Lebanon today stands before a moment that may never repeat itself. Such moments are rare; nations often pass through them only once before history moves on without them. For the first time in its modern history, the country has a genuine opportunity to break free from its inherited curse, to stop being a land rented out to wars, bloodshed, and proxy battles, and to finally become what its geography, people, and potential have always promised, a land of peace, growth, and prosperity.
But history teaches us one brutal truth, opportunities do not save nations. Leaders do. What Lebanon needs today is not another consensus manager, not another cautious maneuverer, not another hostage to the illusion of “balance.”
What Lebanon needs is an Anwar al-Sadat.
When Anwar al-Sadat chose peace with Israel, Egypt was not ready for peace, and he knew it. Egypt had fought four wars between 1948 and 1973. The trauma of defeat, the weight of humiliation, and the mythology of eternal confrontation shaped public consciousness. Peace was seen as betrayal. Negotiation was taboo. Recognition was heresy. The Arab political order itself was built on rejection.
Sadat did not ignore this reality.
He confronted it. He acted knowing the anger of the masses and the hostility of the powerful, yet he chose the future over comfort, over safety. He understood something rare in this region: that war had restored Egypt’s dignity in 1973, but only peace could secure its future. The October War was not an end in itself; it was leverage. Sadat used force to rebalance power, then used diplomacy to end the cycle altogether.
In 1977, he flew to Jerusalem and addressed the Israeli Knesset. The act was unprecedented, deliberate, and deeply destabilizing, not militarily, but psychologically. With one move, Sadat shattered three decades of ideological warfare and exposed the fragility of slogans that promised honor but delivered stagnation. He paid a severe price.
Egypt was ostracized by the Arab world. It was suspended from the Arab League. Sadat faced fierce domestic opposition, accusations of treason, and relentless incitement. In 1981, he was assassinated, killed for a choice that history would later prove right. Yet Egypt regained Sinai, secured its borders, restored its sovereignty, and exited the logic of permanent war. Sadat’s legacy is not that peace was easy, but that it was necessary. He proved a truth many leaders still refuse to accept, states are not built by popularity, but by consequence.
Lebanon today is facing a moment of similar gravity. A moment of truth. A rare window has opened, strategically, regionally, and economically, for Lebanon to achieve long-lasting peace with Israel, and in doing so to free itself from decades of forced alignment, artificial hostility, and imposed isolation.
Two states with enormous, complementary potential stand separated not by geography, but by walls built deliberately over decades: walls of fear, ideology, and manufactured enmity. Together, Lebanon and Israel sit atop assets capable of reshaping the Eastern Mediterranean from strategic coastlines and ports linking East and West, massive offshore and underground energy resources, human capital unmatched in innovation, finance, and entrepreneurship and trade, logistics, and technology platforms with global reach
The world is watching and ready to engage economically and politically with a Lebanon that dares to choose peace.
An alliance between these two states would not merely normalize relations. It would redefine the regional balance, unsettle entrenched power centers, and terrify those whose relevance depends on permanent conflict. And that is precisely why it has been prevented for so long.
Yet instead of seizing this historic opening, Lebanon is hesitating. President Joseph Aoun, despite the gravity of the moment, continues to maneuver as if time were infinite and the old rules still applied. They do not. Hesitation today is not neutrality.
It is loss. Every day Lebanon waits, external powers adjust, regional opportunities close, and the window narrows.
History does not wait for leaders to feel comfortable. Windows close, and when they do, they rarely reopen. More dangerously, Lebanon’s leadership continues to behave as if the region were frozen in yesterday’s realities. It is not. The collapse of the Iranian regional project is no longer a prediction or a probability. It is a fact in motion. Across the Levant and the Gulf, old doctrines are unraveling, red lines are being erased, alliances redrawn, and new political realities emerging. States are already acting as if they live in the next day. Lebanon is not. And that is the real danger.
Anwar al-Sadat did not wait for perfect conditions. He created them. He did not seek approval from every street or capital. He sought a future for his state. He understood that sovereignty is not loud, it is decisive. He knew the risks. He knew the cost. He paid it.
Lebanon today does not need more rhetoric about resistance, balance, or waiting. It needs strategic peace. Peace rooted in strength, opportunity, and self-interest. Peace that ends Lebanon’s role as a battlefield and restores it as a state. Peace that unlocks growth instead of financing destruction.
Peace that places Lebanon among nations shaping the future, not mourning the past.
History will not ask whether this choice was popular. It will ask whether Lebanon had the courage to take it. What Lebanon needs today is not another caretaker. It needs a leader with a lion’s heart, willing to break illusions, absorb political shock, and walk into the storm so the nation can finally reach safe shores.
Lebanon must have the courage to choose peace, a path the majority of its people already long for, and one far easier than the one Sadat dared to take. The Lebanese people are ready, all that remains is for courage to follow.
Elissa E Hachem is a journalist and political writer specializing in regional affairs and governance. Former Regional Media Advisor at the U.S. State Department’s Arabic Regional Media Hub, with broad experience in strategic communication across government and private sectors.
The views in this story reflect those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of NOW.
