## 31

## “I ASSURE YOU ONCE AGAIN
[SAMIR], THAT YOUR HOPES ARE
SOUND AND IN THE RIGHT PLACE”

April 24, 2006

> Nasrallah’s speech at a Beirut rally in support of Lebanese, Palestinian, and Arab prisoners held by Israel provided a clear indication that Hezbollah intended to carry out further capture operations as a means of bargaining for the return of Samir Qintar, the longest-held Lebanese detainee in Israel, among other prisoners identified by the party. Indeed, only five months earlier, Hezbollah had attempted one of its boldest operations in the disputed Shebaa Farms—an operation that ended disastrously in the deaths of four Hezbollah fighters at the hands of an Israeli sniper.

> Still, Nasrallah’s “promise” was mostly overshadowed by his comments concerning the ongoing sessions of the “National Dialogue”—an extra-legislative round table of Lebanese political leaders, including Nasrallah himself, tasked by Speaker Nabih Berri with hammering out a national consensus on the status of Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon, the formation of a national defense plan (presumably addressing Hezbollah’s weapons), and a host of territorial and sovereignty issues concerning both Syria and Israel.

> The sessions also reportedly dealt with the status of President Emile Lahoud, whose 2004 Syrian-extended mandate was not set to expire until 2007. Hezbollah’s new ally, General Michel Aoun, had long been vying for the top Maronite post, but ever since his alliance with the March 8 camp, formalized in a written agreement between his Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah on February 6,1 the pro-Western majority led by Hariri, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and leader of the right-wing Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea,2 had publicly resisted any deal giving Aoun—and now, they argued by extension, Hezbollah—the presidency.

> Only 11 weeks later, however, all of these disputes, as well as the National Dialogue itself, would be subsumed—buried, at least for the moment, under the weight of a punishing 34-day war with Israel, initiated, though not consummated, by Hezbollah’s “Operation True Promise.”

(…) Let me seize this opportunity to tell the dean of all the detainees, the great resistance fighter and old mujahid Samir Qintar,3 the following. I read your letters, especially that last one, in which you said that you are pinning your hopes on the resistance and on me personally. I assure you once again, that your hopes are sound and in their right place, and that the coming days and the spilled blood will prove me right. We look for excuses, and tell ourselves that perhaps it is the will of God that you stay where you are a bit longer, so that you would remain our cause, though it will not be for much longer now. This is an apt moment for us to tell you that you are still the main cause of the Arabs, of the resistance, and of the patriots in this country of sects, most unfortunately shut off from one another. Besides being the cause of the Arab-Lebanese national struggle, you will also be the cause for the Druze in this conflict.

In this context, I do not want to omit mentioning the issue that some have raised recently regarding Lebanese nationals who either went missing or have been arrested in Syria; and I think that Syria and its leadership have dealt positively with this issue. We have already taken a number of steps, and will definitely pursue this issue further, in spite of the current contrarian mood in Lebanon. This mood sees it as our right to demand that Syria establish diplomatic relations with us, that it give us written documents proving the Lebanese identity of the Shebaa Farms, and that it agree to the redrawing of our common borders. At the same time, we want to reserve the right to attack Syria day and night, curse its leadership, and call for war and conspiracies against it, and this makes no sense at all. Those who want this accuse Syria of being negative and uncooperative, and of not dealing with them correctly over these issues. In any case, regardless of whether the political atmosphere in Lebanon is positive or negative, we shall keep on working with our brothers in Syria, and in cooperation with other Lebanese groups, to separate this purely humanitarian issue—that of the detainees and missing Lebanese nationals—from other pending issues, so that we can arrive at a conclusion.4

As you already know, the remains of some of the missing and detainees in Syria whose names appear on those lists, were found at various burial sites.5 In any case, if we want to arrive at a solution, this issue has to be dealt with on a purely humanitarian basis, away from political bargaining, heated discussions, setting traps for one another, or the scoring of political points.

Let me clarify, in a few quick words, certain points relevant to the national dialogue. In the past couple of weeks, we heard certain Lebanese politicians say that “there was unanimity around the dialogue table on this or that point,” and started imagining meetings that never took place, announced them to the world, and sought its reaction to them. I will mention one such example: they said that there was unanimity regarding the need to redraw the borders with Syria. In fact, there was nothing of the sort. On the contrary, the issue that took the most time around the table was that of redrawing the borders. However, I wish to urge the Lebanese people and their political leaders not to keep making mistakes, or add more to the ones that have already been made. All the issues on which there was agreement at the national dialogue were officially announced by Speaker Nabih Berri, whom we all acknowledge as the national dialogue’s official spokesperson. Read the texts of Speaker Berri’s announcements; is there anything there regarding redrawing the borders?

