The Christian leader sees the moment for Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah – POLITICO

Just before the interview, as the sun set, a loud boom reverberated off the mountains, prompting his aides and armed guards to look north toward the Shiite village of Maaysrah. A few days earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed five people from the same family and injured fourteen others. But because there were no clouds of smoke, guards concluded the blast was a sonic boom from Israeli fighter jets.

The Geagea complex was built more than thirty years ago, during the civil war of 1975-1990. “We started building during wartime. So we took into account that it had to be solid to withstand shelling. So it’s solid,” he says.

He suspects the 2012 assassination attempt was carried out after weeks of secret surveillance of the compound, during which the conspirators established his pattern of comings and goings.

It was on the Maarab grounds that Geagea struck a deal with the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a rival Christian group, in 2016. This paved the way for leader Michel Aoun to become president of Lebanon – ending, albeit briefly, decades of hostility between the two main Christian leaders. Their forces clashed violently in East Beirut in 1990.

Divide and conquer?

Geagea is not the only war leader from the past trying to chart a course for Lebanon. In another mountain fortress, in Chouf Mountain, southeast of Beirut, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is also trying to forge a path forward.

He too has called for the appointment of a president, but he is publicly more cautious than Geagea and parted ways with him on how to deal with Hezbollah. Jumblatt is much less confrontational with the Shiite movement, fearing that Israelis are playing their old game of divide and rule and trying to exploit divisions between Lebanon’s Shiites, Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze. The cooperation between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Israel during the civil war plays an important role in the Druze’s overall suspicion of Geagea.