Any dialogue with Hezbollah is futile
By: Elias Bejjani*

March 08/10
 
Lebanese politicians and leaders from rival parties are scheduled to engage tomorrow, March 09/10 in a new national dialogue session at the presidential palace under the chairmanship of President Michel Suleiman to look into means and ways that could ultimately lead to the disarmament of the Hezbollah terroris Iranian militia and give the Lebanese central government the sole authority on the decision making process of war and peace.

Hezbollah is insisting that the fate of its weapons is not on the table by any means, and arrogantly is calling on all the Arab countries to adopt its role model of resistance against Israel and abandon hope of reaching peace with Israel via negotiations.

Meanwhile, several top notch Hezbollah leaders have been lately boldly and with a tone of overt intimidation and threats asserting almost on daily basis that those Lebanese politicians and leaders who call for its disarmament are Israeli and American agents and traitors. Hezbollah wants all the Lebanese people to embrace its weaponry and support its "divine resistance".

Cabinet Minister Mohammed Fneish, representative of Hezbollah in the Al Hariri government, said yesterday that disarming his "resistance" group was not up for discussion in the dialogue session, but instead that the national defense strategy would be appropriate for discussion. According to Hezbollah this strategy should give its leadership more power and more authority to safeguard all of Lebanon against Israel. "Some have implied that the dialogue session seeks to decide on when Hezbollah will be disarmed," Fneish was quoted as saying by the Anbaa News Agency. "This issue is not a subject for discussion and will not be debated at the dialogue session," Fneish said.

Prime Minister Saad Al Hariri and his pro-independence 14th of March Coalition have failed to resolve the thorny issue of Hezbollah's weapons since the end of the Syrian occupation in 2005. The current Hariri government is crippled due to the fact that Hezbollah and its puppet allies who are Iranian and Syrian mercenaries have the upper hand in all its decisions. They have a veto power through which they can kill any decision that is not in their favor.

Although the 14th of March won the majority in last year’s parliamentary elections and defeated a Hezbollah-led coalition backed by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has refused to disarm and has been doing so since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war and insists that its weapons are necessary to defend Lebanon against Israeli aggression.

The first Lebanese national dialogue sessions were held in 2006, before the devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel, to determine the fate of the weapons held by this Shiite Iranian terrorist militia. But it has been delayed several times because of the country's successive political crises.

Hezbollah has built up its arsenal in recent years from 14,000 rockets at the outbreak of the 2006 war to more than 40,000 now. It fired around 4,000 rockets into northern Israel during the 2006 war. Last month, Hezbollah General Secretary, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed to unleash the group's military might on Israel's infrastructure, including Tel Aviv airport, should the Jewish state attack Lebanon.

It is worth mentioning that during its deplorable occupation era, Baathist Syria had forced since 1982 the armed Hezbollah Shiite organization under the disguise of resistance against Israel, as well as many other armed Lebanese and Palestinian militias, safeguarded the outlaw status quo of the cantons it created in all the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and produced a corrupt and conscienceless generation of subservient puppet Lebanese politicians who are professionals in camouflage, carrying on flimflam, fraud, knavery, treason, lying and cheating.

The disarmament of Hezbollah must be a priority in the rational dialogue sessions that will start today. All manipulative, Trojan and twisted justifications used by Hezbollah's leadership and their Syrian and Iranian rogue regimes to hinder Hezbollah’s disarmament must be addressed openly, exposed publicly and stripped of all lies and threats in front of all the Lebanese people and the whole world.

Hezbollah which is an Iranian-sponsored Shiite terrorist jihad militia based in southern Lebanon, Beirut and Bekaa Valley, was the only Lebanese armed militia allowed by Syria to remain armed in 1990 when Christian, Druze and Muslim Lebanese militias were all disarmed in accordance with the "Taef Accord" (forced on Lebanon's MPs in a conference held at the Saudi Taef City in 1988 to end 15 years of internal Lebanese wars). Syria also did not disarm any of the Palestinian militias and at the same time did not allow the Lebanese authorities to carry out this duty.

Hezbollah militarily and administratively fully controls Lebanon and its government. This current bizarre armed status quo is in defiance of the Lebanese constitution and of both the "Taef Accord" and the UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701, as well as the "Armistice Agreement" that regulated the Lebanese - Israeli borders (signed in 1949).

Both UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701 as well as the "Taef Accord , call for the disarmament of all militias, for the Lebanese army to patrol the Lebanese Israeli border and for the Lebanese government to enforce its control and authority on all the Lebanese territories through its own legitimate armed forces.

Hezbollah strongly refuses to disarm, while its General Secretary Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and many other of his top aides have publicly cautioned that any hand that dares to touch their arms has to be an Israeli one and will be accordingly severed. At the same time they keep on threatening that any attempt for their disarmament will lead to a state of internal unrest and confrontations.

All the Lebanese leadership is required to take a clear-cut stance on Hezbollah's weaponry and declare publicly what kind of dialogue they are perusing? Is it the kind of dialogue that Hezbollah is after in a bid to safeguard its current military status quo at the expense of the central government authority, keep its huge arsenal, maintain full control on the cantons it erected in South Lebanon, Beirut suburbs and Bekaa Valley, and keep Lebanon's decision making process for peace and war in the hands of Syria and Iran? Or a dialogue that is preset to fully disarm Hezbollah, disintegrate its military structure and help in its integration into the political, democratic and peaceful Lebanese life?

It is a sad reality that the majority of Lebanese political and religious groups, including the Lebanese government members, are either camouflaging and frightened to take a stance or are on Hezbollah's side for religious or personal agenda reasons.

We strongly believe that both the UN and free world countries who prepared, sponsored and passed the UN Resolutions 1559, 1701 and forced Syria to put an end to its occupation of Lebanon, have a further obligation to see that all clauses of these two resolutions are implemented and that Hezbollah and all the other Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias are disarmed, or otherwise the whole Middle East will know no peace and the war against terrorism will never be won.

*Elias Bejjani
Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator
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