Press Releas from NEAL- New England Americans for Lebanon
Boston, Massachusetts Founded 2000
www.neal-us.org Tel: 781-729-1312 neal_us@yahoo.com

For Immediate Release
May 21, 2007 – Boston - Massachusetts

The ongoing battle between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian groups inside the Nahr El-Bared Camp should finally make it clear to the world community what the Lebanese “Civil War” consisted of: The fight between a sovereign Lebanese State against radical, anti-peace, pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian Palestinian and other mercenaries who use Lebanon as the stage to fight their wars against Israel and the West.

The scenario remains the same today as it was in the 1970s and 1980s: Syria or Iran want to prove something or exert pressure on the West and Israel, they instruct their proxies in Lebanon (Palestinian militias, Iranian Hezbollah and others) to destabilize the situation. Bombs go off, towns are invaded and massacred, mostly Christian towns (Damour, for example), and when the Lebanese people and State attempt to quell those groups, the Lebanese are accused by Arabs and Westerners alike of being extremists or the Christians are accused of wanting to hold on to power. Today, it is a Sunni-led Lebanese government battling a Sunni Palestinian militia.

The Lebanese, though, have their share of responsibility: In the 1970s and 1980s it was the Sunni Prime Ministers who paralyzed the government against taking the same action that the Sunni Siniora is taking today. They defended the PLO and Syria’s encroachments on Lebanese sovereignty and denied the President the prerogative to quell the Palestinian militias as King Hussein did in Jordan in one month in 1970. In Lebanon, it is only after the Sunnis extracted power from the Christians in the Taef Accord of 1989 and had their own Rafik Hariri assassinated by Syria that they today have discovered their Lebanese identity, become anti-Syrian and are willing to battle the lawlessness of the Palestinians and hopefully Hezbollah as well one day, should it refuse to disarm. Indeed, the role that the Palestinians played as proxies for Syria, Libya and other Arab countries over the years, is today played by Hezbollah which continues to destabilize the country at the behest of Iran, like it did last summer in its reckless war against Israel.

For Lebanon to be placed on a firm path to peace and stability, it needs to:
- Abrogate all existing agreements with the Palestinians (1969 Cairo Accord and others) and abide only by the principle of the supremacy of Lebanese sovereignty over any other cause, Arab, Iranian or otherwise. The Palestinian camps and all non-State affiliated militias, like Hezbollah, should be disarmed.
- Declare its neutrality vis-à-vis the Israeli-Arab conflict. The delicate demographic composition of Lebanon mirrors that of European Switzerland, and given the havoc that geopolitics wreaked on Lebanon over the past three decades, it is time for the country to emulate Switzerland’s status in Europe and protect itself under international neutrality.
- Draw up a plan for redistributing the Palestinian refugees to Arab countries (in proportion to their population densities) and to traditional countries of immigration (North and South America, Australia). As much as Israel’s rejection of the Palestinian Right of Return is driven by concern over its demography, so does Lebanon, and the final status of the refugees should not be the sole responsibility of Lebanon. The entire international community is responsible for the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is therefore responsible for the fate of the refugees. Lebanon will never accept the permanent settlement of the Palestinian refugees on its soil. Those in the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia, who claim to want to protect Palestinian rights are welcome to do so by providing the Palestinians – most of whom are Sunnis – with permanent settlement in the vast Sunni expanses of the Kingdom and with its enormous wealth. Lebanon has borne the burden of the Palestinian question more than any other Arab country and should refuse to continue to do so.

New England Americans for Lebanon