I told my colleagues around the dialogue table, on more than one occasion, that we have a firm patriotic, ideological, and political position regarding the redrawing of the borders while there is still an occupation in place, regardless of whether satellites can draw borders or not. I said that repeatedly, and this is why we took the decision to change the term “redrawing” to “delineating” the Shebaa Farms area, which means a general specification of their location.6 After liberation, we can redraw every valley, mountain, hilltop, and palm tree between the Syrians and us.

The first step, therefore, is to delineate the area of the Farms, since we have not yet agreed on redrawing borders, although they still repeat on a daily basis that “the Lebanese are unanimous on this, and Syria refuses to comply with this unanimity.” I do not want to mention other examples to avoid any misunderstandings, but this is a clear example of something we heard a lot about in the past few days (…)

Regarding the search for the weapons of the resistance, if we want to arrive at a solution and avoid going around in circles, we should not discuss this issue based on the premise that we—or at least some of us—have made commitments and undertakings to international parties that we would like to keep. This will guarantee that we will never arrive at a solution, because sitting around the dialogue table with such a pre-commitment will lead us nowhere. Are we not talking today about freedom, sovereignty, and independence?

I can say without hesitation that we are among those who approach these issues, as God only knows, with a patriotic mindset, and that our only yardstick is Lebanon’s best interest, as we see it; let us all approach issues with this spirit. When we resume our dialogue, we should be able to discuss the resistance’s weapons with a patriotic mindset and spirit; this is why we stated that we were ready to discuss anything. We could easily have said, from the very first day, that we are not ready to talk about it, that these weapons are a sacrosanct issue, that Israel is the aggressor, that our weapons will remain where they are, and that we do not intend to discuss them; what we said, instead, was that we were ready for dialogue. With the signing of the understanding between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, there is now a clear statement that, after the Shebaa Farms and the prisoner issues, we should attend to the issue of Lebanon’s strategic national defense.

The big question here is, How do we protect Lebanon? The fact that opinion polls conducted in Lebanon indicate that the people consider Israel to be the enemy of course means that the majority believes that Israel still has designs on Lebanon, and therefore poses a threat to it. Given that the majority believes that Israel still poses a threat to Lebanon, the question is therefore, How do we protect this country?

A few days ago, a suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad movement carried out an operation in Tel Aviv, and for many hours after that, as has often happened in the past, a number of Israeli officials and some Israeli media accused Hezbollah of being behind it.7 They said that Hezbollah sent a group of people into occupied Palestine, specifically to the West Bank, and that these [people] went later on to Tel Aviv, which explains why the Israeli Intelligence Service did not discover them earlier. What they are saying, in other words, is that since it is impossible for a Palestinian to go over the [West Bank] wall and overcome all the measures that Israel has put in place, Hezbollah must be the perpetrator. We had nothing to do with this incident, and do not have the honor of claiming responsibility for it.

In 1982, the Israelis attacked and invaded Lebanon before they even knew who had shot their ambassador in London—who, by the way, survived the attack.8 Lebanon is under threat regardless of whether the Shebaa Farms is an issue or not.

How do we defend our country? Will going back to the Armistice Agreement of 1949 protect Lebanon and its people? Are international guarantees, given by Bush, Blair or anyone else, sufficient to protect Lebanon? Let us debate whether Lebanon’s security can be guaranteed by military alliances and mutual defense pacts, just like the one Israel has with the United States, which undertook publicly to defend Israel. Every two or three days, George Bush makes a speech in which he renews this public undertaking. What and who will protect Lebanon? Its own military power? It would be great if this was possible, but what and who is this military power? Is it the army? How so? Is it the army and the resistance together? How so? If we agree that it is the army and the resistance, we should bear in mind that there are people who are afraid of the resistance. How do we eliminate their fears? The resistance is one-colored. How do we make it multicolored? If we approach the negotiations with this spirit, we will arrive at a solution, because we will all be working towards the same objective, which is how to best protect our country and people. At the end of the day, we are not discussing a philosophical treatise, but a subject in which we have a lot of human and hands-on experience, and a situation we have lived under together for many years. Let us take these experiences, study them well, and then use them to resolve the issue of Lebanon’s strategic national defense.

