January 03, 2025
Nasser Kandil
• The month of January is packed with pivotal deadlines both domestically and internationally. In Lebanon, the highlight is the presidential election session scheduled for the 9th of the month. Globally, the most significant event is the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on the 20th. Between and around these two events lie pressing questions about the fate of the ceasefire agreement in southern Lebanon, with its implementation deadline on the 27th, and the ongoing negotiations for a Gaza agreement aimed at ending the war and resolving the prisoner exchange crisis. All this unfolds under Trump’s looming threat of “all hell will break out” across the Middle East should these matters remain unresolved before he assumes office. Concurrently, Syria faces its own critical milestone: the convening of the National Dialogue Conference as a springboard for a political process culminating in a new constitution and elections.
• Some claim to possess a comprehensive narrative addressing these questions. They argue that Lebanon’s presidential elections hinge on a U.S. green light, that the ceasefire in southern Lebanon is a prelude to disarming the resistance, and that the Gaza agreement is a thinly veiled ultimatum for war on Iran – Trump’s hellfire – unless Hamas accepts Benjamin Netanyahu’s terms. These voices assert that the region, which once deluded itself into swimming against the American tide through the rise of resistance forces, has returned to the U.S. fold more firmly than ever. They interpret the outcomes of the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ war and the shifts in Syria as the death knell for the era of resistance and the dawn of a new American-Israeli age. But is this assessment accurate?
• Debating this narrative seems unnecessary, as the answers will soon reveal themselves. While the opaque dynamics of Lebanon’s presidential race – caught between U.S. ambiguity over backing the army chief’s candidacy or delaying the election until after Trump’s inauguration – make it difficult to judge the narrative’s validity, the fates of the ceasefire in Lebanon, the Gaza negotiations, and the prospects of a U.S. war on Iran are clearer tests. The Egyptian proverb aptly applies here: ‘The water reveals the diver’s truth’ in other words ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’.
• If this month ends with the withdrawal of the occupying forces within the ceasefire’s 60-day deadline, and the resistance’s leadership asserts that its commitments are limited to facilitating the establishment of a weapon-free zone south of the Litani River – excluding its own arms and role from the agreement – then the narrative aligns with the resistance’s stance, not its critics’. However, should Israel stall the withdrawal under various pretexts, the Lebanese government, which negotiated the agreement, and the army, which oversaw its implementation, must clarify their positions. If both place the blame on the occupying entity, the narrative collapses.
• In Gaza, if an agreement is reached that includes mechanisms for Israeli withdrawal and an end to the war, the narrative falters. Conversely, if no agreement is reached and the U.S. does not launch a war on Iran, thus averting Trump’s predicted Middle Eastern inferno, the narrative is similarly invalidated. It gains traction only if an agreement emerges in which the resistance relinquishes its condition for ending the war and achieving Israeli withdrawal. The crucial question in both Gaza and Lebanon is whether the agreements ensure the dismantling of resistance forces and their armaments – fulfilling the Israeli assertion that this is the linchpin for the occupying entity’s existential security. Such an outcome would end the coexistence with armed resistance movements, which produced the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’, its support fronts, and the extension of battles into territories occupied in 1948, threatening settlement security and the deterrence power of the occupying army. So, do these agreements mark the end of coexistence with armed resistance, or merely delay an inevitable confrontation?
• Once again, ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’.
