We will not risk speculating on the reasons that led the President of the United States to discover the Lebanon file, dust it off, and place it at the forefront of what accumulates on his desk.

Whispers from here, advice from there, and counsel from a son-in-law who married his daughter over there may all be behind alerting Donald Trump, not only to the newfound importance of the Lebanese issue, but also to the emergence of an opportunity that must be seized, much like major investors who pounce on prey whose secrets they knew before others.

Trump set, in his characteristically abrupt and unpredictable style, a roadmap linking the investment field with the harvesting of its returns. He received concerns from Arab allies about the consequences of what the Israeli war machine is doing in Beirut, as well as about Tel Aviv’s and Washington’s apparent neglect of the rare historical transformation Lebanon has officially undertaken to stop the war.

President Joseph Aoun had presented, during a European meeting, an initiative prominently proposing direct negotiations with Israel, moving beyond the technical level to the political one. The Israeli Prime Minister disregarded the proposal amid an American silence that Lebanon and the Europeans struggled to understand.

We know the rest of the story. The American president resolved two issues in a call with Netanyahu: stopping the bombing of Beirut and responding to Aoun’s initiative.

But Trump, because of who he is, hastened to push the ambassadors of both parties toward his table in Washington—at the State Department and then the White House—generously urging them to host a meeting between Aoun and Netanyahu.

His rhetoric says: let’s burn the stages and impose a peace, fragile in the same way as the peace claims he once boasted about, claiming to have halted eight wars, before igniting a ninth against Iran, still struggling to exit it.

Trump hastens to produce an image bringing him together with Aoun and Netanyahu. It does not matter what it carries, nor what the outcome of the meeting may be. What matters is the image itself, which will be added to the record of peace in the Middle East, a record that has stalled since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and no longer produces images of peace.

He rushes to stage an image without a preceding sound that could provide it with the weighty guarantees needed to create a supportive environment for a peace worthy of that image. The paradox recalls Youssef Chahine’s 2001 film “Silence, We’re Rolling”, whose story captured the conflict between reality and illusion.

And because it is merely an image that the Lebanese president does not find timely or beneficial, the American president’s envoy in Lebanon does not hesitate to present the matter as a picture unworthy of all the heated debate inside the country. His tone suggests: what harm is there in taking a photo with the “bogeyman” if it is only a picture?

Meanwhile, the Lebanese president—backed by constitutional powers, a majority within the government and parliament, and a broad political spectrum in favor of advancing direct negotiations to achieve peace and stop destruction—sees in the idea of that picture something that stirs within the country the mills of the “defiers,” who interpret it as sin and error, from the Secretary-General of the Party of Iran to the platforms of what remains of his supporters.

Dozens of American ambassadors, envoys, and senior diplomats have dealt with Lebanon. Many have demonstrated insight, understanding, and awareness of the country’s complexities and uniqueness, while a few have shown a tendency toward simplification, superficiality, and ease.

Even though most are known for their support of and alignment with Israel, it would never occur to the more professional among them to underestimate the deepest, most entrenched, and complex conflicts in Lebanon, or to reduce them to a photo session at the White House in the presence of the American president, presented as an opening to negotiations rather than a result of prior agreement.

President Aoun refused to take Netanyahu’s call, while announced that the timing of the meeting proposed by Trump between them is “inappropriate.” He did well to place decisive points on ambiguous letters, not merely in regard to an opposition that rejects tying Lebanon to ongoing negotiations with Iran and submitting to pressures that change according to moods from beyond borders, but because the story has origins and timing that should not burn its chapters at the disposal of a need for an image of victory in which there is no victory for Lebanon.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.