Lead:
Karim Saied, Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, is attempting to seize exclusive control of the mechanism to impose haircuts on large deposits in ongoing negotiations with an International Monetary Fund delegation, according to reporting in Al-Akhbar. The dispute centers on who will lead the loss-distribution process — the Central Bank governor or the ministers of finance and economy, Yassin Jabber and Amir al-Bissat — as talks continue through Friday. Separately, columnists across Beirut's opinion pages have turned their focus to structural questions about Lebanon's sovereignty, its military's independence from American pressure, and whether dialogue with Hezbollah can ever produce a functional state.
Voices & Positions:
In Al-Akhbar, an unnamed columnist argues that negotiations over deposit haircuts remain deadlocked on procedural control rather than substantive loss-sharing, and that the Central Bank governor is resisting oversight by the finance ministry and IMF framework supervision.
In Al-Diyar, one columnist contends that only the complete disarmament of Hezbollah and dismantling of its financial and military apparatus will allow Lebanon to become a real state, dismissing internal dialogue as mere "taming" of Lebanese citizens who want genuine rule of law. A second Al-Diyar writer asserts that the Lebanese Army's rejection of domestic confrontation with Hezbollah — and its use of the phrase "Israeli enemy" in statements — reflects a principled refusal to be drawn into American pressure to abandon constitutional neutrality, and that internal factions are attempting to trap the military in political conflict.
In An-Nahar, one columnist argues that Washington's insistence on separating Lebanon from Iran's orbit through existing frameworks underestimates how electoral shifts in the United States reshape regional leverage, particularly after Republican losses in midterm voting.
Tension & Convergence:
Writers converge on the reality that Lebanon's internal institutions — the Central Bank, Parliament, the Army — face competing pressure from domestic factions, the IMF, and Washington. They diverge sharply on remedy: some demand unilateral Lebanese state action (disarming Hezbollah), while others warn that American-backed pressure on the military to do so violates institutional independence. No columnist resolves whether dialogue with Hezbollah can coexist with statehood, or whether it is fundamentally incompatible.
Editorial Takeaway:
The dominant voice today is that Lebanon's crisis is no longer primarily economic — it is institutional and constitutional, hinging on whether the state can operate independently of both armed non-state actors and foreign capital-and-security demands.