When the Smoke Clears

Above the hills of Beirut, the marble halls of Baabda Palace, where the Lebanese president resides, have been silent for two years.

Lebanese lawmakers have tried – in dozens of attempts, the last being 18 months ago – to select an occupant, a successor to President Michel Aoun, after he stepped down in October 2022. But politics, the particularly complex politics of Lebanon’s sectarian system along with the powerful external patronage of its players, kept getting in the way.

On Jan. 9, however, lawmakers managed to do what seemed impossible – they put aside their differences and elected Gen. Joseph Aoun, the head of the Lebanese military, as their new president.

And just like that, the country turned a page.

“A new phase in the history of Lebanon begins today,” President Aoun said, as fireworks went off in the streets and horns blared around the capital in jubilation.

The election of a new president shouldn’t have been such a big deal, not least because the position is mainly a ceremonial post. But the symbolism of the election of Joseph Aoun in this devastated country wasn’t lost on anyone – or how much has changed in the past few months.

For two years, Lebanon existed in a political stalemate: the powerful Shiite group Hezbollah and its allies wanted one candidate, a man close to the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, while almost everyone else wanted Joseph Aoun. Neither side could advance.

But after the 14-month war with Israel, which ended on Nov. 27 in a ceasefire, Hezbollah was not only leaderless with the death of Hassan Nasrallah, it lost influence. The group was blamed by a large part of the Lebanese population for dragging the country into a conflict that killed about 3,800 people and inflicted $8.5 billion in damages and economic losses on an already broken country.

Then in December, the Syrian regime collapsed. Long a force that controlled Lebanon in one way or another, the implosion next door freed the Mediterranean country, said analysts. Because with the collapse of the Syrian regime and the diminishment of Hezbollah, the dominance of Iran also ended: Almost overnight, Lebanon saw its default membership in the “axis of resistance” canceled.

“It’s a new political reality,” Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told the New York Times. “It will take time for this new reality to unfold but what we’ve seen so far is enough to show us that the tide has turned.”

While many Lebanese may feel joy and hope at the turn of events, Joseph Aoun and the new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, who was appointed last week against Hezbollah’s wishes, still have a momentous task ahead of them in stabilizing and rebuilding the battered country.

For example, Lebanon has been in an economic crisis for the past five years, has seen its economy contract by one-third, and its currency collapse in that period, according to the World Bank. Now it is desperate for money to rebuild after the war with Israel. The new president said it would be his priority to usher in economic stability and root out the correction that has played a large role in preventing its growth.

And the election of the new president, which was attended by the ambassadors of the US, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, signals a positive change in Lebanese politics, which means the unlocking of aid from donors, and begin fulfilling the terms of a 2022 bailout package from the International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile, the 60-day ceasefire agreement with Israel ends later this month and it’s been shaky from the start. Aoun has promised to disarm Hezbollah, which is why he has support from the West, the Gulf states, and Israel. “The specter of renewed war is still on the horizon,” wrote Kim Ghattas, a fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics, in an op-ed for the Financial Times. “Lebanon needs a president and a government that can negotiate the next phase.”

This week, with the selection of the new prime minister, the president signaled strongly that he wants to move the country forward, and quickly.

Some Lebanese desperately want to believe him.

“We hope that this will be a new phase for Lebanon,” one Beirut resident told France 24. “We hope this president can lead us toward becoming a country that is liveable for our children.”