Colin Sheridan: Lebanon’s endless war — a country trapped in other people’s conflicts

Lebanon’s tragedy is not only that it is repeatedly drawn into other people’s wars. It is that this condition has come to be seen as natural, writes Colin Sheridan

An Israeli airstrike that hit Qlaileh village is seen from Tyre city in south Lebanon on Friday. Photo: AP/Hussein Malla

We call them resilient, as if survival were a virtue freely chosen, not a sentence handed down by geography and history. 

In Lebanon, wars rarely begin and never quite end; they arrive like weather systems, drifting in from elsewhere, gathering force over borders drawn by other hands. The country endures the way a scar endures — visible, unhealed, and quietly instructive.