Lebanon has spent six years living inside a grey zone. Not as a metaphor. As a governance condition. Deposits became a rumor. Rules became negotiable. Dignity became conditional on who you know.

That is why the public reaction to the draft financial gap law has been so sharp. People are not only angry. Many are exhausted. Some are simply done. After a week of statements, drafts, and counter-drafts, the question is no longer who is right. The question is will anything here actually hold.

The government’s instinct is understandable. Lebanon cannot recover while deposits remain a hostage situation and the banking sector remains a zombie that neither lends nor intermediates. Confidence cannot return while the country cannot describe its losses in one official number, let alone enforce a repayment path.

But credibility in Lebanon does not come from intention. It comes from design that anticipates how this system has been gamed before.

A framework is now on Parliament’s table after Cabinet approval. It is framed as a first legal container after years of denial. The headline mechanics, as publicly reported, are widely understood: smaller deposits are treated faster, while larger balances receive an initial portion and the remainder through longer-dated, asset-backed instruments linked to central bank resources, with repayment horizons stretching well beyond a few years depending on deposit size. The draft also carries language on audits and accountability and is positioned as part of an IMF-aligned reform track.

Whether one supports the draft or rejects it, one thing is now unavoidable: the debate has shifted from do we need a law to what kind of law can survive Lebanon.

Why the reaction is so brutal
The deposit file is not read by the public as a neutral policy item. It is read through lived experience.

In Lebanon, vague language does not signal complexity. It signals a trap.

Long timelines do not signal patience. They signal another confiscation, stretched over time.

And accountability language does not signal accountability. It signals theatre unless it comes with deadlines, published results, and consequences.

This is not because Lebanese people are irrational. It is because they have been trained by repeated institutional betrayal. People scan for loopholes. They shut down from overload. They react with moral anger. They no longer trust time.

A law that does not account for this will fail socially, then fail politically, then collapse back into paralysis.

What Parliament must force into the text
This is not about beautifying language. It is about inserting proof.

If Parliament wants this draft to hold, it should require a mandatory exhibits package attached to the law. Not to be provided later. Not subject to. Mandatory, published, and independently verified.

A few exhibits would change the credibility landscape overnight.

Start with a single validated loss figure, with a transparent bridge from 2019 to today. One number. One method. No range designed for political comfort. Without an anchor, every allocation becomes arguable, and every argument becomes another year.

Add a flow-of-funds reconciliation. Not for political theatre. For closure. The public cannot accept loss allocation without an official account of how losses crystallized and what channels consumed the system’s resources.

Add a multi-year cashflow table for the repayment plan, by depositor brackets, with sensitivities. What happens if asset valuations come lower. What happens if liquidity underperforms. What happens in a downside scenario. A repayment promise without a cashflow is a press release.

Add an asset schedule behind any asset-backed instruments, with legal constraints and encumbrance flags. The public argument will not be won by repeating that assets exist. It will be won by proving which assets are usable, how they generate cash, and under what governance they are managed. On this point, the gold debate must be handled with legal precision. Ambiguity invites propaganda, litigation, and panic.

Finally, connect the gap law to a credible bank resolution pathway. A gap law that does not connect to bank-by-bank outcomes will be read as a settlement that protects institutions without restoring function. The country needs to know what survives, what merges, what exits, and how governance will be forced.

This is what an execution-first government does. It does not ask the public to believe. It publishes what the public can verify.

The insider advantage problem that can blow up the law
One issue deserves special attention because it can detonate everything, even if the rest is well drafted.

Tradable instruments.

If tradable instruments are part of the mechanism, the law must hard-code market integrity firewalls. Otherwise, the next scandal writes itself. Distressed depositors sell at a discount to get cash. Strong hands buy. If those strong hands include insiders, related parties, banks, or politically connected buyers, Lebanon will relive the theft in a cleaner suit.

So if tradability exists, the text must include restrictions on related-party accumulation, beneficial ownership disclosure, buyback limits, and sanctions for manipulation. Not as guidance. As enforceable rules.

This is not a technical footnote. It is the moral core of the debate.

Accountability cannot be decorative
The draft is publicly framed as containing accountability elements. That matters. But credibility will not come from the word accountability. It will come from an accountability clock.

A timeline for audits and asset quality reviews. Publication requirements. Due process safeguards. Defined consequences if milestones are missed. No discretion disguised as a promise.

Public remarks by Information Minister Paul Morcos, who has voiced reservations and framed the draft as a prelude rather than a complete solution, should be treated as a constructive signal: the draft is not final, and the real work is strengthening it in Parliament. That is the only way to avoid a symbolic step that satisfies nobody.

The state’s role must carry weight
The draft reportedly touches the state’s obligations toward the central bank. That is necessary. But it cannot remain in the realm of reaffirmations.

The state contribution must be time-bound, instrumented, and enforceable. Otherwise, the public will read the entire plan as a time-based haircut. Lebanon’s deepest credibility deficit is not only corruption. It is missed deadlines with no consequence.

This is where a reform government must behave differently. It must build enforcement by default.

If the timeline slips, triggers should activate automatically. Not because rigidity is a virtue, but because discretionary governance is exactly what broke trust.

What holds in 2026
Beirut One was built around confidence. Confidence is not a slogan. It is a delivery system.

This is what the moment demands from government and Parliament.

Stop arguing motives. Publish the exhibits.

Stop selling intentions. Insert safeguards.

Stop promising accountability. Put it on a calendar.

Stop designing solutions that can be gamed. Make cheating harder than compliance.

Parliament should not bury the law. Parliament should harden it.

Government should treat this as a delivery campaign, not a legislative event. Weekly reporting. Visible milestones. Data published in plain language. A process people can track without connections.

Lebanon cannot afford another national argument that ends in fatigue and silence. Silence is not peace anymore. It is the symptom of a system that has given up on being believed.

Enough talk. Show us what holds.