In the Episode held in 04 July 2024, the facilitator of the dialogue session, Ms. Sonia Nakad, a journalist and specialist in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, opened the session with a quick introduction in which she introduced the dialogue session leader, Alexander Karam, a Lebanese-German journalist, who briefly reviewed the goal of the "Media for Peace" project and the history of the dialogue sessions that exceeded 12 in Lebanon and Afghanistan alike, as well as the role of media in peacemaking. He stressed the need to move away from historical dialogues and narratives that focus on wars and confrontations and look forward to solutions that can be applied in the future. He also spoke about the conclusions of these sessions, which will be published later in the form of articles.

Then, Mrs. Nakad stressed that the goal of the dialogue is to look forward peacefully to the future and use the media in a different and progressive way than what is prevalent today; disagreements are natural in political life but resolving them violently is the wrong approach. She stressed the need to remove the media from its role of fueling disagreements and conflicts and igniting wars with misleading news, as the main goal of this project is to reach peaceful solutions that combine the various political viewpoints that exist in a repulsive manner in Lebanon and other countries. She explained the mechanism for managing these episodes... During the session Mrs. Nakad summarized the most important things that each participant said in sentences at the end of each participation.

The session began with each participant quickly introducing themselves and Mrs. Nakad presenting the problematic of this episode: What future social contract for Lebanon? A new vision for the future away from history and the narratives of the past that everyone knows.

We start from the end, where all the participants in the dialogue session agreed on the necessity of formulating a new social contract for Lebanon because the current contract has only produced civil wars, large and small, from 1840 until today. The discussion in this round focused on the basics of establishing a new social contract.

The first participant, a university professor of law and a human rights and political activist, began by emphasizing that: “The social contract has several philosophical, legal, political and constitutional dimensions.” Therefore, it is necessary to simplify the “expressions” to define that the social contract as “the minimum limits that unite the Lebanese together, despite the political divisions.” He stressed that the social contract in Lebanon is translated by dividing: “the presidencies between the three largest sects, without which the war would not have stopped.” He continued his speech by saying that the social contract is: “a contract between groups and between sects,” especially since the constitution guarantees each sect the right to organize its own affairs.

Mrs. Nakad interfered and ask a direct question to the first participant: “As for you, what social contract would you like to see in Lebanon?” To answer that the social contract he would like to see in Lebanon is one that: “guarantees sub-national identities, respects sectarian pluralism while moving away from secularism at the present time, and formulates a new narrative of history from the present till forty years ago.”

The second participant, a theater teacher and political activist, agreed with the first participant and continued saying that the goal of the new social contract is: “to restore the constitution... and move away from the existing quotas in power that were established after the civil war... and although the October 17 revolution was an opportunity, it was an incomplete opportunity and did not reach a result... no one should be excluded or abolished, but a solution must be found.” The participant continued with a historical narrative to reach the present and said: “The Lebanese must come together around a new social contract... our losses are great today... the state is being dissolved with all its institutions... especially the judiciary, and thus the social contract has become a necessity for continuity.”

Then, the third participant, a journalism graduate and political activist in a political party, who praised the previous participants’ words, continued to define the social contract from his point of view: “The social contract is an idea that links the citizen to the authority... and after the end of the civil war, a new clause was added to the social contract, which is the leaders of the sects.” After a simple narration about the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the authority, he concluded that any social contract is valid if it has three foundations, which are: “the stability of the contract in a democratic system protected from the judiciary.”

The fourth participant, a social affairs consultant with a master’s degree in sociology and who is preparing a doctoral dissertation, stressed two points: the first is that: “Pluralism as a founding element among minorities to create a new social contract is not enough; there must be equality among these minorities.” The second is the consensus that: “The current Lebanese social contract has failed… and has become, in its current state, harmful to citizens.” She ended her speech by saying: “The current contract, or rather the quota system, threatens our lives with pollution, corruption, war, and other things…”

While the fifth participant, a sociology teacher at a school and university, raised a fundamental problem that must be resolved before talking about the social contract, which is the issue of identity. She asked: “Who are we? Why do we belong to this country? Why are we in this country? … We love this country with everything in it on paper, but we don't love it or belong to it…” She considered that “the cornerstone of the new contract is defining the collective identity of all citizens before talking about anything else.”

