Despite all the predictable attacks against the Lebanese state for daring to engage in direct talks with Israel through American mediation, the second phase of this diplomatic track has started this week, and perhaps the most important thing to say at the outset is that Lebanon no longer has the luxury of pretending that slogans, denial, or ideological purity can protect its sovereignty, its people, or what remains of its institutions.

For decades, Lebanese politics has been trapped between two equally destructive illusions. The first is that Israel can be confronted by speeches, emotional blackmail, and the permanent outsourcing of state decisions to armed factions.

The second is that Hezbollah’s weapons are somehow a Lebanese source of strength rather than an Iranian instrument that has repeatedly invited destruction upon Lebanon, especially upon the very communities Hezbollah claims to defend. Both illusions have collapsed under the weight of fire, displacement, economic ruin, and the humiliation of a state that is expected to be responsible for a war it never truly decided to enter.

This is why the current Lebanese decision to enter a diplomatic process, even a difficult and politically costly one, should not be treated as weakness. On the contrary, it is the minimum expression of statehood. A state that is absent from the negotiating table is not a resistant state, nor is it a principled state; it is simply a state that has surrendered its fate to others. Lebanon cannot impose rationality on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and it certainly cannot impose humanity on the Israeli war machine, but it can at least refuse to leave the future of the south, the border, and the Lebanese people in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its local franchise.

The issue today is not whether Lebanon is rushing toward normalization, as Hezbollah and its chorus would like to claim. This is a deliberate distortion meant to intimidate the Lebanese presidency, paralyze the government, and drag the country back into the old vocabulary of treason. What is on the table today is not peace in the romantic or final sense of the word. Peace, if it ever comes, will require another stage, another debate, and another kind of national consensus.

What is on the table now is far more urgent and far more basic: stopping the war, restoring Lebanese territory, asserting the authority of the state, and beginning the process of removing the Iranian militia’s ability to decide war and peace on behalf of all Lebanese.

The Lebanese state, of course, does not enter this process from a position of great strength. Its credibility has been damaged by years of hesitation, compromise, fear, and infiltration. Hezbollah has penetrated institutions, influenced officers, judges, and political decisions, and created a psychological barrier inside the republic whereby any attempt by the state to impose its authority is immediately described as civil war. This is perhaps the greatest lie Hezbollah has managed to impose on the Lebanese imagination. If the army protects constitutional institutions, defends citizens, and prevents an armed group from hijacking the country, this is not civil war. This is the restoration of state authority. It is not sectarian confrontation. It is law enforcement. It is counterterrorism when the weapon in question serves a foreign military project and turns Lebanese villages into sandbags for Iran.

The real challenge, therefore, is not merely how to negotiate with Israel, but how to rebuild Lebanese seriousness in the eyes of the world. Lebanon cannot demand international pressure on Israel while refusing to address the armed structure that gives Israel the permanent excuse to strike. Lebanon cannot ask Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Paris, or anyone else to save it while it continues to tolerate a militia that openly rejects the logic of the state. Diplomacy requires credibility, and credibility requires that Lebanon speak in one language: the language of sovereignty, not the language of excuses.

This does not mean that Israel should be trusted. It should not. Israel is using fire to impose facts on the ground, and its government has every reason to exploit Lebanese weakness. But the answer to Israeli aggression cannot be to keep Lebanon hostage to Hezbollah’s weapons. That weapon has not liberated the Lebanese state; it has brought occupation, assassination, isolation, and endless war. It has not protected the Shia of Lebanon; it has made them the first victims of Iran’s regional calculations. And it has not deterred Israel; it has given Israel the argument it needs to continue striking Lebanon while presenting itself as responding to an Iranian threat.

President Joseph Aoun’s move, therefore, must be understood as an attempt to return Lebanon to the only battlefield where it can still gain something: Diplomacy backed by a clear national position. The attacks against him are expected, but they should not frighten the state into retreat. Hezbollah’s intimidation has worked for too long because too many Lebanese leaders chose survival over clarity. Today clarity is no longer optional. Lebanon must say openly that the weapon outside the state is not a resistance weapon, not a national asset, and not a sacred matter above discussion. It is the core of the Lebanese tragedy.

Direct talks through US mediation are not a gift to Israel. They are a message that Lebanon intends to recover its decision-making, rebuild trust with the international community, and separate its future from the Iranian battlefield. Whether this process succeeds will depend on many factors, including American seriousness and Israeli restraint, but one thing is already clear: Refusing diplomacy will not protect Lebanon. It will only protect Hezbollah’s monopoly over war, and Lebanon has paid enough for that monopoly.