Lebanon: stages of civil conflict and the power of arbitration

Dr. Ahmad Beydoun
Language: Arabic

Sectarianism, as the basis of the socio-political system in Lebanon, has a history, meaning that it does not present itself to us in the same image from one stage to another. This also means that its crises do not repeat themselves, neither in their origins nor in their consequences, neither in the ways out of them nor in the horizon of solutions that they offer to us, that is despite the existence of similarities in the general sense between once crisis and another. This similarity is a closeness that can easily be discerned and that were one to ponder it would be of little use. In the heart of all of the contemporary crises that our country has witnessed figures prominently the problem of the production of a judicial or arbitrating authority in times of discord that could make the governing of the country possible again. This lecture aims to trace the ensuing shapes that this problem has taken over time and the solutions that it sets for itself. It concludes with the question of whether or not the current sectarian crisis can have a sectarian solution.