https://arab.news/b5qu7
After last week’s Sharm El-Sheikh summit on the Gaza ceasefire deal, US Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack, who is also handling Lebanon, said that the only pieces missing from the peace puzzle are now Lebanon and Syria. He hinted at a possible peace or normalization deal between Lebanon and Israel. However, such a deal is unlikely for many reasons.
Despite the American hype over the Abraham Accords, the issue of normalization is controversial and creates internal division. An April poll conducted by An-Nahar, the leading Lebanese newspaper, and Information International found that 75 percent of Lebanese consider Israel to be the country’s primary enemy. However, despite this overwhelmingly negative view of Israel, views on normalization differ.
Christians appear to be the community most open to the idea of normalization. Joe Eissa Khoury, the minister of industry who was named by the Lebanese Forces in the Nawaf Salam government, said that the region is heading toward peace. He was viewed as making an overture for normalization when he said that the Lebanese “should be ready.”
Similarly, Marcel Ghanem, a host on the MTV news channel, which reflects the right-wing Christian factions, alluded during one of his talk shows that it was time for Lebanon to jump on the normalization bandwagon. He said that talking about peace with Israel was a necessity and no longer a point of view. To start with, the Christian parties have less affinity with the Palestinians than other factions in Lebanon due to their bloody history with the Palestine Liberation Organization during the civil war.
