Lebanon: A country to be reinvented, a report produced with the editorial staff of “L'Orient-Le Jour”
Each week, Courrier International explains its editorial choices. In this issue, we've chosen to invite the editorial staff of L'Orient-Le Jour for a special report on Lebanon today. After the war and with the weakening of Hezbollah, a new era is dawning. But the challenges are colossal. This issue pays tribute to the tremendous work of the Lebanese daily, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.
This week we are offering you a rather special and long-standing issue, a tribute first and foremost to a newspaper with such a unique voice, whose articles we regularly publish on our website and in the weekly: L'Orient-Le Jour. The Lebanese French-language daily celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2024, an exceptional longevity in a region where the press has experienced the worst difficulties in recent years. “In its diversity, L'Orient-Le Jour remains above all a child of the century. A product of political modernity, a player in independence, a collateral victim of the war, a victim of the crisis, a survivor of the era,” wrote Stéphanie Khouri last year , a journalist in the unit that handles the newspaper's reports, investigations, and long formats. It is with her, in particular, and with Anthony Samrani, co-editor-in-chief, that we prepared this separate issue.
At the time of the Maidan events in 2014, we invited the weekly Oukraïnsky Tyjden to invest our columns. Later, in 2017, it was with the journalists of Cumhuriyet, the last Turkish opposition newspaper, part of whose team was then imprisoned, that we put together a dossier on the authoritarian drift , already, of the Erdogan regime. This time, it is therefore the editorial staff of L'Orient-Le Jour whom we chose to invite for his fantastic coverage of news in the Middle East.
Typically, most of our articles are compiled from multiple sources. This time, exceptionally, all the articles are written by the Lebanese daily's journalists: Élie Fayad, also co-editor-in-chief, Soulayma Mardam Bey, Nemtala Eddé, Clara Hage, and Émilie Sueur. The articles are previously unpublished (except for those devoted to the newspaper's history, including the one cited above) and discussed at length with Courrier International's Middle East department. Photo reports are also included.
Since October 7, 2023, we have widely relayed L'Orient-Le Jour 's analyses and reports on Gaza, Israel, Syria, and the war waged by the IDF against Hezbollah in recent months, with the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic leader of the Shiite party. This time, we have chosen to focus this issue on Lebanon today, after the war. A portrait of a wounded country, the hope of a rebirth... Through our discussions with the editorial staff of L'Orient-Le Jour, we defined an angle and together selected the articles that would allow us to reflect the reality of a country still weakened, but which is trying to rebuild itself.
The war unleashed by the "Party of God" against the Jewish state in support of Hamas has caused death and destruction in Beirut and various regions of the Land of the Cedars. But it has also significantly weakened Hezbollah, which for twenty years was the dominant party on the Lebanese scene, thus opening up new political perspectives. Earlier this year, a new president, Joseph Aoun, was elected after more than two years of inactivity, and a new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, was appointed. They could be the faces of the "new Lebanon," writes Anthony Samrani.
But the challenges are colossal. The country is barely recovering. The population has remained mired in a terrible economic and financial crisis since 2019. Above all, they hope to be able to—finally—live in peace, celebrate lightly, and look forward to the future with confidence. Since the start of the civil war (1975-1990) fifty years ago, Lebanon has been buffeted by wars and crises, which have caused massive waves of emigration. The Lebanese would perhaps like their sacrosanct resilience to stop being tested. This special report explores all of this.
“Lebanon as told by the Lebanese,” “A new beginning,” “A country to be reinvented” … On Friday, May 23, during the last meeting between our two editorial teams, when it came time to decide on the front page title, after a series of video exchanges between Beirut and Paris and discussions on archives, photo choices, and covers, we ultimately had little hesitation in choosing the title that would accompany the fantastic cartoon by Ivan Debs. Perhaps the hardest thing in the end was knowing that this meeting was the last on this project. Enjoy!
