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LEBANON: ‘Resistance’ to Israel above all

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It was the first fruit of Hezbollah’s latest political victory.

The Shiite militant group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said today that armed ‘resistance’ against Israel would remain the cornerstone of the country’s defense strategy.

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Indeed, he strongly suggested that armed struggle against Israel would take precedence over Lebanon’s democratic experiment.

On a gigantic screen, Nasrallah addressed thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut’s southern suburb to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the end of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. His speech came a day after the long-awaited election of a new president in Lebanon, which resulted from a recent Qatar-sponsored political agreement between all Lebanese factions.

Nasrallah devoted a big part of his speech to argue that armed resistance and not negotiations, whether in Palestine or Iraq or Lebanon, had proved the only way to liberate Arab soil:

The resistance presented a paradigm and a strategy in two areas and not in one area only: the strategy of the resistance and that of expelling the occupier, and the strategy of defending the nation and the people in the face of aggression and invasion and threats.

And he laid down the law as to Lebanon’s priorities. The goals of the resistance, he said, remain above the interests of the Lebanese state:

The resistance does not wait for a national and popular consensus. It should carry weapons and move ahead to accomplish the duty of liberation with weapons and blood and high-priced sacrifices.

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Nasrallah warned against using force to try to disarm his group:

The resistance’s arms are to fight the enemy, liberate lands and prisoners, and defend Lebanon — and for nothing else. The government’s arms, or the army and armed forces, is also to defend the nation, the people and their rights, the government, and to maintain security.... The government’s arms cannot be used to nail the resistance and its arms.

Hezbollah’s leader defended the 2006 summer war with Israel that devastated the country and triggered a political crisis temporarily resolved only this week. His fighters’ ‘victory’ over Israel had reduced the possibilities of a U.S. or Israeli war against Iran and Syria:

Your steadfastness in this region and your courage and your resistance, which foiled Israel’s war against Lebanon, have reduced a chance of wars in the region. The possibilities of a U.S. war against Iran have diminished.... So is the case of an Israeli war against Syria. There are two dreams: a Lebanese dream and an American dream. The Lebanese dream is that of a peaceful summer and the American one is that of a hot summer. Let us realize our dreams and not those of our enemies, and I promise you and all the Lebanese to exert every effort and overcome grudges and pass over wounds to put our hands together and build the nation.

Nasrallah also said Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails would ‘very, very soon’ return to their homes, hinting at a possible swap between Hezbollah and Israel. The fate of two Israeli soldiers, whose kidnapping by the Shiite group sparked the summer 2006 war, remains unknown.

In a reconciliatory gesture toward Lebanon’s Sunni community, Nasrallah said Lebanon could remain both a bastion of armed struggle against Israel and a land of economic prosperity and foreign investment.

There were also light notes to his speech, as when he blessed Lebanon’s coming tourist season.

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‘I strongly wish and I hope from God that the Lebanese would know a calm summer,’ he said.

Raed Rafei in Beirut

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