The May 17 memory is on the table … so does Beri raise the banner of confrontation?!

It was not the seventeenth of May 1983 merely a station in Lebanese history, but rather an open wound in the national memory. On that day, the official Lebanon sat under American auspices to sign an agreement described as a launching treaty, which prompted President Nabih Berri to call him a “humiliation and shame” in a famous speech, and he said at the time clearly that the agreement was “born dead”, and that he would fall because the popular will and resistance cannot be shortened by a decision from above. Indeed, it was not months until the street brought him down, and the Venice, who decided that dignity was not sold in the policy bazaar.

Today, after more than four decades, May 17 returns to the forefront, not only as a historical anniversary, but as a comparison standard. American and Israeli pressures are renewed more severe, as economic aid and reconstruction are linked to acceptance with political and security conditions that affect the essence of Lebanese sovereignty. While the state in 1983 was besieged by the direct occupation in Beirut and the south, the state today is besieged with an unprecedented financial collapse and continuous security threats, which makes it vulnerable to equation either concessions or the explosion. Consequently, the moment of today is not far from that historical moment, and if the pressure tools and its methods differ. Today, the Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri stands at a site completely different from his role four decades ago. The man who faced the May 17 agreement from the opposition site and contributed to its overthrow, is now overlooking the position of the legislative authority and the godfather of internal balances, as his speech is calculated in the balance of regional and international accounts. Perhaps his position does not allow him to be satisfied with a tactical discourse, but rather requires him to provide an integrated political equation: how he rejects the conditions of compliance without pushing Lebanon to suffocating isolation, and how it success in external pressure that threatens stability, and the Israeli pressure that waves with fire, and between the constants of the shrine. What is expected from Berri is not merely a repetition of slogans, but to confirm a decisive political equation that reminds the outside that Lebanon will not sign a second copy of the May 17 agreement, no matter how the headlines change, and it reminds that the unit of the situation is no less important than the gun in the face of dictates. Although the regional context is different, the similarity in the essence cannot be denied. On May 17, the official Lebanon had signed, while the street dropped the agreement. Today, the attraction revolves around whether the official Lebanon will adapt to the pressure under the title “Realism”, while the resistance street and the national environment are broader, harder and more firm. At that time, Berri was screaming in the face of a deadly born agreement; Now it is expected that it will prevent the birth of a new agreement aimed at undermining the role of the Maqqah and perpetuating external guardianship under various names such as the buffer zone or security guarantees. The main difference is that the compromise that was a fetus in the eighties, today turned into a solid force and a regional equation that cannot be exceeded. History does not literally restore itself, but it sends its references, and if the May 17 has fallen because there are those who refused to sign, then the test today lies in Lebanon’s official and popular ability to adhere to the same principles. Consequently, Berri’s awaited speech this afternoon will be a sensitive balance. Will the ceiling be raised in the face of pressure or opens a door for a dialogue on the basis of bargains? In all cases, the truth remains clear: those who dropped May 17 yesterday, are able to drop every modified version of it today, provided that the interior does not fall into his hand the instrument of surrender written with an American ink and is with an Israeli seal.