The final point concerns the issue of the presidency of the republic. We debated this issue in the national dialogue, and part of what we said was leaked to the press. Is there a particular mechanism we can adopt to discuss this issue? Some people suggested conducting an opinion poll to find out what the Lebanese people really want; and if we do not trust our local polling organizations enough, we could commission five Western polling organizations to conduct a survey each, and then designate whoever gets the highest score in all five surveys. This suggestion, however, was rejected, despite being quite practical. They said, “Lebanon’s sectarian make-up is well known; some people did not want the current speaker of parliament to be elected speaker again, but you Shia said that you wanted him in that post, and got your way. Why aren’t we Christians allowed to elect the president of the republic?” We told them, “the Shiites have unanimously chosen Mr. Nabih Berri as speaker of the National Assembly, and we had no problem doing that; now you, as Christians of Lebanon, are welcome to meet and unanimously decide on your choice for president of the republic, and we will support that choice.” They said that this was correct in theory, but where would that unanimity come from?

The third option is for us to discuss a list of various names. We told them: let us sit down together at that table and discuss names; they refused, and asked for more time to undertake backstage negotiations.

We had a stake in these negotiations, and therefore got involved in them; and when you heard about four and five hours of discussions, we were actually debating very sensitive issues. Our brother, Sheikh Saadeddin al-Hariri,9 in his capacity as the leader of the largest bloc in parliament, held talks with me, with His Excellency Mr. Nabih Berri, and with others, and it is his full right to be the focus of these negotiations. We held bilateral and trilateral rounds of negotiations, though we will keep their gist to ourselves.

What I would like to clarify today is that Hezbollah has so far not nominated a candidate in any of those side negotiations, be they bilateral, tripartite, quadripartite, five-party, small or large. We did not do so because we are not the real majority in the National Assembly; we are not the ones who should suggest a name, but those to whom a name should be suggested for discussion, in our capacity as a parliamentary bloc.

We then started to hear in the media that we, as a party, had suggested this or that name; this is not true. We suggested no names, although some names were indeed suggested to us; and while we rejected some of them, we said that some others were negotiable. In the past two weeks, some of the February 14 personalities, and members of the media, addressed themselves to the Free Patriotic Movement saying, “See how Hezbollah and the Amal Movement refused to nominate General Aoun to the presidency of the republic?”10 They concocted stories and gossip around this issue, with the aim of sowing discord between the party and the [Amal] Movement, on the one hand, and the Free Patriotic Movement on the other. At that time, a sort of clear realignment was underway around the dialogue table, and some people thought it vital for their interests to drive a wedge between Hezbollah, Amal, and the Free Patriotic Movement, and thwart their cooperation efforts. I wish to reassert that Sheikh Saadeddin al-Hariri was not at all involved in these machinations and leaks, and that the channels of communication between us are open and respectful of each other’s views.

The aim of airing these matters in the press rests on the assumption that I would approach you and ask, “Are you for or against nominating General Aoun for the presidency?” People who do such things do not really care about General Aoun or about us; they just cannot imagine for a moment that General Aoun could become president of the republic. What, then, is the real aim of these people? Their aim is that, if you said, “Yes, we would like to nominate General Aoun for the presidency of the republic”, they will seize upon your words, as long as the issue is not yet serious enough and is still in the public and media domain. If you say yes, they will take down your words and your picture and send them around the world to the American Congress, the French National Assembly, the European Union, and the British, Australian, and Italian Parliaments, and say, “Look, General Aoun is Hezbollah’s, the terrorist organization’s candidate in Lebanon!” Therefore, we will give them an answer only once the issue becomes serious, because mere talk is fodder for the media, and mere banter.

They believe that if the party nominates General Aoun to the presidency, he will be discredited throughout the world, because that world sees Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. If, on the other hand, we say, “OK, we will not nominate General Aoun,” they will turn around and tell the Free Patriotic Movement, “See—now go at each others’ throats”!

I therefore call upon these politicians and media organizations to stop playing this devious game. When we see the Lebanese people sitting down together to reach an understanding, establish cooperation among themselves, and forge closer ties, we will help by telling them, “Well done!” We will sit with them, and not foment sedition among them.

Finally, I would like to say that, in any case, if the February 14 forces are sincere and convinced about nominating General Aoun to the presidency of the republic, let them say so at the dialogue table on April 28, and they will hear our answer […]