Nabil Abou-Charaf

[Robert Satloff @robsatloff]

An entirely preventable tragedy is about to befall #Beirut.

-- For weeks, #Hezbollah has abused #Israel’s @POTUS-imposed relative restraint on hitting #Lebanon’s capital by focusing its weapons stocks and drone assembly efforts in that area. After suffering attack after attack on its northern civilians, let alone attacks against troops deployed in the south #Litani sector, Israel is about to target Greater Beirut.

-- Many factors led to this terrible situation - from Iran’s evil strategy of using the Lebanese as pawns in its greater contest with America to Israel’s post-Oct 7 inability to translate military success to political achievement. But the one variable that could have dramatically changed the equation - the missing key in the entire Lebanon saga - would have been the deployment of Lebanon’s U.S.-armed, trained and equipped Armed Forces to fulfill its national responsibilities to confiscate Hezbollah’s illegal weapons and assert the sovereignty of the state.

-- While the Lebanese government has taken a series of courageous decisions - from banning Hezbollah military operations to entering direct peace and security talks with Israel - the Armed Forces, with the implicit approval of the country’s highest leadership, has stood by and refused to execute government decisions. Instead of saving Beirut by doing its job, it stands on the sidelines, with the likely outcome being the capital going up in smoke.

-- This is the product of a perverse idea of “national consensus” - often articulated by the #LAF commander - that the Lebanese people have themselves rejected. According to that warped idea, the state has to restrain its sovereign action to respect the will of the minority of its citizens who support Hezbollah lest it open the prospect of a return to civil war.

-- This argument is prima facie absurd since “civil war” is not what you call a conflict between the legitimate authority of the state and an illegal militia - the correct word is "insurrection" or "rebellion." But the argument should have been settled yesterday, when fewer than 75 people (of whom many were journalists and government security agents) showed up to attend what Hezbollah billed as a massive rally, as the people of Lebanon voted with their feet to show how idiotic this idea really is.

-- Sadly, though, the LAF still doesn’t deploy even throughout Beirut, to do its job of securing the area from Hezbollah fighters and their arms and thereby avert Israeli military action. In these circumstances, it is difficult to understand why the United States doesn’t suspend its support for the Lebanese army.

-- The USG gave the Lebanese government a face-saving way out recently by sanctioning only one LAF officer for complicity with Hezbollah when it could have targeted many; instead of cashiering the one officer and showing it was on the right side of this issue, the LAF did nothing.

-- To add insult to injury, the LAF commander issued a statement on “Resistance and Liberation Day” last week that said a lot about confronting Israeli occupation but not a single word about disarming Hezbollah -- or about exerting a state monopoly over force, executing government decisions to confiscate illegal weapons, preventing banned military operations by non-state actors, or anything that could be interpreted as a commitment to fulfill Beirut’s part of the bargain at the heart of the Lebanon-Israel peace process.

-- I hope I am wrong - that the LAF is, as I post this, deploying in force throughout Greater Beirut to execute the government’s monopoly on force, thereby sending a clear and unmistakable message of its commitment to disarm Hezbollah. But if that is not happening and Israel operates there instead, the leaders and generals of Lebanon will have no one to blame but themselves.

-- Hopefully, out of the rubble, a new spirit can emerge that will take advantage of the truly historic opportunity to redefine a post-Hezbollah relationship of security, peace and prosperity between the peoples of Lebanon and Israel, who certainly deserve better than what they have.

[Bechara Gerges @BecharaGerges]

🚩 Peace with Israel is the single most terrifying word in Lebanese politics, not because it threatens Lebanon, but because it threatens every faction that has built its empire on the permanent absence of it.

I have watched this country for decades, and I will tell you what no one on a podium has the courage to say: the people who oppose peace are not protecting Lebanon; they are protecting their own relevance. Hezbollah cannot exist without the “enemy” at the gate. Iran cannot justify its corridor to the Mediterranean without a front line that never closes. And every warlord turned statesman who laundered a militia past into a cabinet future needs permanent instability the way a parasite needs a host.

That is why they prefer death over peace. Not Lebanese death, which has never cost them a single sleepless night, but the death of the system that feeds them. Christians watched their presidency hollowed into a rubber stamp issued from Dahiyeh. Sunnis watched Rafik Hariri assassinated and his political heirs forced to coexist with the architecture of his assassination. The Druze watched their autonomy reduced to a phone call from a handler. Every community outside Hezbollah’s orbit has been living under undeclared occupation disguised as national unity, and the absence of peace is the lock on the cage.
Sixty years of rejectionism didn’t liberate a square meter, didn’t build a single power plant, and didn't secure a future. It buried 200,000 people, bankrupted a nation, exiled a generation, and delivered total strategic control to a militia that answers to Tehran and calls it sovereignty.

Anyone still defending this isn’t a patriot. They are either an operative, or a hostage so conditioned by captivity that they have mistaken the warden for a guardian.

