Seventy-five years of paying other people’s bills. It was a debt Lebanon was forced to pay for choices made in Cairo, Damascus, and Tehran. The Arab order needed a country small enough to absorb its failures. The Iranian theocracy needed a forward base. Lebanon was both.

Nasser exported the burden. Arafat planted the franchise. The 1969 Cairo Agreement legalized an armed state inside Lebanese borders — Lebanon’s first official surrender of sovereignty, signed under Egyptian pressure, against every Lebanese interest. Hafez al-Assad turned the country into his security depth and called it brotherhood. Khomeini’s heirs built Hezbollah on the rubble the PLO left behind. Nasrallah inherited the franchise. Bashar wore the same occupation in a different uniform.

📋 The Indictment — What Each Man Took
Nasser Exported the burden of pan-Arab nationalism onto Lebanese soil. Pressured Beirut to absorb Palestinian armed factions, destabilizing Lebanon’s delicate confessional balance in service of Cairo’s regional agenda.
Arafat / PLO Planted the armed franchise via the 1969 Cairo Agreement — a state within a state. Ignited the civil war’s early fires. The PLO’s militarization of southern Lebanon invited two Israeli invasions and cost tens of thousands of Lebanese lives.
Hafez al-Assad Occupied Lebanon for nearly three decades under the cover of “Arab brotherhood.” Used Lebanon as strategic depth, assassinated Lebanese leaders, and engineered sectarian conflict to ensure Syrian dominance.
Khomeini / Khamenei Built Hezbollah on the rubble the PLO left behind. Transformed Lebanon’s south into an Iranian forward operating base, held the state hostage to Tehran’s regional war with Israel, and financed the destruction of Lebanese sovereignty from afar.
Nasrallah Inherited and expanded the franchise. Dragged Lebanon into the 2006 war, the Syria conflict, and October 7’s aftermath — none of them Lebanese decisions, all of them paid for by Lebanese lives and Lebanese livelihoods.
Bashar al-Assad Wore the same Syrian occupation in a different uniform. Oversaw political assassinations — including Rafik Hariri — to preserve Damascus’s grip on Lebanese political life.

“The 1969 Cairo Agreement legalized an armed state inside ours: Lebanon’s first official surrender of sovereignty, signed under Egyptian pressure, against every Lebanese interest.”

— Bechara Gerges, @BecharaGerges

Every Generation Paid the Bill

Every Lebanese generation since 1948 paid the bill: Damour, the mountain war, the South, the displaced, the emigrated, the disappeared, the assassinated — and an entire Christian demographic collapse engineered in someone else’s name.

🩸 The Debt Ledger — Paid in Full by Lebanon
Damour massacre (1976) — A Christian town annihilated by PLO forces. Hundreds killed. The opening entry in a long ledger of communal destruction.
The civil war (1975–1990) — 150,000 dead, 300,000 wounded, and one million displaced across fifteen years of proxy warfare waged on Lebanese soil for everyone else’s causes.
The mountain war & demographic collapse — An engineered Christian exodus from vast swaths of Lebanon, reshaping demography under the cover of factional conflict.
Two Israeli invasions (1978, 1982) — Invited by the PLO’s militarization of the south, devastating Lebanese infrastructure and displacing hundreds of thousands.
The 2006 war — Hezbollah’s unilateral provocation cost Lebanon an estimated $3.6 billion in destruction. No Lebanese government authorized it.
The disappeared & assassinated — Thousands of Lebanese vanished into Syrian prisons. Political leaders — Kamal Jumblatt, Bachir Gemayel, Rafik Hariri — killed to silence sovereign Lebanese politics.
Economic collapse & emigration — Lebanon’s financial ruin, accelerated by Hezbollah’s wars and Iran’s instrumentalization of the state, has driven the largest Lebanese diaspora in the country’s modern history.
The Obscenity of “Solidarity”

They Taught Us to Call It Solidarity

The obscenity is not that they used Lebanon. It is that they taught the Lebanese to call it solidarity — and that for too long, too many did. Each armed project arrived wrapped in the language of resistance, liberation, or Arab unity. Each one left Lebanon smaller, poorer, and more fractured than it found it.

“The obscenity is not that they used us. It is that they taught us to call it solidarity, and we let them.”

— Bechara Gerges

Pan-Arabism demanded Lebanon sacrifice its stability for Cairo’s prestige. The Palestinian armed movement demanded it sacrifice its south — and eventually its state institutions — for a cause that produced no Palestinian state and no Lebanese peace. The Iranian project demanded Lebanon surrender its future to a regional confrontation decided in Tehran.

The Debt Was Paid in Full

Lebanon owes the Palestinians, Tehran, and Damascus nothing. The debt was paid in full: in blood, in country, in economy, in security, in peace, and in future.

That is not indifference to Palestinian suffering, nor hostility to any people. It is an accounting of sovereign cost — the recognition that a small nation was used as raw material for everyone else’s wars, and that the price of that use has been catastrophic and unreciprocated.

Lebanon’s obligation now is not to the ideological projects that consumed it. It is to its own people, its own sovereignty, and its own future — a future that can only be built once the Lebanese stop being charged for debts they never agreed to carry.

Original Thread on X / Twitter Read Bechara Gerges’ full thread: “Nasser, Arafat, the Assads, Khomeini, Khamenei, Nasrallah: The Men Who Stole Lebanon” — @BecharaGerges
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Lebanon Hezbollah Iran Syria PLO Nasrallah Sovereignty Christians Middle East Opinion