Publics, Politics and Participation

Haugbolle 129

reference to the Second Palestinian Intifada is clear here. But Beshara’s
first and last concern is with the Lebanese and their attempt to regain
their national pride:

There remains the basic causes for which I fought: a free

Lebanon, a country at peace, but also grounded in the ideals

of justice and democracy. This is above all a question of mem-

ory. If the people let themselves forget, then this hope will be

lost and the spirit of the Resistance vanish.^31

Although Beshara’s account is touching in its humanism, a dilemma
remains: her discourse represents what she perceives to be the righteous
side in the war, even if she attempts to cover this bias by claims that the
war was “madness” and a “mistake.” These attempts to define Israel as the
real enemy and in turn connect the liberation of the South with the post-
war period were two significant new formulations of Lebanese national-
ism. It is an attractive narrative, because it offers a nationalist teleology
and a positive ending to the war (in 2000, not in 1990). However, even if
it is never stated, the members of the Christian Right who worked with
Israel would have to ask for absolution, and the group that successfully
concluded the war by defeating the national enemy would have to be
rewarded. Contrary to the official discourse of lā ghālib, lā maghlūb [no
victor, no vanquished] the Lebanese were not equal partners in this new
nationalism, just as they were not equal partners in the war. The pretense
of an inclusive public sphere against the backdrop of perceived political
marginalization had several detrimental effects. As we shall see, it urged
excluded elements, like the Left and the Christian Right, to buttress their
war memories, albeit in careful ways that reflected the ambiguities and
sensitivities of postwar Lebanon.
ll three memoirs are created out of present concerns of the authors A
and address three periods in Lebanon’s modern history: the war, the
immediate postwar period, and the period after 2000, when the war began
to be a sufficiently distant memory to be discussed as a historical event
rather than a pressing reality. It is no coincidence that all three memoirs
were written outside of Lebanon. Reflections need distance, in space and
often also in time, in order to be successfully disentangled from the habit-
ual, internalized memory which people do not see but which shapes the