New England Americans for Lebanon (NEAL)

For Immediate Release

PO Box 2638 Edgartown, MA 02539
Tel/Fax 508-627-9350
neal@neal-us.org
www.neal-us.org
 

Boston, Massachusetts - May 29, 2006

The weekend cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Palestinian groups allied with Syria on one hand, and Israel on the other, across the Lebanese-Israeli border are an extension of the 35-year old cycle of violence that was forced on Lebanon and against the will of its own people.

Hezbollah is to be blamed first and foremost for maintaining the state of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon on the ideological ground of a permanent and eternal hostility to Israel. Try as they may to say the opposite, the full spectrum of Lebanese active forces today is no longer interested in perpetuating the cycle of violence in the south, particularly if only Lebanon, of all Arab countries, is made to be the only open war front with Israel.

Israel captured the Shebaa Farms from Syria, and not from Lebanon.  Therefore, the Lebanese claims to sovereignty to Shebaa should be restituted first by Syria to Lebanon, by providing the legal and documentary framework for the United Nations to legitimately cede sovereignty back to Lebanon. Only then can Israel be expected to restitute Shebaa physically to Lebanon. Syria has so far refused to do anything in this regard, and the Saniora government has been derelict in taking Syria to task on this issue. The claims by the Saniora government that Israel’s occupation of Shebaa is the problem are upside down. Saniora should first be pressuring Syria to concede sovereignty. Second, his government should make Hezbollah give up its weapons and dismantle. Then Israel can be made to withdraw of its own will once Lebanese sovereignty over Shebaa is certified by the UN, and if Israel chooses not to, to have an international mandate to force it to.

The Lebanese government and all those in Lebanon who continue to hail Hezbollah as a national Resistance force are fooling themselves and the world, and instead of making the right choices, they are plunging Lebanon back on the brink of violence that the Lebanese have tired of in the course of 35 years. Hezbollah is before anything else a radical fundamentalist movement whose ultimate objective is to erect an Islamic State in Lebanon. It is secondarily an Iranian and Syrian proxy whose allegiance to Lebanon – unless we hear otherwise – is fourth after its Islamic, Shiite, and Arab identities.

Ever since it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with MP Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform Parliamentary Bloc last January, suggesting a positive move to reintegrate a strictly national Lebanese platform, Hezbollah has moved farther and farther away from that hopeful moment by increasing the tenor of its anti-Western and anti-Lebanese sovereignty rhetoric, retreating back to its violent radical ideology, and still continues to refuse  to implement the Taef Agreement to which it signed in 1989 which requires it to disband and allow the Lebanese army  to take full, exclusive  and unchallenged control of the south and the Lebanese-Israeli border. Hezbollah has not shown any tangible sign of abiding by the spirit of the Memorandum.

Like all other Arab countries, from those at peace with Israel such as Egypt and Jordan, to those who are holdouts of the anti-peace camp, like Syria, Lebanon deserves a chance for stability. If Syria and Iran want to destroy Israel, let them do that from the Golan Heights or from the hot air of their distant and divinely-inspired illusions, and not from Lebanese territory.

NEAL calls on the Saniora government to immediately dispatch the Lebanese Army to every inch of the border with Israel, even at the risk of a confrontation with Hezbollah, and with an increase of the assistance already provided by the United Nations by deploying a much larger contingent of UN Forces to secure the border and prevent any further instability in that region. This scenario seems a better short-term risk to take than another 35 years of death, mayhem and destruction for the people of south Lebanon and for the entire country.

Long Live Free Lebanon

Dr. Joseph Hitti

President of New England Americans for Lebanon