"UN Resolution 520 is the Answer"
By; General Michel Aoun
(Translated by: Elias Bejjani)
27 March 1998

Everything that has been happening in Lebanon is unfolding as if time had stopped in the late forties when the Lebanese-Israeli armistice agreement was signed. Lebanon's unwise and irrational rhetorical stance in support of the "Palestinian cause" has killed this cause and destroyed Lebanon. It allowed Syria to control the country, disturb its domestic tranquility, and confiscate its independence and sovereignty. It has permitted Syria to cripple Lebanon's political and economic infrastructure, opened its borders to international criminals, outlaws and strangers, made Lebanese soil a taboo for its own people, and lastly, allowed Israel to invade half of its southern territory and give it justifications to remain there up until now. The Puppet Lebanese regime is currently dealing with the southern crisis as if nothing wrong has happened there.

Lebanese officials seem to forget that Lebanon signed the "Cairo Accord" after the armistice agreement and that both agreements were superceded by UN Resolution 425. They feign amnesia instead of acknowledging that UN Resolution 520 has guaranteed the terms of UN Resolution 425 and that the two resolutions constitute an inseparable entity calling for the withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Lebanon--Syrians, Israelis, and all others. In dealing with Israel, Lebanese puppet officials are ignoring the fact that no other Arab country remains in a state of war with it.

Any emphasis on conditions for implementing UN Resolution 425 that exceed efforts to reclaim Lebanese land, sovereignty, and water resources is in fact a cheap political maneuver orchestrated by the Lebanese puppet regime in a bid to remain in the political forefront. This stance also serves Syria's ambition of retaining totalitarian hegemony over Lebanon in all domains.

The implementation of the UN resolution 520 is a must for the Lebanese people to put an end to the Syrian-Israeli conflict on their land. Syria and Israel have peaceful and harmonious relations on their own borders, while they continue their heated conflict by and through us the Lebanese people.

We must therefore free ourselves from this dreadful Syrian-Israeli game. Our patriotic obligation is to ask the UN for to implement Resolution 520 in its entirety, and on all Lebanese territory, with the logistic support of UN troops as the situation exists in other countries, so that peace will one day prevail in all Lebanon, not just the south. Lebanese peace can't prevail only in its southern occupied zone, for peace is a vital, holistic social entity that should surpass all human limitations. Keeping Lebanon in the current status quo of havoc and confusion is a slow death process that negatively affects the welfare of all components of Lebanese society.

Those who are involved in the Middle East crisis in general, and in the Lebanese conflict in particular, should not mistake the mirage for the water, lest they die of dehydration, or confuse real water for a mirage, or they will drown in it. In Israel, there is both mirage and water.
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