BEIRUT—The Lebanese government’s decision to appoint former Ambassador Simon Karam, an openly political civilian, to lead the Lebanese delegation at a meeting of the so-called Military Technical Committee in Nakoura is not a procedural adjustment. Rather, it is a political landmine.
What was designed as a narrow framework between officers under the cease-fire of November 27, 2014, is quietly being repackaged into a civilian-led negotiation trajectory. The committee is chaired by U.S. Special Envoy Morgan Ortagus, an Israel enthusiast.
In other words, the technical ceasefire mechanism is being weaponized to advance normalization under Israeli and American pressure.
For decades, Nakoula meant one thing: field arrangements, maps, coordinates, and UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) surveillance.
Nakoura is Lebanon’s southernmost coastal town, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and located on the “Blue Line” drawn by occupied Palestine and the United Nations.
Since 1978, it has been the headquarters of UNIFIL and a central venue for ceasefire negotiations, border disputes, and technical military conferences between Lebanese officers and their Israeli enemies under international supervision.
In Lebanese political parlance, Nakoula is more than just a place. This is the critical point where wars are paused, maps are redrawn, and every word at the negotiating table takes on strategic weight.
Appointing a non-military person to head a delegation today signals a significant change. It handed its enemy, Israel, exactly what it had been seeking for years: an overt political doorway in the guise of a “security council.”
When the table turns to civilian affairs, the discussion turns to politics. Gas fields, joint investments, “economic cooperation” and what Netanyahu shamelessly calls “economic peace.”
This danger is not hypothetical. It’s on record. Tamir Morag, political correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, reported that US envoy Morgan Ortagus urged Israeli authorities to strike at the funeral procession of Hezbollah leader Saeed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut’s Sports City, claiming that resistance leaders would be in attendance.
Although enemy Israel ultimately did not carry out the plan, fighter jets continued to circle over the capital throughout the ceremony, a grotesque reminder of the disdain that both Washington and Tel Aviv have for Lebanese lives.
This is the same idea that currently masquerades as an intermediary in Naqoura. Let’s understand it better. The party proposing “organizing negotiations” is the same party that floated the idea of bombing a million civilians in a single attack. It is diplomatic drama at its most cynical.
Even the enemy, Israel, no longer hides behind euphemisms. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement completely free of diplomatic pretense, saying: “The sending of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s representatives to talks with Lebanese officials is the first attempt to lay the foundations for relations and economic cooperation with Lebanon.”
This is not a cease-fire statement. This is the language of the appendix. It is normalization before border demarcation, and diplomacy before deoccupation.
Israel has essentially announced that Naqoura is no longer about the “Blue Line” but about breaching Lebanon’s political firewall.
The choice of Simon Karma, an openly anti-resistance Maronite political scientist who has repeatedly dismissed Hezbollah as a “danger to Lebanese society,” is no coincidence.
The Naqoura negotiations are the perfect civilian foil for Israel’s policies, which promote the rhetoric of “dialogue” and plans for “cooperation.” Once civilians are seated on the other side of the table, Israel will push for joint maritime projects, gas partnerships, international financing packages, and “economic reconstruction.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu has been touting “economic normalization” for years. Now Lebanon is giving him an opening.
All of this points to a blatantly political equation that translates military pressure into political concessions. Washington and Tel Aviv no longer mediate between the two parties. They co-author the agenda.
The Israeli occupation entity is telegraphing loudly and clearly to Lebanon two options: take an “economic peace” deal or prepare for nightly escalation.
Naqoura is no longer a map room. It is a battleground for Lebanon’s strategic identity. Will Lebanon relinquish its sovereignty by allowing economic normalization to creep in through a ceasefire commission? Or will they demand no political deals and negotiations under strict military conditions?
Let’s abandon illusions. These developments are not “confidence-building measures.” These are slow-motion attempts to pull Lebanon away from the axis of resistance and absorb it into the Israeli and American economic projects.
And the question hanging over this whole farce remains brutally simple. How can this be called “negotiations” when just a few days ago one of the so-called mediators was recommending the bombing of a funeral attended by one million people?