https://arab.news/mdpwv
It is no use talking about forgiveness while quoting Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu or Mahatma Gandhi to ruined depositors whose life savings are stuck in Lebanese banks and may be lost forever. They want justice, accountability and perhaps revenge or retribution; someone needs to be punished for the crime, heads need to roll.
This is the mood in the country and it is more emotional than it is rational. You can lose many friends arguing for a financial amnesty, for turning the page, moving on and looking forward to rebuilding the country and the economy instead of bickering over the past. I am willing to make the sacrifice.
We are all victims of the catastrophic financial collapse. Behind it are “real” economic and political causes that no single actor had control over. For the last 20 years, the country has been the target of constant battering until it disintegrated. It was dragged into two major wars with Israel, accompanied by assassinations, paralytic political crises, smuggling, the cost of the Syrian war, the Beirut port explosion and much more.
Lebanon was isolated from its main economic partners and boycotted. The country was drained year after year at huge cost in wealth, in income, in people and in friends. The loss was not purely economic, it was also reputational — the country is now seen as a hopeless failed state. What we are arguing about are merely the mechanics of that collapse and the financial repercussions.
