It is time to stop the state of denial. The Israeli Boycott Law, issued on 23 June 1955, has not protected Lebanon. It has not deterred a single conflict, prevented a single incursion, or strengthened the Lebanese state by a single institution. What it has done is criminalize reality — the reality that Lebanese people, across every sectarian and regional boundary, are already communicating, engaging, and interacting with Israelis across every digital platform that exists.

The law is a fiction sustained by political fear. And Elissa El Hachem is no longer willing to participate in that fiction.

El Hachem’s call does not exist in a vacuum. On 18 March 2026, three members of the United States Congress sent a formal letter to U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa (@usembassybeirut) demanding that the issue of repealing Lebanon’s boycott laws be raised with relevant Lebanese authorities — and calling for a full evaluative review of these laws and their impact on Lebanese sovereign sentiment and security coordination.

Their letter demanded that Ambassador Issa raise the issue with the relevant parties and conduct an evaluative review of these laws and their impact on Lebanese sovereign sentiment and security coordination. The linkage was deliberate and significant — the boycott law is not merely a symbolic relic. It actively impedes the kind of direct coordination that Lebanese sovereignty now requires.

And on 23 April 2026, President Donald Trump himself affirmed the necessity of repealing this law — placing the United States unambiguously on record that Lebanon’s 1955 boycott law is incompatible with the direction of the region and the ambitions of the Lebanese state.

El Hachem’s commentary was prompted by an important interview given by Barak Ravid, the Axios journalist and LBCI guest, who disclosed the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the most recent ceasefire discussions between Lebanon and Israel. His account reveals something that Lebanon’s political class finds deeply inconvenient: the negotiations are real, they are substantive, and they are moving — with or without political cover from Beirut.

The picture Ravid paints is one of a negotiation that is genuinely alive — far more active and substantive than Lebanon’s public political discourse acknowledges. Which is precisely El Hachem’s point.

El Hachem’s demand is precise and actionable. It does not require a parliamentary majority. It does not require a government resolution. It does not require Hezbollah’s approval. It requires ten Lebanese MPs — ten — willing to sign a memorandum demanding the suspension of the implementation of a law that criminalizes the kind of contact that is already happening daily, openly, and irreversibly.

The framing is deliberate. Let the obstructors bear the responsibility. Not Lebanon. Not the MPs who sign. The ones who block it. The ones who stand in the way of a country communicating with its neighbor, conducting security coordination, and reclaiming the sovereign right to decide its own relationships — those are the ones who must now explain themselves.

President Trump has already weighed in. Three members of the U.S. Congress have already written formally. The American Ambassador has already received the request. The region is already moving. And Lebanon’s parliament has 128 members — surely ten of them can find the courage that the Lebanese street already exercises every single day on its phone.