Amid the death boats that have turned the "Great Blue" into a mass grave for the wretched, chronicling their despair with tragedies that remain open to further misfortunes, a presidential election is approaching with winds favoring the ship of vacancy heading to the Baabda Palace as of November 1. Meanwhile, the government vessel is battling conflicting waves that may "dock safely" with it or drift aimlessly in a sea of multidimensional complexities... Three issues weigh heavily on the Lebanese scene, floating above a financial-economic wreckage that is feared to worsen by a constitutional-political chaos completing the "fatal prescription" for Lebanon... which once was.
While internal efforts focused on unpacking the details and implications of the American-Saudi-French trilateral statement about the situation in the "Land of the Cedars" and its specifications for the presidential election and its related topics from a Lebanese perspective, alongside the meeting in Dar al-Fatwa gathering 24 Sunni MPs (out of 27) on the agenda discussing the risks Lebanon faces starting from the presidential elections and the governmental file in particular, there was no voice louder than the moans of the wounded and those shocked by the massacre that took the lives of around 91 illegal migrants who set off on a boat from northern Lebanon carrying about 150 people (Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian) and sank off the Syrian coast near Tartus, with around 50 of its passengers still missing.
While the families of victims of the largest disaster witnessed by waves of illegal migration from Lebanon monitor the body count being retrieved from the sea and wait at the land border with Syria (to the north) for the "caravans of death" returning to the "land of slow killing," the transformation of the "Land of the Cedars" into a platform for "irregular" journeys towards the shores of Europe, mostly departing from northern beaches, is now being approached from a political angle that raises fears of a possible "look away" from human traffickers and their thriving activities, connected to "warming up" the issue of Syrian displacement recently, increasing pressure on the international community to return them, just as there were implicit attempts to lure decision-making capitals to revive the financial reality with support doses outside the known "humanitarian corridor."
In this context, some recalled the "Turkish model," where Turkey had previously threatened Europe with sending "millions" of migrants and refugees to pressure for increased financial contributions to support Ankara in bearing the burdens of Syrian displacement. The Lebanese Minister of Social Affairs in the caretaker government, Hector Hajjar, reinforced the impression of "skeptics" regarding the political threads behind activating illegal migration or at least an attempt to "exploit it," announcing, "We warned the international community of our inability to bear the large number of Syrian refugees." He stated, "We will suffer multiple crises this winter, and there is a high likelihood of an increase in the number of migrant boats, especially with the approach of the winter season." He added, "We have informed everyone that the situation in Lebanon is very dangerous, and we must find a solution for the Syrian refugees."
