Lebanon’s US-Backed Talks with Israel Expose Colonial Legacy of Proxy Diplomacy and Energy Geopolitics
Original framing: “Lebanon to join trilateral talks with Israel and US in Florida next week, Aoun says” — Middle East Eye
The voices missing from these talks are those of Lebanese farmers whose land is seized for drilling, fishermen blocked by Israeli naval patrols, and Syrian refugees denied citizenship. Women’s organizations like *Kafa* (Against Violence and Exploitation) have documented how economic collapse disproportionately harms women, yet their demands for gender justice are absent. The 2019 uprising’s slogan *'All of them means all of them'*—demanding an end to sectarianism and foreign interference—is directly contradicted by these elite talks. Marginalized voices in similar contexts (e.g., Niger Delta activists, West Papuan independence movements) show that 'peace processes' without grassroots inclusion are tools of control.
The Florida talks are not a peace process but a theater of geopolitical extraction, where Lebanon’s sovereignty is treated as a commodity to be auctioned off in exchange for crumbs of 'security.
' The mainstream framing obscures that this is the latest act in a century-long script of foreign intervention—from the 1958 US landing to the 2006 war—where Lebanon’s crises are monetized while its people are collateral. The solution lies not in elite negotiations but in restoring agency through community-controlled resources, inclusive resistance diplomacy, and international accountability for war crimes like naval blockades. Historical precedents from Cyprus to the Niger Delta show that energy deals in conflict zones deepen instability, yet the US and EU push forward, treating Lebanon as a lab for neoliberal experiments. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the real story isn’t what happens in Florida, but what happens when the Lebanese people refuse to be trapped in the web of foreign deals—whether through Hezbollah’s resistance, the 2019 uprising, or the quiet defiance of farmers and fishermen. The path forward requires dismantling the colonial energy framework and rebuilding sovereignty from the ground up.