MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M VOLUME 65, NO. 3, SUMMER 2011 DOI: 10.3751/65.3.12 © Middle East Institute. This article is for personal research only and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the permission of The Middle East Journal. Lebanon after the Civil War: Peace or the Illusion of Peace? Faten Ghosn and Amal Khoury This article investigates the effectiveness of Lebanon’s post-conﬂict strategies by exploring the “reconciliation” efforts that were undertaken after the war, and highlights the obstacles to such efforts. While Lebanon signed a peace agreement in October 1989 to ofﬁcially end a 15-year civil war, today it is still a troubled country. Many have attributed Lebanon’s inability to shed its conﬂict-prone past to its sectarian system; however, this article traces the ongoing instability, in part, to the failure of the government to deal effectively with the abuses of the civil war. “There can be no justice without truth and no justice without reconciliation.” Ghassan Moukheiber, Lebanese Member of Parliament, Washington Post, January 2, 2006. “Societies do not have the luxury of not dealing with their past. If not dealt with proactively, the past will always haunt post-conﬂict societies.” Paul van Zyl, Director of ICTJ, Daily Star, December 5, 2006. Almost 20 years have passed since the end of the civil war, and Lebanon is still a distraught and scarred country. While many attribute this solely to the political and/or social structure of the country, this article traces the ongoing instability in part to the failure of the government to deal effectively with the past abuses of the civil war. In fact, Lebanon today is a great example of a war-torn society in which unsolved atrocities, a hasty amnesty law, and the lack of reconciliation have all added fuel to a latent ﬁre that can easily ignite new rounds of violence, while creating an environment of mistrust and hatred as past injustices are swept under the rug. 1 Hence, while hasty amnesty laws might be necessary to end bloodshed, in the Lebanese case the post-war settlement has Faten Ghosn is Assistant Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Ari- zona. Her recent publications include “Getting to the Table and Getting to Yes: An Analysis of International Negotiations,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 54 (2010), pp. 1055–1072; “Inﬂuence of Domestic Politics on the Decision to Negotiate,” International Negotiation, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2011), pp. 69–85; and “Is- rael and Lebanon: A Precarious Relationship,” in Hassan Barari, ed., The Middle East – Peace by Piece: The Quest for a Solution to the Arab-Israeli Conﬂict. Currently both authors are working on a book manuscript on reconciliation efforts in Lebanon. Amal I. Khoury is Assistant Professor in the Peace and Conﬂict Studies Department at Guilford College. Her publications include, Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East, with Mohammed Abu Nimer and Emily Welty (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, June 2007); “Water Scar- city in the Middle East: Balancing Conﬂict, Development, and Survival in Turkey, Syria and Iraq,” Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2006); and “The Muslim World Reacts to September 11,” in Nancy Matuszak, ed., History Behind the Headlines: The Origins of Conﬂicts Worldwide. 1. Gunnar Theissen, “Supporting Justice, Co-existence and Reconciliation after Armed Conﬂict: Strategies for Dealing with the Past,” (Berghof Research Center for Conﬂict Management, 2004). http://www.berghof-handbook.net/uploads/download/theissen_handbook.pdf.