the context of the clash between a local population and an invading force. What is not understood, however, is why the celebration and the celebrators leap over the circumstances that led to the Israeli invasion and the ensuing establishment of the Front. Indeed, despite all subsequent lies, recall that all of Lebanon had lived in security between 1949 and 1967, thanks to the armistice agreement that prevented war as much as it prevented peace, and also recall that we only entered the Israeli death spiral thanks to the weapons that had claimed to be seeking to liberate Palestine from the south and from Arqoub. True, some celebrating the National Resistance Front wanted to make a pass at Hezbollah to question its monopoly of the resistance. But this too is part of the kind of civil antagonism that does not quite rise up to the level of conducting a radical critique of resistance itself, in a country that could have lived without either occupation or resistance. This was absent from the minds of the sponsors of the celebration of the founding of the Resistance Front. Each one of these parties reiterated their exact positions from 1982. Most probably, all positions are charged with more passions and a sense of mobilization than they were 30 years ago. None of the sides noticed, with the passage of time and the multiplying number of tombstones and deaths, that their respective narratives of the events were partial and at complete odds with the others' narrative in Lebanon. None of the parties thought to reconsider their narratives to reach other ones that can be accepted by a multi-confessional society with different and often conflicting attitudes. This is a good reason to say that the conditions for civil war in Lebanon are very mature, having been further aggravated by the split over the Syrian Revolution, without being altered profoundly by the political polarization between March 8 and March 14. As to why the war does not occur, well, it is the non-Lebanese who should be asked about this!