The fourth participant expressed in a new intervention the necessity of having "collective will... and a specific mechanism... to reach this new contract... and all this after everyone acknowledged that the current social contract has completely failed... due to the loss of the unifying identity of all citizens."

The second participant expressed once again the failure of the current social contract and considered That "due to corruption and quotas, the authority acted as a master and considered the citizens as slaves in its service."

After the end of the first round, Mrs. Sonia Nakad raised the new problem to start the second round of dialogue: "What is the importance of trust in formulating a new social contract? And can this contract be formulated without trust between all parties?"

The first participant avoided answering the question of the centrality of trust in formulating the social contract, but he stressed the need not to confuse the social contract with the political system... because "the social contract is a compromise that does not eliminate or exclude anyone... the social contract is the common denominators around which we meet despite our differences, based on equality... but the real problem lies in the balance of power in Lebanon." Then he returned to talk about a new idea of: "modesty among all parties and acceptance of the other regardless of differences... and acceptance of the idea of ​​the individual's interest in this contract. At the end, he said that an idea or clause that should be at the forefront of the clauses of the social contract, which is "not resorting to violence and armed conflict to solve political problems."

The fourth participant moved away from the idea of ​​trust in the social contract and focused on the idea of ​​settlement and denied the importance of settlement in formulating the new social contract due to previous experiences. She gave the example of the Taif Agreement, which was a settlement to end the Lebanese war. The Taef agreement was accorded due “financial bribes offered by Saudi Arabia to the representatives, and as a result, warlords came to power as leaders who divided up ministries and administrations until we reached a stage where citizens had nothing to propose a settlement for.” She concluded her speech by emphasizing the need to "accountability before engaging in a discussion of the formula for a new social contract."

The third participant returned to the centrality and importance of the idea of ​​trust, and stressed that building trust between the various groups of the Lebanese people is done by creating a new narrative in which we agree on details, phrases, and classifications such as: “Who is the enemy? What is guardianship? What is civil war? What are its causes? How did it break out? ... What is the state? How do we want its system to be? Under what legal structure?” ...to conclude his speech by saying, “Our relationship (as citizens) with the past is non-existent... We must rewrite history and understand the past to be frank and move towards the future... This issue, based on a special experience in the Tripoli region, is a ‘big workshop’ that the authority, with all its institutions, must undertake to reach an actual solution.”

Here was a new intervention by a sixth participant, a political activist, in which she moved away from the idea of ​​trust and emphasized the idea of ​​accountability in the economic, political and social aspects based on: “confiscating the money of the men of power in exchange for not imprisoning them..."

The first participant returned to correct the statement that he had made about the settlement, saying that: "The social contract must include everyone, and no class can be excluded, regardless of who it is... for more than one reason, but the most important of them is that the October 17 Revolution failed with all its slogans and was unable to obtain overwhelming popular support.

The second participant was upset by this talk and refused to make such admissions of failure, and to turn the previous page without holding accountable those responsible for the great collapse, and she refused to pay prices for which she was not guilty, and she said: "Of course, I am not in favor of hanging people, but it is unacceptable that there is no way to hold the corrupt accountable."

The fourth participant agreed with everything that was said, and confirmed that everything that was said was the reason for her emphasis on the idea of ​​the appropriate mechanism or path to reach the new social contract, and this mechanism begins: by acknowledging the failure of the social contract, the political system, and successive governments... and then we move to meet and create consensus and a collective will around a new social contract... Today we do not have the ability to talk to others, let alone negotiate.

The dialogue ended with side discussions between the participants, who confirmed that the failure of October 17 was a failure of the tools that had expired in the present time, and not a failure of the people.

Everyone agreed that the new social contract was an actual necessity, but they couldn't distinguish between the social contract and the political system.

At the end, the facilitator summarized everything that came up in the dialogue regarding the formulation of a new social contract based on the idea of ​​humility and trust between all parties, regardless of the actual balance of power on the ground. She stressed the need to hold dialogue sessions to reach a clearer crystallization of the idea of ​​the new social contract.