This is why peace isn’t just a diplomatic position; it is the single act capable of collapsing the entire architecture of Lebanese captivity. The moment the war justification disappears, Hezbollah loses its veto, Iran loses its last ideological foothold on the Mediterranean, and every political actor in Beirut is forced to stand naked, stripped of the conflict they’ve hidden behind for half a century.

And then, only then, the Lebanese can finally have the conversation that’s been strangled since Taif: what does this country actually look like when no one holds a gun to the table? Perhaps it’s federalism. Perhaps it’s partition. Perhaps it’s a model no one has written yet. But that conversation is impossible as long as one armed faction holds the permanent right to override every community in the name of a resistance that resists nothing except Lebanon’s own survival.

The opponents of peace know this perfectly well. They know that the day Lebanon signs, their operating myth dies. That’s why they will fight it with every tool they have: religious guilt, nationalist shame, sectarian fear. Because peace doesn’t just end a conflict with Israel; it starts a reckoning with them. And they would rather bury another generation than face that reckoning.

Enough. The absence of peace has already cost Lebanon everything except its last heartbeat, and the men who caused it are now asking for more time. They’ve had a century. The answer is no.

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

This is complete nonsense. Lebanese people are being bombed, displaced, and killed — and you somehow turn that into a PR line for Iran? Absolutely not.

Hezbollah didn’t “save” Lebanon — it dragged it into this war. That’s not even controversial anymore. Large parts of the country are openly saying it. The government has gone as far as declaring Hezbollah’s military actions illegal and calling for disarmament. Hezbollah is not acting for Lebanon — it’s acting for Iran. You don’t get to bomb a country into collapse and then claim people are grateful to the ones who caused it. The reality inside Lebanon is the exact opposite of what you’re saying: anger at Hezbollah has been growing, not disappearing; most Lebanese now see it as what it is: an Iranian proxy; people want sovereignty — not to be a battlefield for Iran. So no, Lebanese aren’t looking to Iran to “save” them. Stop projecting propaganda onto a country that’s already paying the price for it.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

President Trump: "Schumer is gone. I mean, he's a Palestinian! He should be fighting on the side of Palestine. He's actually become a Palestinian leader!"

"I don't know. I've never seen a man change so much. He used to be pro-Israel. Now he's pro-Palestine."

"I've never seen anything like it. And you know, he's worried he's going to lose this next election, which it only depends if anybody runs against him. If anybody runs against him, he'll lose."

"But he's gone very wacky and very dangerous for our country!"

[Louis Abou-Charaf @LouisAC1]

قولنا و العمل في سبيل الوطن

إيماناً بمنطق الدولة والمؤسسات في مواجهة منطق الدويلة والمزرعة،
وفي زمن حروب الآخرين والانهيار الأخلاقي،
وحرصاً على احترام المهل الدستورية وانتظام الحياة الديمقراطية رغم التمديد المرتقب لمجلس النواب،

قررت التقدم بترشيحي للانتخابات النيابية عن المقعد الماروني في دائرة كسروان – جبيل (قضاء كسروان) إلى جانب من دافعوا و يدافعون عن لبنان،
إيماناً بأن لبنان لا يُبنى بالشعارات،
بل بتلاقي القول بالفعل، والموقف بالثبات، والكلمة بالمسؤولية.

[Zouzou Cash @ZouzouCash]

THERE’S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN ⭐️

#كريم_سعيد #مصرف_لبنان
#Lebanon #KarimSouaid

[Kirkland & Ellis @Kirkland_Ellis]

We’re excited to welcome Nabil Abou-Charaf as a partner in our Investment Funds Group! https://t.co/hPDTlmhbAo

[Eli Khoury @elikhoury]

تحية لشهداء ورفاق احلى مرحلة.

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

With the victims ⁦@NOWLebanon⁩ “In the end, those questions are best asked directly to Hezbollah. But in a country where fingers point at them, investigations die with the victims.” https://t.co/FCm7uvlK9B

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

@Reeka2 @Apple So nice of them, they should give you the new iPhone @apple Dubai

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

Interesting to see that opposed parties agreed in literally a few minutes to ally against an independent running for the Beirut Bar Association, but haven’t been able to agree on a PM for the country for 3 weeks now... #oldhabitsdiehard v/s #lebanonrevolution. #Lebanon wins!

[Morgan Lewis @MorganLewisLaw]

We are bolstering our global investment management, tax and corporate capabilities by adding a 31-person team joining our Washington, DC, office and new Abu Dhabi office on Mar. 1. For more information on our new team: https://t.co/GHU59jp3m6

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

@BEYAirport is a disgrace, a shame and going through it is a pure humiliation. Its director should resign IMMEDIATELY, together with whoever is in charge of security. #whoisresponsiblelebanon #مين المسؤول؟

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

https://t.co/MfM5UbKgEv

[FigaroVox @FigaroVox]

Jean d'Ormesson : http://t.co/aJmjTgGLUi

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

#JeSuisCharlie

[Nabil Abou-Charaf @nabil_ac]

Sakker El Dekkene http://t.co/II8lEVwvvY