“It has been six years since I entered my kitchen to make coffee, less than one hour after getting home in Beirut after 10 years of being away, and suddenly there was an explosion,” Bassam recalled. “I cannot believe that six years later the matter remains unresolved,” he added.
Caused by the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been somehow stored inadequately in a warehouse, the Beirut Harbour explosion resulted in at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and approximately 300,000 displaced people, alongside property damage estimated at US$15 billion.
Six years down the road, no final indictment has been issued. Earlier this year, Tarek Bitar, the judge in charge of the investigation, turned his findings, which involved 70 individuals, to the public prosecutor for his opinion and re-referral to Bitar himself. No clear timeline is offered for the process that has been qualified by some of the families of the victims as deliberately slow and hesitant for fear of confronting the wrongdoers.
On the eve of the tragic anniversary, however, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun urged the judiciary to issue the long-awaited indictment. "The issuing of the indictment by the investigating judge has become a necessity that can no longer be delayed," Aoun said in a statement on Monday. "The Lebanese judiciary is called today more than ever before to prove its independence and ability to deliver justice to the victims. The indictment is not just a legal procedure, but a right owed by the living to the martyrs and their families," he added.
However, according to a Beirut-based foreign diplomat, “Aoun knows very well that the issue is thorny – and that it is more so now than ever”. He explained that “right from the beginning” it was clear that there are two parties involved in this disaster that the Lebanese government is stuck with: “Hezbollah and Israel”.
He added that sources close to the investigation have clearly said that while “the ammonium nitrate was stored at the port by Hezbollah under the eyes and ears of some members of the security of the port”, “it was certainly Israel who targeted the cache and caused the explosion.”
Today, “the situation is perhaps more complicated than ever,” said the diplomat who has considerable inroads into Lebanese decision-making quarters. He explained that today Aoun tries to convince Hezbollah to agree to put down its arms, especially in the area south of the Litany River, for the Lebanese state to be able to push for an Israeli withdrawal from the areas it occupied since the new Hezbollah-Israel war that started in solidarity with Iran late February.
“In reality, Israel had never honoured the ceasefire agreement that was reached with Hezbollah [in the autumn of 2024] at the end of the war that started [in October 2023] in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza,” he said. However, he added that in the mind “not only of Aoun but many others”, Hezbollah stands to be blamed for its unilateral military decisions that were conducted to serve non-Lebanese interests.
Still, he further added that “it is not at all that Hezbollah is without a constituency or that everyone is standing behind Aoun on the process of negotiations that he has been conducting upon the demand of the US to reach a deal with Israel.” “So, it is really a very delicate balance that Aoun has to be observing – and to me, it seems that today the deal with Israel is his priority,” he added.
On 26 June, the US brokered a deal between Israel and Lebanon that was designed to end the state of war, facilitate a phased Israeli military withdrawal, and implement the disarmament of Hezbollah through the Lebanese Armed Forces. The deal came under considerable internal criticism from non-Hezbollah allies. Critics said that by not insisting on a prompt Israeli withdrawal, the deal all but legitimized the Israeli presence in Lebanon. They also rejected the consent of the Lebanese state to abandon an otherwise legitimate right to pursue legal action against Israel for violations and crimes committed against Lebanon.
“In his mind, Aoun, and for that matter [Sunni Prime Minister Nawaf] Sallam think that it is pointless to try to get any indictment against Israel given the American protection,” the source said. However, he added, “for the critics of the deal this does not justify the major consent at such a very early phase of the negotiations”.
The biggest problem for the deal, however, came from across the Lebanese political spectrum, who warned of grave consequences of getting the Lebanese army and Hezbollah face to face on the point of the disarmament of Hezbollah.
According to an informed Egyptian source, this has prompted Aoun to slow down and to change plans on passing the deal for the endorsement of the government. “Aoun actually tried to re-route a little in the subsequent round of Lebanese-Israeli talks that convened in Rome, at the siege of the US Embassy,” the source said.
Held on 14 and 15 July, the sixth round focused essentially on ‘the pilot zones for Israeli withdrawal’. The withdrawal from Zawtar Al-Gharbiya was very limited given that Israel had only occupied the outskirts of the south-Lebanese village.
“It is a joke, the Israelis are withdrawing from a village that they never really managed to occupy and meanwhile continued to strike Lebanon,” Bassam commented.
A Sunni in his late 60s who has been living in North America for over 20 years, Bassam said that he is all for “the state sovereign rights”. However, he argued that the first sovereign right for the state is to “get Israel out unconditionally and then talk to Hezbollah”. Otherwise, he argued, “there is a risk, small or big, I am not sure of igniting a civil strife – maybe not another civil war but certainly a civil strife.”
According to the Beirut-based diplomat, however, “it is just unrealistic to expect Israel to withdraw from Lebanon without a plan to disarm Hezbollah.” “This is not just about Hezbollah but about the Israeli plan to end the concept of militant resistance all around Israel; they are doing the same with Hamas,” he said. He added that the maximum that Aoun could do today is to secure US support for the expansion of the ‘pilot zones’ to make them include areas that Israel has really occupied and to work in the meantime “to reassure Hezbollah that the state is not out to fully end it.”
This, he said, is the kind of progress that Lebanon is hoping to get out of the 7th round of the talks with Israel that are opening today in Rome. He added that Lebanon is also hoping to get Israel to commit to suspend its attacks on the south of Lebanon “or at least to significantly reduce these attacks to strengthen the position of the state in the eyes of the critics of the deal.”
Several diplomatic sources who spoke to Ahram Online on the matter shared profound skepticism on the chances for Israel to agree to any of these demands. “Israel knows that Hezbollah has been significantly weakened not just by the strikes it committed in 2024 that allowed for the elimination of the top Hezbollah leadership but also by the weakness that Israel and the US has inflicted on Iran in the two wars of June last year and the longer war that started in late February this year,” said one of the diplomatic sources. He added that even if Iran is spared from further destructive military strikes by a new deal with the US, “it would still be too difficult for Tehran to resume its full-fledged support for Hezbollah,” he added.
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