Lebanon: Why The Return Rumour Every Year?

Lebanon comes up every year as a country that will possibly return to the contest or maybe that should be debut at the contest. For those who do not know Lebanon were due in 2005 to take part in the contest in Kiev represented by Aline Lahoud and her ballad “Quand Tuot S’enfuit”. It was to be the first time ever that an Arab country would take part in a contest where Israel were present, Morocco back in 1980 had taken part but Israel were not at the contest.

At the end of 2004 Télé-Liban looked like they were going to withdraw from the contest before they even took part due to financial issues, however 5 days later the EBU stepped in and Lebanon would debut in the May of 2005. Then in March 2005 tensions grew between Télé-Liban and the EBU as the channel on their website refused to show Israel as a participating country, the EBU stepped in warning them of disqualification, the channel then reacted by removing the participants list and replacing it with a link to the official Eurovision website.

The final straw came later that March when the EBU wanted confirmation that Lebanon would show the Israeli act, Télé-Liban did not give this guarantee. By Lebanese law broadcasting Israeli content on TV is illegal. Télé-Liban then withdrew from the contest, this came with penalties from the EBU, the channel faced a large fine, having to pay its participation fee for the 2005 contest and a ban from the contest for 3 years.

Since 2005 the only time that participation again has looked likely was in 2009 when Mika said in an interview that he would like to represent his country at the contest. However no channel stepped forward to allow this to happen.

But it seems that no one has ever actually noticed that Lebanese law has not changed since 2005. The law still forbids the showing of Israeli content on TV, hence why for the foreseeable future Lebanon will not be seen at the contest.

You can listen to the Lebanese entry that never made it below: