Hezbollah is no Resistance..Its Terrorist Record Speaks for Itself

From:  https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/110830/nadim-bustani-hezbollah-is-no-resistance-its-terrorist-record-speaks-for-itself/

Hezbollah is no Resistance..Its Terrorist Record Speaks for Itself
Nadim Bustani
July 29, 2022

According to international law, the legitimacy of military resistance against foreign occupation is justified by the right to self-determination. Which means that if the people are in a position to implement their will within the constitutional authority of the state, the resistance posture is negated, and the conflict becomes a state of war between two states.

Hezbollah cannot claim to be a resistance while at the same time fully participating in the political process in Lebanon and being represented in the institutions of the state, let alone when it has seized control of most levers of power in the country. Furthermore, if a truce extends beyond a year, the right to resistance is greatly diminished despite the persistence of the occupation, whereby the cessation of military activities which has firmly taken hold between Lebanon and Israel from 2006 to date strips the resistance of its justifications.

Under international law, the organization must not undertake any military actions whose immediate goal is not to liberate occupied land from foreign forces, and it should not be involved in internal fighting. Accordingly, Hezbollah’s fighting in Yemen and Syria, and earlier in the fighting in Beirut on May 7, 2008, or even its participation in the Yugoslavia War, deals a blunt blow to its character as a resistance.

Other critical international law principles for classifying a movement as a resistance stipulate that the policies of such a movement should not include the a priori threat of military action, so that the threat does not itself become the factor leading to an outbreak of war or causing the military occupation. The movement’s combat actions are also prohibited from being retaliatory actions for previous strikes because military reactions have nothing to do with resistance, yet these characteristics have become Hezbollah’s entrenched policy in the very words of its secretary general.

Among these fundamental principles is the obligation on the part of the organization not to exploit the guarantees provided by the laws of war. In particular, the organization is prohibited from using human shields such as taking advantage of hospitals, schools, and other civilian facilities as shelters for the protection of its soldiers and assets, which is what Hezbollah violates by continuing to concentrate its military activity in the heart of residential areas, building its depots in high-density populated areas, and seeking to camouflage itself in them.

Perhaps the most fundamental of these rules is banning the targeting of the hostile party’s civilians under any circumstance. This prohibition includes randomly firing shells and missiles onto cities, taking hostages, killing war prisoners, practicing torture, targeting diplomatic missions, peacekeeping, or truce enforcement troops. The organization must also permanently abide by all the provisions of the international laws of war, which in Hezbollah’s case is beyond discussion because since its inception it has never distinguished between civilian and military targets during combat, much as it has never spared diplomatic missions or peacekeeping forces, not to forget its public claim of responsibility for taking hostages and killing them.

In sum, an organization seeking to be classified as a resistance must adhere to international treaties and conventions, particularly those signed by the country to which the organization belongs, and here we refer to the 1949 Truce Agreement between Lebanon and Israel.

Hezbollah claims for itself the mantle of a national resistance against the Israeli occupation, while it does not fulfill the binding criteria cited above. The question is not connected to the Israeli withdrawal of 2000, whereby some people argue that Hezbollah ceased to be a resistance movement after that withdrawal. The fact is, however, that Hezbollah has since its inception being systematically involved in military activities violating the tenets of this classification, and indeed making itself fit the classification of a terrorist organization.

Among these military activities:

• The bombing of the US Embassy in April 1983 in Beirut, killing 63 victims including 32 Lebanese nationals; 
• The bombing of the headquarters of the Multi-National Force (MNF) in October 1983 in which 346 people lost their lives, when these troops were tasked not with a combat mission but with the humanitarian peacekeeping mission to separate combatants, namely to secure the exit of the Palestinian fighters and protect the civilians in the camps, with the approval of the Lebanese state. This bombing of the MNF troops is widely known as the bombing of the US Marines headquarters near Beirut Airport, and the bombing of the French paratroopers in their Drakkar compound;  
• The bombing of the US Embassy in September 1984, killing 23 people the majority of whom were Lebanese citizens following up on their visa applications;  
• The kidnapping, assassination, and torture of civilians, diplomats, journalists, and Christian clergymen throughout the 1980s, reaching a total of 104 kidnapped individuals, of whom 8 were killed, including for example two presidents of American University of Beirut, David Dodge and Malcom Kerr;  
• The bombings in Kuwait City in December 1983 that targeted oil facilities, the embassies of the United States and France, the airport, and the workers’ residences of an American company. These attacks killed 5 victims;  
• The hijacking of a Kuwaiti Airlines flight in December 1984 with its 95 passengers or whom two were killed;  
• The attempted assassination of the Emir of Kuwait by a suicide operative who targeted his convoy in May 1985, in which three people were killed while Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabbah suffered injuries;  
• The hijacking to Beirut Airport of TWA Flight 847 a few minutes after its takeoff from Athens in June 1985. Among the 147 passengers on board, a retired US Navy diver, Dean Stethem, who was killed and his body dumped on the Beirut airport tarmac, and the renowned singer Demis Roussos;  
• The hijacking of a Kuwaiti Airlines flight in April 1988 with 112 passengers on board, two of whom were killed; Backing the Palestinian organizations in the War of the Camps, and direct involvement in the Iqlim Al-Touffah war and the battles that followed it against the Amal organization, which resulted in the death of upwards of 2,500 people over three years between 1988 and 1990; Hezbollah is also responsible for liquidating many leaders of the National Movement in the late 1980s, including among others Mahdi Amel and Hussein Mroueh;  
• The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in March 1992 in which 29 people, a majority of whom children, were killed when their school was hit by the explosion; then the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Argentina in July 1994 in which 85 people lost their lives; 
  
• Participating in the bombing of the Al-Khobar Residential Compound in Saudi Arabia in June 1996, which killed 19 people; 
  
• Dispatching dozens of fighters, including a Hezbollah cadre, Ali Fayyad, to fight alongside the Bosnian militias in the civil war in Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1995; 
  
• Bombing of a tourist bus carrying Jewish passengers in the region of Bourgas in Bulgaria in July 2012. Six people were killed in the attack;
  
• Preparing explosive devices, setting up munitions depots and security networks in countries like Thailand, Germany, Britain, France, Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus, the US, and Brazil; 
  
• Storing munitions in populated areas, some of which has exploded causing civilian deaths in the regions of Shahabiya (2004), Khirbit Selem (2009), Tayr Harfa (2012), Nabi Sheet (2012), and Ayn Cana (2020); 
  
• The conviction of a Hezbollah leader, Saleem Ayyash, by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon at the Hague for participating in the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Ayyash is also accused in four other assassination cases and terrorist operations, cases which are pending before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and in the May 7, 2008, military occupation of the city Beirut and for launching attacks against civilians in Beirut, Shwayfat and other localities in which 71 people were killed, 23 of them civilians; 
  
• Organizing international smuggling and money laundering networks according to reports by the FATF organization (Financial Action Task Force), which the Lebanese Parliament approved in Law 44/2015 pertaining to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing;  
• Participating in the Syrian and Yemeni wars since 2012 and to date, with responsibility for the death of thousands of civilians and military personnel.
  

Governing Hezbollah’s fight against Israel or its truce-like appeasement of it, like all its other military activities, is a radical Islamic ideology which doesn’t really care for the existence of occupied territories or for transgressions against national sovereignty or for preserving the people’s freedom and interests. Rather, its priority is to secure the success of the Islamic revolution around the world. This ideology is under the orders of the Jurisprudent Ruler who alone has the power to interpret it and adapt it to the secular conditions, most notably declaring and conducting Holy War or Jihad. In other words, he holds the decision of war or peace as expressly stated in the book published by Hezbollah’s deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem, “Hezbollah, the Method … the Experience… the Future”.

More ominous is the fact that Hezbollah defines itself as the “Islamic Resistance in Lebanon”, which means that its fight is governed by a defense of Islam (according to its ideology) and not a defense of Lebanon. Even its flag is copied in near complete identity from the flag of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which negates the claims that such an organization aims to achieve Lebanon’s national interest.

Hezbollah doesn’t deny its organic and ideological ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the question is not merely one of religious liberties and subordination to a religious authority, as is the case with Catholics and their relationship with the Vatican. This is because the personal status (subject to religious laws in Lebanon) loses its sway in cultural matters and in the family status, and does not give the right to assemble armies and subordinate them to a non-constitutional authority. Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has admitted this much publicly when he literally said, “I am proud to be a soldier in the party of the Jurisprudent Ruler, and as such we declare that our leadership, our will, the rule of our affairs, the decision of our war and our peace is in the hands of the Jurisprudent Ruler”.

Accordingly, it is urgent to categorically stop qualifying Hezbollah as a “national resistance”, to cease granting any justifications for its military organization which operates outside the provisions of Lebanese laws, neither before nor after the Israeli Army’s withdrawal, since Hezbollah has never had the attributes of a legitimate resistance. Rather, its activities fit perfectly in the terrorism category.

In Pictures and Jest: Lebanon's Ruling Tsar and Consorts

 

 

 

 

Michel Aoun, the puppet Christian president of Lebanon has undergone a political conversion from a wannabe, but failed, liberator of his country to Lebanon's Grand Dhimmi in servitude to the Syrian dictatorship and the Iranian theocracy. Since he now follows only God's will, he doesn't mind poverty, garbage, corruption, foreign occupation, etc. because it is all in God's hands. Therefore, a do-nothing execution of his presidential powers is backed by a "no comment" or "just say no" policy. The much promised accomplishments of a "strong" president were based on a primitive tribal definition of "strong", which in Aoun's mind consists of being a vengeful obstructionist to any solution to the devastation he has himself brought to his country. His declining mind, unfortunately, has become a dump for Gebran Bassil's nefariously stupid and pedestrian ideas which are behind Aoun's conversion from a Jewish Israeli lover (see Aoun's 2002 interview posted on this site) to a born-again Baathist rejectionist of the purest stinking Syrian vintage. I think I would like to see a "weak" president after Aoun. Just curious to compare and contrast.

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah has developed elbow joint inflammation from shaking his arm, brandishing his fist, and pointing his finger. He just can't stop. Either his orders from Tehran are really cruel, or he's developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Thank God he's got a vast reservoir of hatred to drive him and propel his upper limbs' repetitive movements. Thank God also for the sub-standard unregulated Iranian anti-inflammation drugs that have swamped the Lebanese pharmacies in the absence of regulated high-quality drugs whose scarcity is due to a Lebanese state that has been bankrupted by Nasrallah's Quixotic quest to destroy everyone and everything that disagree with him. He's obsessed with Israel. He can't live while Israel is still around, in fact so close to Lebanon that Hassan has also developed a cankerous rash in his mouth. I wouldn't come close to his microphone, what with the diseased times we live in where spit drizzle, no matter how emotional and well-intentioned, can cause severe disease. 

 

And now, the Crown Prince of the Free Patriotic Movement, one Gebran Bassil whose claim to political position rests on his marriage to the President's daughter, and also on the President's heavy-handed repeated appointments of Bassil to FPM party leadership and ministerial posts where he proved himself a terrible and corrupt loser. Bassil is believed to be the Rasputin of the Aoun family, just as his counterpart of Russian lore served the Romanov imperial family. His advice to Tsar Aoun caused Aoun to undergo the conversion mentioned above, from one of liberating Lebanon from Syria and Iran to one of dhimmitude to Syria and Iran. Where are you modern-time Bolsheviks to rid us of both Gebran Rasputin Bassil and Michel Romanov Aoun? Notice that the rocket he holds in his hand in the picture was a gift from Hezbollah in gratitude for playing the Christian fig leaf to hide the monstrosity of Hezbollah. No one knows what he did with this thing, but one thing is certain: he has an alternative (up his Laqlook palace) to the presidential seat after he loses his bid to it in October. Given the shortages of fuel, he will need a warm contraption to embrace and that rocket will do the trick.

Lebanon's Syrian Refugees

The Palestinian Refugee Precedent

In 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed the borders of Palestine into the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, chased by the Jewish Zionist terrorist organizations Haganah, Lehi, Irgun, Stern and others (later to coalesce and become the "most moral army of the  world", the Israeli Army. Perhaps the 'moral' qualifier was a typo error whereby the intended word was 'mortal'). These Jewish terrorist organizations had been conducting a campaign of terror against the native Palestinian population and against the British mandatory power. 

Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 people and injuring dozens. But most tragically, these European Jewish terrorists, having "trained" under the Nazi regime in Germany before invading Palestine, supposedly as refugees fleeing Europe, became the butchers of their Palestinian hosts.

In 1948, Lehi assassinated in Jerusalem Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish envoy of the UN trying to mediate the civil war between the native Palestinian owners of the land and the European Jewish invading colonists. 

More than 600 Palestinian villages were attacked, their inhabitants killed, raped and forced to flee (just as Joshua was commanded to do by his God Yawheh: every man, woman and child of the native Canaanites were to be killed whilst Yahweh gave the Hebrews the Promised land), and while many of these villages became Jewish colonies with new names, the vast majority with their old stone houses and their olive orchards were burned, destroyed, demolished and razed to the ground. 

Today, the millions of Palestinian refugees who descend from the original refugees live in the squalor of refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, in the West Bank and in, ironically, Israel itself. Jewish colonists from Brooklyn New York move to Israel, kill a few Palestinians in the West Bank, uproot their olive orchards, claim the lands of the Palestinians by virtue of obsolete and suspicious Ottoman and British laws, and build themselves high-end houses overlooking the very same refugee camps in which they herded the Palestinian owners of the land. Just as white British colonists did in the nascent America of the 1800s with the native Indian population, herded into reservations after their lives, livelihoods and lands were taken from them. No wonder the US and Israel are as united as they are: They share the same barbarity and indecency of their birth and growth at the expense of the millennial native populations.

In 1965, less than two decades after their eviction from their ancestral Palestine, the Palestinians founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which proceeded with US and Western collusion to undermine Lebanon. Henry Kissinger, who had sealed the truce between Syria and Israel after the October 1973 war, enrolled the two countries into a programmed destabilization of Lebanon with the goal of making Lebanon a substitute homeland for the Palestinian refugees. All Arab countries joined Syria and Israel in undermining Lebanon, sending money, weapons, mercenaries and terrorists to fan the flames of wars. Those Arab countries included Saudi Arabia, Libya, Irak, Jordan, Kuwait and others, all of whom sided with the Palestinians against the Lebanese Christians. 

If the Palestinian refugees settle permanently in Lebanon, they will no longer claim the Right of Return to their ancestral Palestine, thus relieving Israel of that problem. Since the vast majority of the Palestinian refugees are Sunni Muslims, their settlement in Lebanon would demographically favor the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon and by extension the Arab countries. And so it was that, in the aftermath of the Lebanese War between the Palestinians and the Christians of Lebanon, the Lebanese Sunnis came out as victors, a victory personified by one Rafik Hariri who proceeded to Islamize the country and sideline the historic role of the Christians.

The Syrian Refugee Situation

Fast forward to 2011-2022. Millions of Syrian refugees cross their country's borders into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, fleeing not a foreign invader but their own government, the Assad dictatorship. Bashar Assad, aided by the equally barbaric Russian military, destroyed city after city of his own country and murdered close to 600,000 of his own people. Close to half the country's population lives today in tents and refugee camps in the countries adjacent to Syria. In Lebanon, an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees have settled 'temporarily' with the hope of returning some day to Syria, nearly all of them Sunni Muslims. Same pattern as with the Palestinian refugees, thus furthering the demographic collapse of Lebanon's diversity in favor of the Sunnis. But Bashar Assad, the dictator in Syria, is not Sunni; he is an Alawite Muslim, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam comprising about 12% of Syria's population before the Syrian War of 2011. Which means he has no interest in the return of these Sunnis to Syria because, without them, the Alawites now represent 40% of the population after the exodus of the Sunnis.

In Lebanon, the Syrian refugees represent a third of the country's total population. In addition to 4 million native Lebanese, there are 1.5 million Syrian refugees, and another 0.5 million irregular non-refugee Syrians who cross the border daily, smuggling cheap Lebanese government-subsidized goods (flour, gasoline, medicine, etc.) into Syria where they bolster the decrepit Syrian economy while bleeding the Lebanese economy. Moreover, each Syrian refugee in Lebanon receives $100 a month in aid from Western countries and colluding non-governmental organizations whose sole concern is not the welfare of Lebanon or the welfare of the refugees for that matter; their sole concern is to prevent a wave of emigration to Europe, thus doing all they can to keep the refugees in Lebanon. The argument for not encouraging them to return to Syria is that the Syrian dictator will seek revenge on them, even though the vast majority of the refugees adore Bashar Assad and demonstrate in the streets of Lebanon in favor of the Syrian dictator.

The Syrian refugees receive the same services (electricity, water, Internet, etc.) as the Lebanese population but they do not pay for these services. Not only does this deny the Lebanese Treasury much needed revenue, but it also curtails the availability of these services to the Lebanese the population. This is in part why Lebanon is in the throes of a major economic crisis: The burden of the Syrian refugee population. The refugees have settled in camps, but they also live and work in nearly every municipality of the country. They receive all manner of assistance off the back of the Lebanese population. The refugees have no environmental concerns for their host country, literally trashing the country everywhere they happen to be. Environmental standards in Syria are abysmal to say the least, and the refugees have brought with them an absolute carelessness when it comes to garbage and waste disposal. Lebanon's roads, streets, and rivers are littered with plastic, which further exacerbates the garbage problem of Lebanon. The Syrian refugees are responsible for the skyrocketing crime rates (theft, kidnappings for ransom, rapes, murders, etc.), including stealing electric cables off the electricity grid and manhole covers and every possible source of metal they can resell. In addition, having being brainwashed by the Baathist regime of Damascus to hate Lebanon as a renegade country they describe as a former Syrian province that was detached from Syria by the French mandate, the Syrian refugees viscerally hate their Lebanese hosts. Having also ridden the Islamic fundamentalist wave of the past 3 decades, they hate the Lebanese because it has a large Christian population and has a Christian president. The Syrian refugees work in all sectors of the economy, open businesses, smuggle goods across the border, and overall live better off than the average Lebanese whose income has dwindled to about $75 per month. Finally, we must not forget that the Lebanese people have been more than courteous and generous with a Syrian population whose parent generation constituted the Syrian army of occupation that smothered Lebanon for 30 years, killing and stealing, kidnapping and torturing, shelling and bombing just as it does today in Syria, only to be evicted by an angry populace in 2005.

It has now been 11 years since the Syrian refugees arrived in Lebanon. If the Palestinian refugee saga is any guide, I predict that the Syrian refugees will soon organize into social-political-military groupings to demand their "rights" and a war will ensue between, on one hand, the refugees and their Lebanese allies (Hezbollah and President Michel Aoun's populist party), and the other political and religious components of the country on the other, thus repeating the War of 1975. There already is a lot of seething anger among the Lebanese, and there are daily reports of local fights and skirmishes in which the Lebanese demand their local authorities to deny entry and housing to Syrians living among the population. Flyers have been found in the mountain villages in the Christian hinterland in which people are demanding that the Syrians leave their villages. 

The Lebanese government, essentially Hezbollah and President Michel Aoun's party, the Free Patriotic Movement, are caught in a bind. On one hand, they love Bashar Assad and do not want to embarrass  him by demanding that he take back the refugees, but on the other hand, they know their own governance of the country is in absolute disarray because of what the Syrian refugees are doing to Lebanon and its people. Meanwhile, foreign governments refuse to pressure Assad to take back the refugees.

Since 1972, Lebanon has been in this sordid state of affairs for close to 5 decades. It is disintegrating in a slow death that neither the local politicians - half of whom are traitors affiliated with foreign countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia -  nor the foreign governments seem to want to stop. When one thinks of how an armada was assembled in the Indo-Pacific to help 200,000 East Timorese secede from 250 million Indonesians, or of when NATO led by the US forcibly sliced off Muslim Bosnia and Muslim Kosovo from the old Yugoslavia to create two new Muslim nations in the heart of Europe, or how the Europeans are welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees and NATO is supplying Ukraine with all manner of advanced weapons, while abandoning Lebanon, a founding member of the UN and a co-drafter of its Human Rights Charter, especially its Christians, to 50 years of torment, wars and instability, it becomes difficult to ignore the conspiratorial view that the West is deliberately killing Lebanon with its complex makeup of Christians and Muslims of 18 sects, in order to reduce the entire Middle East to an easy to understand (by dumb Americans and Europeans) simplistic Jewish-Sunni duality that is already on the mend with the ongoing normalization of relations between Israel and virtually all Sunni Muslim Arab countries.

When the West used to interfere in the Middle East, back from Crusader times through the Ottoman occupation, it would cite Lebanon's Christians as the minority to be helped. Nowadays, the deliberate killing of Lebanon by a colluding West is simply because they no longer need Lebanon's Christians as a Trojan horse to meddle in the region; today the Middle East question has its newer, more European "victim" in need of protection, and that is the Israeli colonists. While Lebanon's Christians have been in Lebanon for millennia, before and after they became Christians, Israeli Jews were never a part of historic Palestine, they don't even descend from the original Hebrews: They converted to Judaism in the 16th and 17th centuries, and with their blond/red hair and blue eyes (Central European Jews), or their African looks (Ethiopian and Egyptian Jews), or the many different ethnic Jewish groups in India, China and elsewhere, cannot have any serious claims to be genetic descendants of the Hebrews or to own the land of Palestine, except perhaps by some horrific tenuous religious claim from the Bronze Age that no sane human being should countenance in this 21st century. 

What exit for Lebanon? How can the country return to some normality? Many hypothetical answers to one question that only the history unfolding before our eyes will answer. In the meantime, suffer you miserable Christians of Lebanon. But when war erupts, beware the wrath of the Lebanese Christians. They were patient for 10 years with the mayhem and plunder that the Palestinian refugees did to the country in the late 1960s and 1970s, trying to accommodate their presence with a number of agreements that the Palestinians kept violating. But finally, in a spontaneous uprising they waged a war of liberation that ultimately sent the Palestinians back into their camps. Nowadays, the Christians have been patient with the Syrian Muslim refugees for a decade now, welcoming them into their villages and towns, working and living with them side by side. But tensions are building, the Syrian refugees are casting a shadow over any sense of humanitarian feelings by a destitute Lebanese population that increasingly sees the refugees as thieves, criminal, rapists, and worse, as supporters of the very Syrian regime that chased them out of Syria. 

Welcome to a new Lebanese War waged by Lebanon's Christians against the Syrian refugees who may not want to return to Syria, and who may try to seize power with the aid of Hezbollah and the pro-Syrian regime of Michel Aoun. On the part of the Christians, I hope they have learned the lessons of 1975, namely the need to win the war first and foremost in the media where they utterly failed in 1975 by meeting Palestinian savagery with their own savagery. If the Christians this time around want to win the war, both militarily and in the media, they have to remain within the bounds of decency and wage a clean and truly 'Christian' war.

Aoun's Legacy: Unprincipled Greed for Power (English - full text)

To the naive people of Lebanon: Compare and contrast the "free" Aoun of 2002 with the "hostage" Aoun of 2022:

This April 9, 2002 interview with Michel Aoun is to be contrasted with his upside-down, inside-out political re-positioning from 2006 to date. Below is the English translation of the rather lengthy Arabic original [see previous post].

Highlights and comments:
Aoun's political positions prior to 2006 on Hezbollah, Shebaa, Syria and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

- The Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms is a lie

- Aoun rejects Hezbollah's rejection of the existence of Israel

- We must negotiate with Israel, not exterminate it. It has the right to exist

- Aoun reads Israeli author Shlomo Ben-Ami

- Aoun rejects much of Hezbollah's ideas, because these ideas are "somewhat strange to our society and incompatible with Lebanon’s traditional mission".

- Syria and Hezbollah's extremist positions: Either reckless or in collusion with Israel

- Aoun's own words about his "Aounist" youth: ... If I change my positions, the Aounist movement will abandon me and look for another leader!

Hahahaha..... Funny but sad. Aoun did completely reverse his political positions in 2006, which makes him lack credibility and integrity. He sold his principles to Hezbollah in exchange for becoming President. Many honorable people dumped him, but many numskull idiots still follow him like a herd of sheep and, to make things worse, they now follow his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, a much detested and obnoxious figure in Lebanese politics. Bassil is under US sanctions for corruption, and has suffered a major defeat in last May's elections. Ever since his "conversion", Aoun and his poodle son-in-law Bassil have been engaged in what I call "vengeful change and reform". Still bleeding it seems from Aoun's abject defeat in 1990, they just want to obstruct and cause headaches, mostly to the Sunni prime ministers, as a way to avenge what the Sunnis did to the Maronites between 1975 and 2005. Their notion of change and reform is one where they want to take the country backward to the pre-Taef situation, oblivious to the fact that the country has somewhat evolved and is on its knees, and that "their" Christians are leaving the country forever, yet again.

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FULL TEXT - English translation from Arabic of the interview of ex-PM Michel Aoun with MTV Station’s Elie Nakouzi, April 9, 2002, on “Sajjil Maouqif” Program.

For the Arabic original, please see [https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/07/aouns-legacy-unprincipled-greed-for.html]

A poll was taken at the start of the program asking viewers the following question:
- Do you support opening the Lebanese front with Israel to back the Palestinian Intifada and resistance?
- Results: 82% against, 18% for 

--------------- [begin interview here] -----------------

Q: PM Aoun, welcome, and we hope this will be the last time we interview you in Paris. Hopefully our next interview will be in our MTV studios, here in Lebanon.
Aoun: This is my wish as well, to meet with the Lebanese people face to face on Lebanese soil, no matter where, at home, under an olive or pine tree. The important thing is that it takes place on free Lebanese soil.

Q: Many are asking today about the Aounist movement and why we don’t see it demonstrating with the Palestinian people. After all, the Aounist Movement promotes action on the ground, sit-ins and demonstrations.
Aoun: Quite the contrary. I did not call for demonstrations, but I instructed the members of the Tayyar [Aounist movement] to contribute by raising their voices if they so wish. Today there was a sit-in at the Lawyers Syndicate, and the largest group there was that of the Tayyar. Same with the engineers. The Tayyar is called upon to make a humanitarian contribution to anything that can help the Palestinians. But we do not condone dictating what position the Palestinians should take. We have a global view of the Palestinian issue and we are not politically subordinated to anyone. If a group wishes to demonstrate in a certain way, we do not condone it.

In general, we support the Palestinian people’s identity and nationhood, but at the same time, we do not want to dictate on them what they should accept or refuse. We support their rights in the absolute, but we do not have a policy of outbidding the Palestinians themselves; we do not wish to corner them in the negotiations. Whoever agrees to negotiate in order to reach a resolution must be prepared with a bottom line in matters of vital interest and for a maximum of demands. During the negotiations, one cannot win the maximum of demands, nor concede less than the minimum. However, since the start of the negotiations to date, it seems that whenever the Palestinian issue nears a resolution, pressures are exercised on the Palestinians by a group of maximalist outsiders for the purpose of cornering the head of the Palestinian Authority into rejecting that resolution. He is thus shoved into a position of weakness, and sometimes of treason, should he accept the proposals for a resolution.

Q: Who in your opinion is putting pressure on the Palestinians?
Aoun: There is a rejectionist party, consisting today on the surface, of Syria and Hezbollah. They are the two parties who are pressuring the Palestinian people and all the Palestinian resistance to go in a particular direction. Here I say that it is wrong to create now the environment of 67 because the Palestinian youth who holds an olive branch in one hand and a stone in the other hand has gained the sympathy and support of the world for the Palestinian cause. But when the booby-trapped cars began exploding, this sympathy was lost and the destructive power of Israel was let loose, and that is a dangerous thing…

Q: You mean the martyrdom operations?
Aoun: These are suicide, not martyrdom, operations. No religion calls for this culture of death and suicide. No human being should be given a mission whose outcome is certain death.

Q: Even if he volunteers for it?
Aoun: We shouldn’t forget the psychological environment in which the person is put in preparation for such an act. I do want to go back to my idea that this Palestinian youth with a stone in his hand has given his cause international support, but booby-traps and bombs have liberated Israel’s destructive power and made its use legitimate. At one point, there was an Israeli Army that was beginning to object to its presence in the West Bank and say, “No to my presence here”, and about 350 Israeli soldiers and officers signed a petition in that regard. Later, 20,000 reservists were called and not one slackened, and now 31,000 additional reservists have been called in and no one slackened here either. Why?? Because there is a rejectionist discourse against the Israeli presence, even in its human aspect. There is for example the discourse of Hezbollah that considers the totality of the Israeli people as a legitimate target, and the similar discourse of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad when he says that there is no Israeli civilian community, that the killing of Israelis is legitimate. We reject this language, and we reject this discourse, and we reject the policy of extermination. By the way, I recall that the Syrian regime said it went into Lebanon to save the Christians from extermination; I want to ask him “who was it that wanted to exterminate us? And who sent those forces who carried out the extermination actions?”

To call for exterminating an entire people is not a humanitarian and civilized posture. This is not permissible, and we do not support it, particularly those terrorist actions from which we previously suffered. We are the country of the 350 car bombs during the troubles, and the Lebanese people remember well the cars that were exploding in all regions. We are against this thinking, this idea of indiscriminately exterminating a society.

Q: But Israel uses an extermination policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, so how do you confront it?
Aoun: This current war is a break from civilization. All parties are killing all parties. Israel is a significant destructive force and military power. By using this weapon (booby-traps) we liberate Israel’s destructive force, and we legitimize its use. I am not discussing what Israel does, nor am I Israel’s keeper to give it advice. I am expressing an opinion on an issue that matters to me and that is close to my heart, which is the Palestinian cause that was winning much in the past. I guarantee you now that the Palestinian people will have a homeland and will have an identity. An Israeli military victory does not eliminate the Palestinian homeland or the rights of the Palestinian people.

Q: You are therefore optimistic about the Palestinian people’s victory?
Aoun: Certainly, but not in the way some people want it. It is not by eliminating Israel, as Hezbollah and Bashar Assad say, because this policy is rejected internationally. Of course, they will reach some mind of a resolution, but this is not the policy which will lead to a resolution, and many issues could have been simplified. I support the rights of the Palestinian people in the absolute, but I do not condone things that go against my beliefs, particularly as I am a symbol of a Lebanese independence movement that believes in non-violence. I have with me young people with the same enthusiasm as the young Palestinians, and they like the use of violence and constantly try to convince me of attacking a Syrian position, and my answer is always “No” because I do not want to liberate the Syrian force that is on the ground from the restraints and allow it to strike those young people, just as I don’t want to liberate the Lebanese force which is in the hands of the ruling authority and allow it to strike the young Lebanese people. This is from wisdom and experience.

Q: This non-violent action and logic in which you believe, does it come from your experience in power, for you used to believe in violence to liberate the country?
Aoun: I was the head of a regular army, and we were facing another army. We were fighting in an intellectually poisoned society with kidnappings on the basis of identity, car bombs, theft, murder and plunder, so where are we to blame in all of this? In our combat, we respected all the terms of international agreements stipulating the respect of the other in the fight. We did not kill a prisoner, we didn’t even blindfold those we arrested. There is a difference between combat and killing; we fought, we did not kill.

Q: Aren’t suicide operations a form of resistance?
Aoun: This is one opinion, but there are other opinions that prohibit it. There are for instance opinions from Al-Azhar that refer to these actions as ‘suicide’ not ‘martyrdom’ operations and do not allow them. I’ve read many articles by Muslim scholars who do not condone these operations. There are different perspectives and I, as a matter of principle, I do not and will not condone them. I did not condone them for myself, so I cannot condone them for others. I am not in a position to judge the Palestinian resistance because it used those methods, but this use, regardless of its motives, has liberated Israel’s destructive power. I am not justifying the actions of Sharon and the Israeli government, but I consider these actions wrong because, as I keep saying, they have legitimized Israel’s use of its destructive power. Furthermore, these operations have fostered an Israeli solidarity between those Israelis who want “peace now” and those who categorically reject peace, and thus one way or another they have supported the anti-peace ideology. So, I believe that military escalation is futile, particularly in a balance of forces that is to a large extent subject to international restraints and not to an intrinsic Arab power that matches Israel’s.

Q: Do you think that Arabs today are incapable of waging war?
Aoun: They know their power better than me, and I don’t know what they have. But I think that after 54 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began in 1948, and after a number of Arab Israeli wars from 1956 through 1967 and 1973, not forgetting 1982 and other smaller wars and skirmishes, and now this internal war in Palestine, I think that after all of this the Arabs have the experience, and I have noticed that those with experience behave more wisely in this juncture. As for those who do not have the experience , mostly young people, they are eager for war, like Hezbollah and President Bashar Assad.

Q: Yet the stone Intifada has run out of steam and did not bring their rights to the Palestinians. As a result, they escalated and got to using martyrdom operations.
Aoun: These “martyrdom” operations have produced the current situation as a consequence.

Q: In whose favor is this situation?
Aoun: We will find out ultimately in whose favor it is. I do not have the facts that made the Palestinians do what they’re doing. What I said is an opinion, not a responsibility. I repeat: I am for the Palestinian rights to their identity and nation, and I have given many lectures on this question. But I do not interfere in what is acceptable to the Palestinian people because this is their right and their decision. On the other hand, I do not accept that the Palestinian people be forced and incited by outsiders to a rejectionist posture, especially by political forces pretending to be with the Palestinians yet does nothing on the war front, and I mean specifically Syria. Right now, it is the preeminent rejectionist state but does not activate the Golan front or anything else, other than inciting Hezbollah in Lebanon to carry out a few acts of harassment while claiming to support the Palestinians. Syria supports rejectionism but does not support fighting, or at least it supports fighting by others, and we cannot accept this. This extremist posture by the Syrians and Hezbollah has one of two explanations: It is either a politically reckless and immature posture, or it is simply collusion with Israel to legitimize Israel’s use of its destructive power with a rejectionist façade that dispels any suspicions of that collusion.

Q: Not many people share this accusation with you.
Aoun: Doesn’t matter. But then I am not accusing, I am merely saying that this posture implies two interpretations, either recklessness or collusion.

Q: Do you believe that rejectionism and resistance to liberate land are reckless acts?
Aoun: The mere fact of going to peace negotiations means a recognition of the other side. You cannot at the end of the peace process, and because of a lack of agreement with the other side on a few points, go back and reject the existence of the other side, place that existence in doubt, and use a discourse in which you express a will to eliminate Israel. I am not saying this in order to win votes and supporters, and many may not like these words, but they will remember them after a while.

Q: Therefore in your opinion, the dream of eliminating Israel or remove it from existence has no basis in reality?
Aoun: At least not in the foreseeable future. The peace process has taken wrong turns from the beginning, it followed the path of subterfuges that have hurt Lebanon, the Arabs and the Palestinians. Not to mention the loss of “humans for peace”, because in the environment in which they are trying to build peace, there is no nurturing of people for peace, there are no regimes of peace; dictatorial regimes cannot make peace. Peace requires democratic regimes; it requires a plebiscite of people to agree to it, so it has a popular foundation. Peace must emerge on a favorable ground because who can guarantee the approval of peace by the people in a given region, and who can guarantee that the peace posture will not change with a regime change, absent a plebiscite and a buy-in by the people?

Q: How do you expect this crisis to end? Why are you optimistic that the Palestinians will in the end have a homeland?
Aoun: First, because they are a vigorous people who are defending themselves. These people exist even if we think that some of their stances were faulty. But they exist and they push. Second, there are international resolutions that will be implemented, but they will be implemented with conditions, the first of which is to cease mutual violence. We hear many Arabs advising Israel that the Palestinian question cannot be solved by violence, and this advice goes for the other side too. The Palestinians must realize that their problem will not be resolved with violence. They have had 54 years of experience with violence and reciprocal wars.

Q: But this is the first time that the war comes from the inside.
Aoun: Even so, when the matter becomes an existential question, and each side is defending its existence, they become trapped in their position and cannot come up with a solution. No side can eliminate the other side, and the issue must come to an end at some point.

Q: But Lebanon was able with its Resistance [Hezbollah] to liberate its land and gave the example to the Palestinians.
Aoun: Lebanon is subject to international resolutions, and the Resistance prolonged the occupation. There was an offer by the Israeli government in 1994, and I ask the Lebanese government why did it withdraw from those negotiations when an Israeli offer was made to withdraw? Lebanon withdrew from the negotiations because it hitched its wagon to the Syrian caravan and erased its own political and diplomatic persona. This offer remains on the table, so please ask the then-Lebanese ambassador in Washington, Simon Karam, for he knows much.

Q: Is this the opinion of his Excellency the ambassador Simon Karam as well?
Aoun: There is a memorandum presented to the Lebanese delegation and the Lebanese government that was published in the daily As-Safir. That memo was referred to a court of justice because it was deemed secret. This memo was from Israel to the Lebanese government, and it was deemed secret? Secret from whom? Secrecy is usually kept vis-à-vis the enemy, yet the memo came from the “enemy” as they say, so why did they deem it secret? Were they afraid that the Lebanese people know its contents? Why was its publication at the time considered illegal and referred the newspaper to justice? Fact is, because they did not want to be embarrassed in front of the Lebanese people.

Q: Is there no merit to the Resistance for liberating Lebanon? And in what way do you see that they prolonged the occupation?
Aoun: There was a resolution on the table. Let them explain to us why did they reject it, and why did they not ask for modifications? Why did they not inform Washington that they wanted to make amendments to parts of it and wait for a response? They rejected it in toto and said that Israel wants Lebanon’s water and land, and when Israel declared the opposite, they replied with a “no, you want the water and the land”. I am speaking right now to the Lebanese people, and I stand by my words.

Q: In the past, you used to salute the Resistance.
Aoun: I still salute the fighter, but the decision-maker has a different agenda about which he should questioned. The fighter carried the rifle out of conviction, and this conviction may be built on faulty facts. I salute the fighter and not the political decision. The political effort should at least have been exhausted before we reach this point.

Q: Some Lebanese believe that the resolutions of the international community have failed to deliver for Lebanon, and so there is no alternative to the resistance.
Aoun: This is an advice we should apply to ourselves too, to do to the Syrian army what the Palestinian is doing to the Israelis, in order to force it to implement Resolution 520. What is the difference, militarily speaking, between Ramallah and Baabda? I, for myself, believe in a different approach.
 

Q: Israel is considered an enemy by all Lebanese, but Syria is a friend for a large segment of the Lebanese people.
Aoun: And I say to you that it is more than a friend, it is a brother. We and the Syrian people are brothers and we never wanted to harm them. But is it permissible to kill in the name of brotherhood? Is it permissible to occupy Baabda in the name of brotherhood? Why didn’t they negotiate? Why did they confront me with hostility from the moment I took charge of the interim government? We don’t want to go back to the past, but we cannot build the future if we ignore the past. Past experience must be accounted for, and this is what prompted me to reject the Taef Agreement because it holds Lebanon eternally hostage and it is still held hostage.

Q: Many are pressing to open the Lebanese front to help the Palestinians in their resistance and to remain steadfast. Can this happen, and what would be the outcome?
Aoun: The Lebanese front was never closed to begin with. All of Lebanon is open, where are the closed borders? They’re not closed with Syria and they’re not closed with Israel, and the State is absent from the borders which are open and are the theater of skirmishes. I am for closing the borders, not to avoid responsibility, but look at what’s happening today. Everyone absolves themselves from responsibility for the rockets that are fired, and the latest joke is that they claim these firings are “individual acts”. In Lebanon, firing Grad missiles has become, in the words of the Lebanese government, an “individual act”, as if a rocket launcher is an individual weapon and a Grad missile is a Kalashnikov bullet. They should be ashamed before the world’s public opinion, they are able to coercively convince the Lebanese that one plus one is three, and the Lebanese people may accept this because they were forcibly subjected to ideological thinking and to the uniformity of thought. But they won’t be able to impose it on the world; who’d believe them?

Q: But they arrested the Palestinians who fired the rockets.
Aoun: There were reports today that those who fired the rockets are five Palestinians and two Syrians, so where are the two Syrians? I’d like to ask, who is in charge of the borders? Under whose responsibility are the borders?

Q: Lebanon’s responsibility?
Aoun: The responsibility of Lebanon as a State or as a party?

Q: We still have a part [of the country] that is still occupied, so the resistance is necessary
Aoun: Where is that occupied part?

Q: The Shebaa Farms
Aoun: That’s a lie, and I mean what I say. We cannot modify the map as we please. The Shebaa Farms is not Lebanese, and even if it were Lebanese, it has been annexed by Syria for a long time, and Lebanon did not object. Not once did the Lebanese government mention that it had occupied land subject to the implementation of Resolution 242. Quite the opposite, it said that it is not concerned with Resolution 242 and that it had no occupied land. So, it cannot go back and claim it after the implementation of Resolution 525 and say that it has occupied land. Assuming that Syria does want to return the land to us, it ought to please give us a document in conformity with international law stating that this land is Lebanese and specify on the map the area of land that is Lebanese in the Shebaa Farms, in which case the Resistance should leave the honor of retrieving that land to us.

Q: If Syria recognizes the Lebanese identity of the Shebaa Farms, do you approve of liberating it by resistance?
Aoun: By resistance or no resistance, the important thing is to eat grapes not kill the vineyard guard. I want to keep my eyes on the prize, I want the rights of the Palestinian people. Other solutions should only be considered if a peaceful resolution is entirely out of question.

Q: If the Shebaa Farms are declared to be within the borders of Lebanon, will the existence of Hezbollah be then justified?
Aoun: In this case, and if Israel refuses to evacuate the territory, then Hezbollah’s existence and all other forms of Lebanese resistance become justified.

Q: Therefore, Hezbollah’s weapons should not be removed?
Aoun: Why?

Q: Because the Shebaa Farms may be Lebanese, in which case we’d need those weapons some day.
Aoun: Why don’t they give us the document certifying the Lebanese identity of Shebaa Farms? Where’s the problem? All of Lebanon was under negotiations between Syria and Israel. Have you read Shlomo Ben Ami recently? Rabin’s policy consisted in granting Syria control over all of Lebanon, so does the Shebaa Farms really matter when all of Lebanon is “lost” and becomes Syrian territory?

Moreover, we have other farms than Shebaa that need to be liberated, we have the Koraytem Farm [Hariri], the Baabda Farm [Lahoud], the Place de L’Etoile Farm [Berri], and they all need liberating, they need freedom in decision-making, so let them leave Shebaa Farms alone because it is an altogether different matter. They want to open the Lebanese front, fine. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Shebaa Farms are Lebanese and that we have the right to shoot, and that we do not want to open a dialogue with Israel, nor do we want to implement the international resolution. So there still is the occupied Golan, why doesn’t the sisterly country of Syria, which made itself a guardian of Lebanon, open its own front [against Israel]?

Q: What is our business with the Golan? We just want to liberate Lebanon.
Aoun: Let the Syrian then “get off our back”, since he says that he wants to support us in liberating the Shebaa Farms, while he has the Golan occupied and doesn’t do anything about it.

Q: In your comments on the Farms of Koraytem, Baabda and L’Etoile, you are attacking our constitutional institutions. Regardless of your position on the personalities, you are attacking constitutional instances that the Lebanese respect.
Aoun: True. I no longer respect these instances because they are no longer Lebanese. As for the persons themselves, I blame them only insofar as they provide a cover for transforming these instances into farms. Where is the decision-making in these instances and institutions? They have been converted into skeletons void of life, and those persons have filled them with pre-packaged foreign decisions. There is no free Lebanese decision-making in those institutions, not to mention the administrative, judicial and security institutions which have become annexes to the Syrian administration.

Q: Some have tried to compare your situation on October 13 [1990] with President Arafat’s situation. They said that had the General [Aoun] stayed in Baabda under siege, his cause would have become an international one.
Aoun: I have already spoken about how I went to the [French] embassy, and I repeat it here. Going to the embassy was a basic condition imposed by Elias Hrawi on the French ambassador for a ceasefire. The ambassador told me, “If you agree to a ceasefire, you must come here”. He bluntly told me that he will guarantee the ceasefire because “they don’t want you free and active in Baabda playing tricks and continuing the fight after a restructuring of the forces”. I had a longer than half-an-hour argument with the ambassador, but in the end, I thought that as long as we have admitted our military defeat, why don’t I go to the French embassy since this was the condition, and let the French ambassador be a witness. I went there, but the fighting didn’t stop and it continued until 2 pm, which is why I stayed at the French embassy. The two situations cannot be compared.

Back on the subject of President Arafat, I’d like to ask who wants to isolate him? Is it Israel which has besieged him and imprisoned him, or is it those who prevented him from speaking to the Arab World at the Beirut summit? Who conspired with whom against Yasser Arafat? Those who are imprisoning him and turning him into a hero? Or those who denied him to address the Arab nation?

Q: They prevented the live broadcast for technical reasons
Aoun: We are dealing with a regime that lies as it breathes. The lie of technical justifications did not convince anyone. If we were to believe them, they could have broadcast the speech, and at any suspicion of external interference they could have immediately cut the broadcast off.

Q: What difference would it have made if the address was delivered live or recorded?
Aoun: The problem is not with the speech itself. There is a certain hostility vis-à-vis Abou-Ammar. There are people being clubbed for carrying pictures of Abou-Ammar in demonstrations. This hostility comes from some Arab regimes.

Q: But the people of the Arab world stand in solidarity with him.
Aoun: He is a symbol. Personal sympathy has nothing to do with it. When you want to talk about a particular question, settling personal conflicts is no longer feasible. What happened is a settlement of personal conflicts in the context of a general matter pertaining to the Palestinian people. Are they able to create a substitute for Abou-Ammar other than chaos?

Q: Much has been said that the Syrians having nothing to do with this issue, and that they didn’t ask the Lebanese not to broadcast the speech. The decision was a personal one by President Lahoud who feared an interference by Sharon, as President Lahoud said.
Aoun: Abou-Ammar’s speech was not improvised. It was part of the agenda. What happened is absolutely unacceptable. If Emile Lahoud took it upon himself, as he says, then he is incompetent to be President of the Republic or of the Arab summit. What right does he have to deny another head of state who represents a people to speak? Does he think that his authority is absolute? He is bound to adhere to a specific program; he cannot anticipate a potential external obstacle with a decision; the decision should come as a result of that obstacle. Does he think that representing the Palestinian people is, like General Aoun’s rights, can be bypassed with an arbitrary decision? There is a certain level of responsibility that should be met when dealing with a summit of Arab heads of state and kings; you cannot dispose of their right and you are obligated to adhere to the schedule of speeches and discussions. This is not as spontaneous as some think.

Q: This is your opinion, and many may not share with you your view on the competence of the President of the Republic who they think has many achievements.
Aoun: Would you like to conduct a popular survey on MTV about the competence of the “President of the Republic”?

In any case, it is normal that there’d be opinions with and opinions against what I am saying. Divine standing itself didn’t convince all people, and those who deny the existence of God on earth outnumber those who believe in him. I am discussing facts, not giving opinions. I said that he cannot lead a session and dispose of the rights of a people to express itself. He can impose arresting a student who is distributing a pamphlet by General Aoun, and he can put him in jail by an arbitrary decision. He can pressure the judiciary as he denies me to speak in general or on MTV. But he cannot prohibit the leader of the Palestinian people or their head of state who derives his legitimacy from his people from speaking at the summit under the pretext of Israeli interference.

Q: They say that this is the most successful Arab summit as far as the decisions taken. The sound initiative of Prince Abdallah, the unanimous Arab decision to support the Palestinian resistance in its Intifada, these are unprecedented. So why don’t you see the positive achievements of President Lahoud and Lebanon?
Aoun: You are now asking me to evaluate the summit and the initiative of Prince Abdallah. We are of course with the initiative, we support it and we support any path to peace that brings back negotiations and stops the violence. Violence will return us back to the same cycle we have endured since the creation of Israel. Violence will not solve the problem, neither from the Israeli side nor from the Arab side. Verbal accusations won’t solve the problem. We accuse Sharon that he is a butcher and Sharon accuses Arafat that he is a butcher, and that won’t solve the problem. The problem will be resolved when the rights of the Palestinian people are recognized, followed by a recognition of their right to a homeland, an identity and borders, and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist followed by its right to security. But if we were to measure the Palestinian homeland and the Israeli existence by the centimeter, this is a huge mistake committed by both sides.

Peace in the Middle East is a civilizational posture that must be developed against the policy of violence. It rests upon the acceptance of the other, the right to difference, and the democratization of the regimes. A new Middle East cannot be built with a mindset of violence. Competition in development and plurality will come by the acceptance of the other, the diversity of races, the freedom of creed, according to the Human Rights Charter. I do not believe that states can manage the peace process and make advances in their systems if they do not recognize the freedom of creed, which is not only religious, but which encompasses politics and all other freedoms. Bin Laden’s school cannot survive, the slogan of war against Christians and Jews cannot survive in both East and West. Lebanon is the only oasis for the reconciliation of cultures, Muslim and Christian, because they have been tested and found to be compatible with life. But external interferences and improvised Arab policies, in collusion with the Israelis, have struck Lebanon to turn it into a substitute homeland for the Palestinians, and that was the trap in which the Americans fell, and I paid the price for this policy. I will never forget what the Israeli government said on October 29, 1989: “We cannot back General Aoun and we are not against a Syrian control of Lebanon, and Aoun will pay a dear price”. Same thing with Ubrani’s statement on July 7, 1990, in which he said, “Aoun is digging his grave with his own hands”. Why did they say such things, and what threat did I pose to Israel? Those statements were in favor of Syria.

Q: Back to the Arab summit with its achievement of Prince Abdallah’s initiative which consists in an Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for the return of the refugees, which is what Lebanon has always called for. Don’t you think this was a Lebanese achievement?
Aoun: The summit presented the principled Arab perspective for establishing peace, and this is what they call maximalist demands in negotiations. You have now to dialogue with the other side to discuss these demands and reach an agreement. But you can’t target the other side with an explosive and discuss with him at the same time.

Q: Are you therefore against martyrdom operations?
Aoun: I repeat, these are suicide operations. This is the opinion of Al-Azhar and of many Islamic intellectuals, and I am of the opinion that gives sanctity to life even when the fighter is carrying out a dangerous mission. People fight to live, not to die, and every mission in which you send him to die means you are perpetuating murder. This is my belief, there is no sanctification of death, only of life, and this has become a delusion. I think it is delusional and I shout it at the rooftops. I am not seeking votes, and I am not trying to satisfy anyone. There is a truth that ought to win at the end, and culture cannot be one of martyrdom and death, it should be a culture of life.

Q: Even when these operations target the military and not civilians?
Aoun: I am talking about civilians, and even the soldier who is sent on a very dangerous mission and he accepts it, he should have a chance to life and not commit suicide in it. I am not saying this only now, go back and listen to what I said in Baabda when addressing the soldiers. I always told them that we fight to live free, and I never said let us become martyrs. I escaped death many times and I know what it is to take risks. I was scared and overcame my fears in various places. I do not sanctify the culture of death, killing and suicide.

Q: Were the operations carried out by Hezbollah in South Lebanon against the Israeli military, but not against civilians, justified? Do you justify that a martyrdom operative blows himself up or his car on an Israeli tank or Israeli position?
Aoun: I am against any suicide operation. You may shell it and bomb it, but there should be a chance for the fighter to life. He should not blow himself up, this is for me against all my human and faith beliefs.

Q: How do you think this crisis will end?
Aoun: It will end by stopping the violence and returning to dialogue, the establishment of a Palestinian State, and the coexistence between the Palestinian and Israeli states, because the dialogue of life will ultimately defeat the dialogue of death. As for Lebanon, it is coming back.

Q: Are Lebanon and Syria approaching peace with Israel?
Aoun: False. The “Unity of Path and Destiny” has nothing to do with controlling sovereignty. There is an ongoing process of overtaking the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon and this is rejected. We do not reject cooperating with Syria in choosing peace and a peace plan with Israel. What I reject is the confiscation of Lebanese sovereignty until the Middle East question is resolved. Why then is Jordanian sovereignty or even Syrian sovereignty not confiscated too? Why is Lebanon the only hostage? And who is confiscating it in the name of brotherhood?

Q: Why do you always demand disarming Hezbollah even though it never turned its weapons on the Lebanese interior and does not constitute a domestic threat, only to Israel?
Aoun: Haven’t you heard the speeches that threatened us with civil war if we demand the withdrawal of the Syrians? Hezbollah is the one who made the threats, and who else has weapons but Hezbollah? It told us that we want to create another Kosovo and that it will oppose it and that it is in the front lines in defense of Syria. This is what the Kuwaiti daily “As-Siyassa” reported quoting Hassan Nasrallah, as if he was accusing us and threatening us with civil war if we call for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Why a civil war if Syria leaves Lebanon? Why can’t I live with Hezbollah, me recognizing its existence and its right to be different from me? Why doesn’t it in turn recognize my right to be different, and lay down a social and political contract? Who rejects Hezbollah’s existence? We do not reject it, why is it threatening us? And why is Hezbollah a line of defense for Syria?

Q: Hezbollah is an ally of Syria, and it considers that Syria is a guarantor of stability in Lebanon. This is its point of view.
Aoun: We have an Independence contract and we have the constituents of a nation that cannot depend on contracts Hezbollah makes with foreign countries. The constituents of a nation are sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity of the people. These are not up for discussion. The Syrian presence erases independence, sovereignty and free Lebanese decision-making, so how can it be a guarantor of stability? The Syrian presence has already erased the nation by transforming it into a Syrian province. With the Syrian presence, there no longer a thing called Lebanon.

Q: Don’t you see any positive to the Syrian presence?
Aoun: Of course not. What are its positives? Are they economic or institutional? France had a mandate over us for 25 years, it created for us institutions after we were among the provinces [of the Ottoman Empire]. These institutions paralleled France’s Third Republic at the time. For us, they were the foundations for our First Republic, and today, after 27 years of the Syrian mandate, our institutions have disappeared, so what positives are you talking about? Positivity requires a tangible model to show for. The best of what Syria has is rejected by us, so what can it give us? Its regime? Its liberalism? Its liberties? We reject all of this because it is not in our temperament. Syria must become like us so it becomes acceptable, we should not become like it. We are the more advanced experiment. Lebanon is the model that must be followed in its cultural and religious diversity, it is the model that ensures stability. As for rejecting the freedom of thought, the rejection of political freedom, expanding the prisons, beating up on the people, this won’t lay foundations for a regime.

Let me tell you about a related incident that happened with me. I was once on my way to the Defense Ministry and I saw a Lebanese officer arguing with some people at a Syrian checkpoint near Yarzeh. I heard some obscene language addressed to the officer by the people of the checkpoint. I stopped at some distance and waived at the officer to come near, and I asked him what had happened. He said that they beat up a Lebanese soldier at the checkpoint, and when I came to inquire about the reasons, they insulted and berated me. I immediately headed to the office of General Khoury, the Army Chief at the time, and related the matter to him. He said, “What else do you expect them to do? They treat each other in this manner”, so I replied, “So why don’t you bring us an army of cannibals, so that every time they ate a Lebanese soldier we’d simply say, oh they treat one another in this manner”. When you want to be a civilized model and ensure stability in a country, all you have to do is present a civilized model that is more advanced than what that country has, not a more backward one.

Q: Who returned stability to Lebanon?
Aoun: Who used to shell us? We were shelled by Syrian 188-mm and 155-mm cannons. When Hitler invaded Warsaw, the German cannons stopped firing, and when Stalin’s tanks ran Budapest over, the cannon stopped. When they entered Prague and crushed the Prague Spring movement, the fighting stopped. So let no one tell us that they stopped the cannons and that we ought to thank them. The occupation has achieved its goals, so why does it continue to kill us? Right now, in all the areas that Israelis overtook in Palestine, there are no cannons left, there is quiet. But that doesn’t mean peace and tranquility. To say that one of the positives of the Syrian presence is that the cannons have stopped, it seems to me that it is legitimizing the use of force to cancel the other and say that this is an achievement.

Q: I am talking about the scourge of war that the Lebanese endured.
Aoun: Well, they lived it because of the Syrians. The invasion of Lebanon came from across the Syrian borders. It began in the Arqoub and moved to the interior. The Palestinian operations that destabilized Lebanon, where were they launched from? Why was there a conflict with the Palestinian resistance, then between Syria and the Palestinian resistance? The conflict in the end was about divvying up the spoils: So, when Syria took over Lebanon it attacked the Palestinians and others. It first used them to undermine the stability of Lebanon, since they first came from our eastern borders with Syria, from Ayn Arab and Deir Al-Ashayer.

Q: But we did fight one another and killed one another on the basis of one’s ID card.
Aoun: There are always intelligence services and active intelligence cells.

Q: We are talking about a war and not about specific incidents. The war began with foreign conspiracy and channels and became a civil war in which Muslims and Christians fought each other. Someone stepped in and thanks to him, calm returned to the country. Who’s that someone?
Aoun: The one who caused the problem in the first place. He came back and played the role of the firefighter because he had achieved his goals. You cannot distort history with me because I lived it. I lived it as a player when I was a lieutenant, then as a witness to decisions, operations, meetings and arguments with the Palestinians in Sidon and elsewhere, and then as a decision-maker in the Lebanese crisis. The Syrian cannot say that Lebanon turned into a place of chaos and that he came in to bring back security to this arena, because he was the one who turned Lebanon into chaos. Where did the Palestinian organizations that undermined stability in Lebanon came from, and who gave them weapons? Go read the speech delivered by the late Hafez Assad on July 20, 1976, in which he said, “We sent men and we sent weapons, but that was not sufficient, so we sent the army”. The mistake of the free world and America, who are now paying the price of terrorism, is that they used Lebanon as a ransom to pay, like the ancients used to pay the dragon every day one victim so it leaves their city alone, as the legend says. They turned Lebanon into a victim in order to pacify a certain situation and referred to Syria as a “factor of stability” in Lebanon! I’ve never heard of a country [Syria] that is asked to bring stability back to another country [Lebanon] whose stability it itself undermined in the first place.
 
Q: Don’t you want friendship with the Syrians?
Aoun: I want friendship with the Syrian people, not with the Syrian regime.

Q: Do you want the Syrian as an enemy?
Aoun: Absolutely not, and let me explain the reasons for the conflict with the Syrian regime. When the Americans asked me to enter into the context of the Syrian initiative and submit myself to Syrian rule, I sent a letter to James Baker on June 27, 1989, which by the way was a response to claims that I am seeking the presidency of the republic, and which was in response to a message he had sent. In my letter, I said, “Force is not the solution in Lebanon, but is the Syrian initiative lacking in force? We want to give Lebanon all that we can give it, we can also protect all Syrian interests as is expected of a neighbor and a friend and a brother to Syria. But there are two things that are not negotiable, and they are the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon.” I concluded the letter by saying, “ I will not lose Lebanon with your diplomatic advice, I lose it by an honorable battle and not with your diplomatic advice that is asking me to bequeath Lebanon as an inheritance, as if we were walking in our own funerals and not on our way to salvation”.

This is the gist of my disagreement with the Americans, and with the Syrians. There is a takeover of Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty. I rejected this reality and said something that many Lebanese still remember. I said, “The world can crush me but it will not take my signature”. Some thought this was some kind of poetry, but it was more of a warning. Anyone who says today that General Aoun didn’t know he’d lose, is very stupid. General Aoun knew he’d lose but he refused to surrender Lebanon.

Q: What do you think of the redeployment of the Syrian army, particularly with the statement saying this is being done in conformity with the Taef Agreement, and do you think this is a negative step ?
Aoun: No, it is not negative. It is a new tactical deployment for the Syrian army in accordance with new regional developments. They said it was a withdrawal per the Taef Agreement, fine, but this is not what any withdrawal agreement stipulates. Any withdrawal from Lebanon must be based on a specific time and place schedule, anything else is moving from one place to another, especially since some withdrawals this year were done from locations from which previous withdrawals were done last year. It is possible that they will do new withdrawals next year from the same locations and say these are per the Taef Agreement and show them on television.

We must be more serious and set timetables for withdrawals in a written agreement between the two governments, and that agreement should be announced beforehand, not in a manner of compromise to cover up a decision made. In any case, this is a positive step and, if true and with further steps, may be a start to begin thinking about positive relations with the Syrian regime. Here, we should not forget that the Bekaa and the north are Lebanese, Zahle is Lebanese, Baalbek is Lebanese, Akkar is Lebanese, and Tripoli is Lebanese, so when will there a withdrawal from them?

Q: According to the Taef Agreement, when the strategic security conditions are met.
Aoun: This is semantics. What strategic security conditions are they talking about?

Q: There is an Israeli enemy on the Lebanese borders threatening Syria and Lebanon.
Aoun: Yes, yes, yes, look at the fierce Syrian resistance that is carried out daily to prevent Israel from attacking. Let him [Assad] go and hold his front and leave us with our front, and “let him not worry about us”.

Q: Don’t you want a strong ally in the region so that Lebanon is not singled out alone?
Aoun: What is the military value of the Syrian army in the balance of forces in case of a military clash with Israel? Do you really think that the balance of forces is what is preserving peace and calm in the east? What is maintaining calm so far is an international decision which can get out of hand right now because of the harassment taking place. We are going through very critical moments and if Hezbollah’s and Syria’s escalation is serious and not out of a Hollywood movie, it may drag the region into a state of war. You will find out then what is the real capability of the Syrian army. Let us not fool ourselves, and I am not divulging any secret, and I am not appraised of information on the level of readiness of the Syrian army and its current leaderships. But its military value is generally known relative to the Israeli military power. The Syrian army cannot protect Lebanon.

Q: All Arab armies combined are no match to Israel’s capabilities, and this is a known fact. But does that mean there should be an Arab division without being allies and friends?
Aoun: Who is saying that? There is Arab division when the Syrian army is on its Golan front? Arab division is caused by the problem of Syria’s control over Lebanon. The Syrians are saying unacceptable things. I don’t want the [Syrian] custody, I am adult enough and I understand, both as humans and brothers, my historic relationship with the Syrian people and our shared interests. But I do not accept to be governed by a Syrian intelligence officer of the Syrian regime. We reject this by our very nature. We are a people who legislate in our system, from the presence of an attorney at an investigation, to an advanced judiciary that matches that of the world’s developed countries. Do you want us back to the justice of intelligence services that sends you either to prison or to the grave without a trial? This is absolutely rejected.

Q: But the Syrian regime never asked once to convert the Lebanese system into a Syrian regime.
Aoun: But the Syrian regime did precisely that. We’ve had more than 5,000 Lebanese arbitrarily detained over these past years. We have more than 100 detainees in Syria , and they continue to deny that they have detainees. Then suddenly they release a few. Even in Lebanese prisons, the Syrian mindset is prevalent. A while back, international institutions published a report of 7,000 detainees in Lebanon, among whom 2,500 have been convicted. The others remain detained without convictions.

Q: Why don’t you agree that the redeployment is a positive step and meet it with positivity?
Aoun: I like to eat my loaf of bread directly at the table, I don’t like to pick up crumbs. I am not begging from Syria or from anyone else. I have a natural right to sovereignty over my land and I want it recognized through a timetable and a protocol that demonstrate respect for the Lebanese people and their will. I don’t want a Syrian officer coming to the President of the Republic and telling him: We [Syria] have decided to do a restructuring, so find the appropriate scenario for this operation. This is rejected, even though some regions are breathing better because the Syrian presence was a burden on them. But this has not relieved Lebanon, the Intelligence Services are still infiltrated in the various state apparatuses, and the State remains under occupation, mentally and militarily. The issue is not only a military one. We must build sophisticated human beings with freedom to think, freedom of conscience, who can live in Lebanon and contribute to its development in accordance with higher humanist standards and not according to the will of a backward regime that is imposing its priorities on us.

Q: You tried confronting the Syrian army to request its withdrawal from Lebanon, and this approach was of no use.
Aoun: I defended myself. The War of Liberation was a reaction to the Syrian war against us.

Q: But you weren’t able to liberate [Lebanon from Syria] in this way.
Aoun: Because there was an international determination to give Lebanon as a consolation prize. I used all that was available to me, but I did not agree to a defeat. Then again, I wasn’t in Damascus, and I didn’t declare war on Syria there. Syrian cannons and tanks were 800 meters away from the palace and we suffered direct hits. Our fight was honorable, and not participating in it is treason to the nation because we were standing in defense of Lebanon’s sovereignty which was gradually taken from us. Since 1983, the presence of the Syrian army in Lebanon has become illegal, and I sent a letter to President Assad in this regard and told him ‘Your presence since 1983 is illegal, so why do you stay in Lebanon?’ If they concluded a settlement in 1989 with MPs elected in 1972, under US pressures and interests, and with the Arabs having “licked their signatures” on the first report they wrote accusing Syria of violating Lebanese sovereignty, all this does not mean that I have failed or was defeated. I brought the rights of Lebanon to the fore, but there were complacency and concessions in the matter.

Q: What do you mean when you say that Lebanon is a consolation prize?
Aoun: Read Shlomo Ben Ami; I mentioned earlier what he said about Rabin’s policy, then in the last negotiations that Syria scuttled, wasn’t there an Israeli public recognition of Syria’s effective control of Lebanon and “what is missing is our legal recognition of that fact”? The Israelis have mentioned this numerous times, and the Syrians didn’t respond. Instead, they agreed with it because they want to take it [Lebanon] as part of the peace process.

Q: You are a symbol for many of the young people who believe in your point of view. Don’t you think that this hostility creates hatred in this generation? How will this generation move from absolute hatred vis-à-vis Syria to one of friendship and brotherhood should the Syrians withdraw?
Aoun: You are substituting the causes for the reasons and vice-versa. In which speech was I hostile to Syria? The Syrian has attacked me, let him leave my land. I do not occupy Syria, nor do I hijack the Syrian decisions. Occupying Lebanese soil and hijacking Lebanon’s decision-making is what causes this hostility. My discourse is one of friendship to the Syrian people. I said previously that I am committed in international exchanges in which I have said that we are ready to give the maximum to protect Syrian interests, but there are two things that are not negotiable, sovereignty and independence. What hostility do you see in this statement? Hostility is in those who come to violate your land, your independence and your sovereignty, whether or not they have domestic agents, no difference. All peoples have had agents.

In Vietnam as in Algeria, domestic agents fought, and no one called it a civil war. Why do you want to call a civil war in Lebanon when the Syrian, the Palestinian, and every monstrous criminal and organization were involved in it? The war was in our home, so either we take the gun and defend it, or we are annihilated. Notice that the displacement affected the Lebanese majority that did not carry guns and rejected the civil war. Had they carried guns they would have created an advantage to the existing strong party, yet it protected them and let them stay. The war is therefore not a civil war.

Q: I’d like to go back to the topic of the redeployment. Couldn’t it be a foundation for a positive relationship with the Syrians? Or must they withdraw from all Lebanese territories in one sweep?
Aoun: I never asked that they withdraw completely in one sweep. I’ve always asked for a fixed timetable that commits to dates and places, and for a protocol for the relationship between Syria and Lebanon during this phase. A "brotherly" relationship means nothing in international relations, it is a tribal relationship. There may be a feeling of affection and friendship between two peoples because there is intermixing between them, but we do not share the same concepts, and we do not accept the Syrian concept.

Q: There are other Lebanese groups, like Hezbollah for example, who see that the Syrian presence is necessary, and these groups represent large segments of the population.
Aoun: It cannot enter into such an association and tie down the whole country to its opinion. Such association is not permissible in a nation. I reject religious and political dhimmitude, and Lebanon is experiencing these days a state of political dhimmitude. No one is allowed to disagree with the public opinion that is imposed by the media. There is always one voice going in one direction and it is imposed on everyone. That is why my own voice always seems to be discordant. How is it that all the voices of the Lebanese in Lebanon seem to be cast in one mold? Is there no disagreement between one opinion and another? They want to forcibly domesticate and tame.

Imagine for one moment what happened to our students at the Mont La Salle school. Two students were dismissed for ten days because they distributed a statement by the Free Patriotic Movement [FPM] calling for a sit-in to commemorate March 14 [1989, date of Aoun’s declaration of the War of Liberation]. At the same time, the Catholic Schools General Secretariat issued a statement against Israel and in support of the Palestinian people, and it incited the students to walk out, strike and demonstrate. Who then is the brother who decided to dismiss two students calling for a demonstration on March 14 to demand the withdrawal of the Syrians from Lebanon? And what right does he have to do that? And you want to tell me that there is free thinking in Lebanon?

The Catholic Schools General Secretariat’s statement contained explosive and violent language, while ours wasn’t like that at all. Here, by the way, I’d like to note that the claims of the Interior Ministry – which lies as it breathes – regarding the March 14 demonstration, in which its “sources” are quoted as saying, “General Aoun is calling on students to head toward Syrian positions even if this leads to bloodshed”. This is a lie, and I am sorry that a journalist like Jamil Mroueh can take it upon himself to discuss fake news as if they were factual truth, and say that general Aoun has no right to ask students to shed blood.

Q: Mr. Mroueh said, “if this news is correct”.
Aoun: He shouldn’t discuss on a television program a rumor coming from “sources”. Everyone knows that anything coming out of sources in the Lebanese Republic is vile rumors disseminated by the authorities.

Q: What did you specifically ask the students to do?
Aoun: I said to them, “even if the road was open to the Syrian position, you stop before it; your mission is to deliver a peaceful message asking the Syrians to depart [from Lebanon]. Do not trespass over the last 50 meters even if the road is open so as not to create any problem”. Many students objected and told me of their objections via messages. They wanted to press on toward the Syrian positions and break into them peacefully. But I didn’t allow it.

Q: What if some infiltrators had joined in and caused a problem, wouldn’t that have caused a disaster?
Aoun: For this reason, I asked them to not come close to the positions. Then no one does this except the political parties supported by the regime, not the opposition parties. No one has an interest in liberating the decision-making of the regime by using violence. The young people of the Tayyar [Free Patriotic Movement or FPM] are the best university students and have become known, and they have their history and their moral capital. No one is armed except the State’s political parties like the SSNP [Syrian Social Nationalist Party] and Hezbollah; they support the regime, and all of this is used under the banner of resistance, so there’s always weapons with which to threaten the others with civil war and murder. If violence is imposed on us, we will defend ourselves.

Q: Will you defend with violence?
Aoun: We will defend by all means if we are attacked. I do not condone what happened today with one of our students at Sagesse University. He was sitting in the cafeteria after donating blood to Palestine. One student approached him and slapped him, saying ‘this is because you show solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The FPM student turned to his attacker and said, ‘if this is how it is, and if the slap is for Palestine, then strike again. I do not condone this negative gesture despite its being a noble one, but he who strikes me with one slap, I will return it to him to the maximum that I can.

Q: Do the FPM students donate blood to the Palestinian cause?
Aoun: Yes, and there’s more. Four physicians from the FPM at Jesuit University requested to go to the Ramallah Hospital to help as volunteers, but they were prevented by Lebanese Intelligence Services and threatened them with collaborating with Israel.

Q: Probably because it is forbidden for Lebanese to enter Israel?
Aoun: They want to go to Ramallah, to the territories of the Palestinian Authority, to an Arab Hospital to treat wounded Palestinians. There is no formal issue with basic practice. You can’t label someone as an agent because he wants to go to the West Bank to help, what’s the problem? Are all the Palestinians there Israeli agents? Just like our folks in South Lebanon who were treated as agents and put in jail.

Q: Mr. Ghassan Tueni has asked me to inquire with you about a letter mentioned by Talal Salman of the Safir daily, in which you say you wished you were a lowly soldier in the army of Hafez Assad. This means you had the best relations with the Syrians, then for unknown reasons you turned against them.
Aoun: I’ve had many indications from a number of people about my stance on the presidency and the Syrians, and I will mention some of them. I think the object here is to prejudice a stance they couldn’t stop, so they resort to distortion. It’s become a custom in Lebanon to accept the role they’ve given you, whether it is the Ottomans, the British or the Syrians, and here comes someone who may be odd or crazy. Doesn’t matter. I accept that they label me crazy but I do not accept that they distort my posture or say that it doesn’t come out of a particular conviction, this I reject altogether.

They said I seek the presidency of the republic like the rest of the Lebanese political crew. This subject was mentioned by many people, just as it was yesterday by Mr. Ghassan Tueni. First of all, I am sorry that Mr. Ghassan Tueni has become at his age a promoter of rumors, and he well knows they are rumors. He knows the whole truth and doesn’t need to use an article by Talal Salman as a reference, nor is Talal Salman a reference in my relations with the Syrians or lack thereof. Then Mr. Sarkis Naoum has written a book entitled “Michel Aoun, a dream or all illusion”, and on page 170 he mentions a long conversation in which PM Rafik Hariri asked President Hafez Assad seven times about me and the presidency, at a time when they thought that Syria had washed its hands completely of General Aoun, according to him. And Assad said, “We have no objection to General Aoun becoming President of the Republic”. Then Hariri asked him for one last time, “do you mind if we forward this conversation to General Aoun?” and Assad replied “Yes”. And then they find it strange, still according to Sarkis Naoum, that General Aoun pursued escalation against Syria and how the war erupted.

Q: Did you get this message that President Assad has no objection to your being President?
Aoun: Yes, I got the message, and I got it in a very positive fashion, and it said that I was “the next President”.

Q: Why then did you escalate?
Aoun: This is where the grand mystery is. I think those who inquire about this matter are ill-intentioned. They know the answer. Many people were asked about it and they dodged the question. When Mr. Fayez Azzi came – he transmitted the letter the to me – I told him you are wrong in what you’re saying because what is required at this juncture is to save the republic and not to appoint a president of the republic. Will you abandon the republic in order to find out who will be president?

It’s very simple then, I refused the presidency because the price was to relinquish the republic, and my opinion was to save the republic first, then we’ll see who will be president. When the refusal came from me, they were the ones who escalated, and I responded and there was the War of Liberation. The escalation started before March 14. March 14 was a hinge moment, it was a decision to respond to the shelling of the legal Lebanese ports, and we did not start it. Now why do we call it the “War of Liberation”, it’s because liberation is the fight of the underdog against the powerful, the fight of the citizen against the occupier.

They say we declared war on Syria, those are big words and this is ignorance of political and military culture!! I am resisting on my land, and if I did not resist, I would have been a traitor. There is a regime that denies your constitution, that refuses to implement the decisions of your legitimate government since 1983, that seizes your central bank, and then it shells you, and shells the UNESCO building with its cannons, what else do we have to do? By the way, speaking of the shelling of the UNESCO, I remind you that since that time we have demanded an investigative commission, so let a courageous person from the other side who is accusing us come forward and place his signature next to ours so we charge an international human rights organization with conducting an investigation in this matter.

I also would like to mention a statement unfortunately made by [former president] Amin Gemayel on the “Hewaar Al-Omr” program, in which he says, “When General Aoun was notified by the Americans that they wanted Mikhail Daher as President, he refused angrily”. I am very sorry that this statement came out of President Amin Gemayel’s mouth because the facts are entirely different. The disagreement was not over the person of Mikhail Daher, or whether or not he’ll be president. When they notified me of the matter, I told them I know exactly what Lebanon’s political situation is, and you alone can appoint a president and the Syrians too can appoint the president they want. But you want to impose an appointment on us and are asking us to approve it. You brought the name of the appointee from Damascus, and you want to impose the appointee on us. At least let us have formal elections, even if only in appearance, and let there be candidates and tell your people to vote for whomever you want. But they refused and said, “That’s the deal, that’s the agreement”.

The minutes of that conversation are at the American embassy and the Americans who were present that day are ambassador David Newton, ambassador Satterfield, Defense Attaché Renki(?), and a translator/interpreter. Minutes of the entire conversation were recorded. I did not reject Mikhail Daher as a candidate, I rejected the principle of appointing [a president]. I demanded elections, even for the form of it, and congratulations to whoever wins, be it Mikhail Daher or someone else. So, what happened afterwards? The President, who was appointed by a recommendation that may not have been 100% Syrian, was assassinated, God have mercy on him. Then a second “President” was elected in the office of Syrian Intelligence, and his term extended by decision of Hafez Assad as he was returning by plane when he said to the Al-Ahram newspaper that he [Assad] perceived a desire by the Lebanese people to extend the presidential mandate, and Parliament immediately met and voted the extension. Then after he returned from Damascus, Elias Hrawi said that the “President” is Emile Lahoud, and Emile Lahoud became “President”. Appointing presidents thus became the marching principle, and we were fundamentally opposed it.

On the same subject, I remember an incident with his Beatitude the Patriarch when he returned from Rome and wanted to submit the names to the Syrians. He told me I want to submit your name with the candidates to the presidency, and I replied, “I don’t want for myself what I refused for Mikhail Daher; I do not accept the principle of Syria accepting me to become president. I’d be proud to be turned down by Syria, so please do not include my name on the candidates list”.

Becoming President was not an objective for me, even if I was in my right to seek it. Many people, including Mr. Elias Hrawi, have said that I turned down everything that was offered to me. Hrawi said that he aspired that I become president, but I refused. He sought to make me a super-minister and I refused. So, I wonder why not one of the reporters stood up and asked him, “Why did he refuse? And what did he want? Let him say I was crazy.

Q: What is it that you wanted?
Aoun: I wanted the return of the republic, and that Lebanon does not become a Syrian colony. I want Lebanon as a friend of Syria and good relations with it, and with an economic integration that is also symmetrical. I want Lebanon to be free, an oasis for freedom in the Middle East because, without Lebanon, there is no civilized interaction in the Middle East. Lebanon encompasses a civilizational and religious equilibrium, it has a mixed interacting society, and what a person takes from another person is by choice, not by coercion. He is not a Muslim crushed inside a Christian community, nor is he a Christian crushed inside a Muslim community. My choice of what I see in the Muslim and what I accept is my natural inclination borne out of conviction and is not coerced. This is the Lebanon that I want.

Q: Wouldn’t it have been better to dialogue with the Syrians instead of confrontation?
Aoun: The Syrian does not dialogue.

Q: He is dialoguing today.
Aoun: Who is he dialoguing with? He is fooling people. Dialogue with him is forbidden.

Q: He is dialoguing with the Lebanese authorities
Aoun: These Lebanese authorities were appointed by the Syrian, so how can they dialogue?

Q: There was a dialogue with the authorities and with the Qornet Shehwan group, so why didn’t you request a dialogue if the Syrian did not want to dialogue?
Aoun: The first problem was with the Qornet Shehwan group, and the first separation with the Patriarch was because of it. They sought an appointment with Lahoud in order to discuss matters brought up at their meetings, and he’d refuse outright and rejected us as an opposition. They tried and they went there, but they left dismissed.

Q: They were not dismissed. Each one of them gave his perspective.
Aoun: He refused to discuss any of the issues they wanted to discuss. If there was a boycott on the fundamental issues they wanted discuss, why did they go to him to begin with?

Q: Isn’t it important for you to at least dialogue with the other in Lebanon, the other who is convinced of the need for the Syrian presence and that Syria is the one to solve our problems, and that we are still in need of guardianship?
Aoun: Syria is the arsonist-fireman who loves to start fires. He starts fires only to be asked to put them down. The policy of divide-and-conquer is very well known to us and is present in all regimes. As for dialogue, of course I am for it, but dialogue has conditions. Here I’ll mention an incident between myself and ambassador John McCarthy. He asked me once, “do you dialogue with Salim Hoss on the situation in Lebanon?”, and my reply was, “Yes, I do”. He then said, “Isn’t it a problem for you that you consider him an illegitimate prime minister?” and I replied, “My position on him as an illegitimate prime minister is entirely unrelated to my considering him a Lebanese individual who has a standing, and we negotiate with him to solve the crisis. His legitimacy or mine are not the issue here. We as Lebanese should be talking to one another about the issue, but I do want to ask you a question: If Dr. Hoss and I meet here around this round table, and we agree on some issue, can he sign or will he first be calling someone, like the Syrians? McCarthy replied, “Of course not. He’ll call the Syrians before signing”. So I said, “Why don’t I dialogue directly with the Syrian regime? Why am I dialoguing with a Lebanese proxy of the Syrians?” McCarthy went silent, and I continued, “This is therefore not a dialogue. The first condition of a dialogue is the freedom to sign of what is agreed to”.

And I made that argument to others as well, particularly to Hezbollah. This was through young people who were dialoguing with Hezbollah between 1993 and 1994. They visited me at the time at La Haute Maison and asked my opinion. I asked them to pose the same question to Hezbollah, and also the following, “If we get to the international borders tomorrow, one way or another, will you drop your guns and let the Lebanese State rise again, or will you continue to carry the guns for some other reason? The answer came back that this will depend on the circumstances at that time, which is diplomatic language to say they won’t abandon their weapons”.

The second question to Hezbollah was the same one I posed to the ambassador: “Are you able to sign on an agreement we might reach, or will you be asking someone else?” They said that they are coordinating with Iran, “our decision is a free one, but we coordinate with Iran”.

There you see the futility of any dialogue between the Lebanese, and when I say that some of the forces on the ground and the Lebanese political parties are an extension of “someone else”, I am not being unjust with them because I experienced this myself. I am ready to discuss with anyone about this matter, and I’ve issued many calls in this regard and invited all those who want Lebanon as a homeland to meet and dialogue before this agonizing homeland ceases to be.

Q: Before we move to another topic, can you please clarify the letters you sent to the Syrians?
Aoun: I sent two letters to the Syrians. The relationship had broken down officially between me and them after the fall of the Iqlim, and after they had promised us that no military action would occur. Then the incidents of East Sidon and the Iqlim took place and the relationship with them broke down permanently in 1985.

When I assumed the prime ministership and the Syrians boycotted me and backed the resigned government, I sent a letter via the Foreign Ministry to the Syrian government in which I requested it to receive an envoy I am dispatching in order to clarify the situation between us. The reply was conveyed by the Intelligence Services, who wanted an intelligence and not a political relationship. I am not one to accept this kind of relations with anyone, and I had requested the relationship to be official and political.

I sent the second letter on March 20, 1989, to President Hafez Assad in which I demanded him to withdraw his troops from Lebanon, given the illegitimate nature of their presence, the Lebanese government of President Elias Sarkis having terminated their mission in 1982, then when President Amin Gemayel sent a letter on the first of September 1983 to Assad and the international authorities requesting the withdrawal of Syrian forces. Since that time, their continued presence constituted an aggression against Lebanese territories.

Based on these two precedents, I requested the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and those two letters I mention are only letters addressed by myself to the Syrians. Otherwise, any comments regarding letters are false and deceptive.

Q: What is the reason for your exit from the Qornet Shehwan gathering, though you meet with them, and why do you always criticize them?
Aoun: We are one of the founders of this gathering, and it began just before the 2000 elections. At the time, an academic study was conducted over the elections and how they ought to be. And when the time came to sign on the demands, we asked them, “If no one meets these demands, will we have a specific position on the parliamentary elections?” Their answer was no. Therefore, was the objective of these demands only a document to keep or even discard in the trash bin? Everyone signed, but I expressed reservations, and I announced in the press that I will not sign a document that is not based on a subsequent position and that doesn’t have any follow-up.

This was in the first phase. As for the second phase, a statement was issued by the Maronite Bishops on September 20, 2000, and we noticed a change in their language. The statement included connecting the dots, a demand to implement resolution 520, and impugn Syria with the responsibility of what was happening. We backed the statement and said ‘we stand behind you. You are the spiritual ones, i.e., the heavens, and we are the earth, so both earth and heavens are with you. Afterwards, we called for meetings, and they did happen, and we demanded to issue a statement in support of this position and slated to be issued in October. Then the prevarication began. October came and went, then November, then a third and a fourth month went by while they were deleting a paragraph here and an idea there. We noticed that there was a watering down of the subject, and we shouldered it to some extent. Then the initiative of Mr. Fuad Boutros was launched but we weren’t convinced of it because there can be no initiatives in this matter, rather a waste of time and a loss of the position. We began pressing for a specific position and we told them, “Take a position, it doesn’t stand in the way of initiatives or lose them or obstruct them, in fact it complements the discourse of Bkerki”. Instead, the language started to diminish gradually, beginning with the idea of backing the Maronite Bishops’ statement because its demands were patriotic pertaining to the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon. It became a retreating posture, as they gradually made concessions until it became the famous statement. The demand for the withdrawal of the Syrian army became “a request for a redeployment in accordance with Taef”. The dysfunction became clearer, and they followed with a call to the regime to implement the Taef Agreement, and I was “hitched” to demand the implementation of Taef which hadn’t been implemented to begin with, nor did it constitute the rule. Here I want to clarify that we did not reject the Taef Agreement because of the reforms it called for, and I have said that hundreds of times. It is rejected because it ties the destiny of Lebanon to an unspecified timeline. I said it in Baabda and I repeat it: They said they will redeploy in two years plus x. In how many years do you think the Bekaa and the north will be back?

This is not an agreement, and if there were a genuine intention to implement an agreement, they’d have scheduled the withdrawals from the start, and there would not have been a problem between us and the Syrians if they had accepted to schedule the withdrawal. We then started making one mistake after another, Lebanon was kicked out of the negotiations, Resolution 425 was implemented, but it wasn’t useful.

As for the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, we have reached the point where we can’t remain silent. I will read without comment their statement of April 3, 2002, article 3: “The Gathering calls on the Lebanese diaspora around the world, who are committed to the causes of the motherland, to act in defense of the Palestinian Cause because it is a rightful cause, to declare that a just and comprehensive peace and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State are a fundamental condition for Lebanon to recover its independence, sovereignty and free decision-making, and also that the establishment of a State of independence in Palestine is a fundamental condition to prevent the permanent settlement [of Palestinian refugees] in Lebanon”.

What this means is that we are done with one “wish”, and the Qornet Shehwan people come forward to tie us down to another “wish”. What is our concern with making the establishment of a Palestinian State a fundamental condition for the recovery of our sovereignty? The Palestinian Cause is 54 years old and is still pending, so are we to hold Lebanon and its sovereignty hostage to it? Why?

Q: The intention is if there’s no stability and a settlement in the region, Lebanon will remain a victim of the conflict
Aoun: Why does it have to stay a victim of the conflict, and who is taking Lebanon hostage? It is not Israel, but the Syrian regime. Why doesn’t it return our sovereignty to us? Should we declare a strike and not practice our sovereignty because the Palestinians have no country? And what benefit is it to them? Will our shirking our sovereignty shake the conscience of Israel and the world community? This is a monumental mistake by a Lebanese political group and it is unforgivable. Why don’t Syria, Jordan and Egypt link their sovereignties to the regional situation? Why is Lebanon always the “diminished” country suffering from an entanglement always linked to one thing or another? Why? And let us suppose that the Palestinian State never sees the light of day, does that mean that Lebanon will cease to exist? Then suppose that the Palestinians accept under duress a solution that does not include a return of the refugees, does that mean that we accept their permanent settlement?

Q: What can we do? Is there another solution?
Aoun: Of course, there is a vast array of solutions. When the Palestinian State is established, the Palestinian refugee turns into a resident Palestinian citizen carrying a Palestinian passport. He no longer is a refugee with a right to settle in Lebanon. The Arabs and the international community must shoulder their responsibility in this matter because they are at the genesis of the Palestinian question. They are the ones who caused the displacement of the Palestinians. Today the world includes countries of settlement and countries of emigration. For two centuries Lebanon has been a country of emigration because of a scarcity in resources and a population density of 361 per square kilometer, one of the highest in the Arab world and with the lowest resources. Any Arab country can bear a fraction of the refugees better than Lebanon. Lebanon has seen a million and a half of its people emigrate in search for a livelihood during the ”peace resolution” from 1990 to this day. Why don’t we give the Palestinian a choice as to whether or not they want to stay in Lebanon? I doubt it. They live today on some assistance, but tomorrow if they integrate Lebanese society, they will have a negative impact on the Lebanese economy and on their own economic situation because they’ll be like the rest of the Lebanese. But if they reside in Lebanon, they will obtain facilities to emigrate and there are many countries welcoming immigrants: Australia, America, Brazil. Anyone wishing to emigrate can do so, and those who decide to stay will stay as resident Palestinians.

Q: Let us go back to Qornet Shehwan and Bkerki, a withdrawal of the Syrian army and a return of sovereignty and independence are a shared concern for both you and them, so why the disagreement?
Aoun: The disagreement is over the method. I’d like to clarify one thing: When I disagree with Qornet Shehwan or with Bkerki, I am not engaging in a dispute with the religious Bkerki as the seat of the Maronite denomination. I am disputing Bkerki’s political outlook with its political advisors around the Patriarch. I do not accept that the Lebanese people be sidelined in a crucial question like liberation from occupation. I do not accept that the Lebanese people participate in the task of liberating themselves and their land. When I say that demonstrating is an act of violence, this is a distortion of my words that I reject. Otherwise, let us label France as a country of violence because it is a country of demonstrations and strikes. The preamble of the Human Rights Charter calls for liberating people from need and fear. Yet we have a regime that wants to rule with totalitarian thought, fear and need. It threatens people in their livelihood and work, then we say that any demonstration against it is an act of violence?? This is a distortion of the precepts of democracy and a cancellation of human rights and the rights of the Lebanese as stipulated by the constitution.

A "containment opposition" is very harmful because it encourages passivity, and this passivity in the positions has become ingrained in many Lebanese people. It is wrong if the Lebanese people do not demonstrate and express themselves. A containment opposition causes a dispersal of forces, and this is where its harm is most acute as has happened on May 7 when the Free Patriotic Movement was hit. We called for a strike, and they said, “We are against the strike, and if people want to strike, let them strike, but we are against the strike”. That was the position of Qornet Shehwan and the free podium at the time, to disperse the political positions and contain the opposition.

I want to ask why are striking and demonstrating good in Beirut in favor of the Palestinian Cause, but not good for the Lebanese Cause? Is the aim to direct people’s pent-up pressure to another cause than their own, in order to deflate that pressure? In Lebanon today all causes are a priority except the Lebanese cause. There are always other causes that are more important. When will the Lebanese Cause for once become a priority in Lebanon?

There are always attempts by the regime to contain popular actions, so why help the regime with an opposition of containment? Take for example Mr. Rafik Hariri. He wants to control the independent professional syndicates, he wants the engineers and the physicians, just as the Workers Syndicate has been controlled. Is it permissible to tame the syndicates because the prime minister has money and power? Berlusconi [in Italy] is about to be kicked out of his office because he has a private television channel. Here in Lebanon, the Prime Minister has taken possession of Beirut and is on his way to take the syndicates, the schools and everything else. This is not right at all, the problem is not Qornet Shehwan alone, it is rather in a system of governance that is fundamentally flawed, and Qornet Shehwan has become a part of it.

Q: Would demonstrations solve the problem?
Aoun: They make people aware of their responsibilities. It does not help us that the solution descends upon us from heaven if the Lebanese people are not aware of their responsibilities, because if they get independence today, they will lose it tomorrow. Even divine miracles don’t happen unless human will meets celestial will. A miracle happens only through quest and persistence. So no one should be trying to convince me that it is possible to rescue Lebanon without a quest by the Lebanese people. They want to turn people from demonstrating for Lebanon to demonstrating for Palestine, that they demonstrate for Syria and not for Lebanon, how then will the Lebanese people shoulder their responsibilities tomorrow? They will become cronies of the Palestinians and cronies for the Syrians, they won’t be citizens of their own country because they will no longer feel their existence as citizens. Demonstrations and demands, they all raise national awareness of the people’s responsibilities and they bring people together. They want us as individuals, like dust particles, sticking to any wall. They don’t want us like “reinforced concrete” sticking to one another in one place. This is what the Syrians want at present.

Q: If you are called with all the opposition to a demonstration against the Syrian presence and thousands of young people take to the street, while the other parties supporting a continued Syrian presence call for another demonstration and thousands of their young people also take to the street, what will happen?
Aoun: There will be a fundamental conflict, and a revision of the nation becomes necessary. Why run away from the problem? Running away doesn’t solve the problem. If they don’t want an independent country, what can we do? There is a national agreement, the National Pact, over an independent country. Even the Taef Agreement stipulated the independence of Lebanon as a nation, and that is the Taef Agreement’s only “miracle”.

Q: But that is their point of view.
Aoun: This is not a point of view. There are well-recognized international principles. No nation can be built without sovereignty and independence and without a unity of land and people. No nation can be built while under another country’s custody.

Q: But there is a point of view that says that the Syrian presence does not truncate Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Aoun: I reiterate that this is not a point of view. This is heresy. There is a definition of sovereignty in all the countries of the world, shall we take our definition from someone committed to Syrian policies? There is an international dictionary that specifies the meaning of sovereignty.

Q: There are many leaders who were elected in their districts without mentioning the Syrian presence in their programs, and yet people voted for them in large numbers, like Prime Minister Hariri for example.
Aoun: In his program, Hariri spoke about amendments to return to an equilibrium, and he was at the time in an environment opposed to the existing situation. Then he promised liberties, and by the way how many has he delivered? Then he promised a separation of powers but couldn’t deliver. He promised us a tenth spring and here too he failed. Eight years of Hariri’s rule in which scarcity and deprivation increased. One failure after another. If the people of Beirut still want Hariri after all this, this means that there is a crisis of intellect in Lebanon and a crisis of leadership.

Q: We noticed that when the Patriarch welcomed hundreds of thousands of people, they demanded a Syrian withdrawal. A few days later, at the commemoration of Ashura, hundreds of thousands also took to the street and Hassan Nasrallah demanded in his speech that the Syrian army stays as a necessity.
Aoun: It was a religious occasion, the Shiites took to the street to pray for Ashura like they do every year, and Hassan Nasrallah seized the occasion to say what he said. In any case, hold a referendum and if they really agree with his words, this means that there’s got to be, as I said, a reappraisal of the nation. We ought not shy away from reality. Peace requires two wills to make, but war requires only one will. If the other side doesn’t want a sovereign, free and independent nation, what are we to do then? We won’t commit suicide of course, but we must find a solution. What is certain is that we cannot be tied down by a partisan objective whose “source” we ignore. I, for one, cannot guarantee anything from Hezbollah’s relationships, and an association with it is difficult as long as it alone is the decision captain on the boat and is pushing to take you along with it; into what kind of storm, we don’t know.

Q: You constantly call for escalating the situation and you say that this is the fundamental difference between yourself and the Qornet Shehwan group. Will it become violent?
Aoun: Not at all. I do not call for violence and I won’t. When the confrontation gets to a phase of violence, my current political leadership will come to an end. I did not establish a movement on the basis of violence, and I know that Lebanon won’t split up. Lebanon will return to being a country for everyone even if there are backers of Syria because their role will cease in the end, and they cannot be against nature. Whoever supports Syria is undertaking something against nature and is securing an immediate and narrow personal benefit to the detriment of the country and its constituents. If he doesn’t believe in a sovereign, free and independent Lebanon, then it’s all over.

To say that the Syrian presence doesn’t harm sovereignty is a completely mistaken statement. If the husband agrees to his wife’s cheating doesn’t mean that adultery has not occurred. The husband’s acceptance is meaningless, because adultery has occurred regardless of whether it was rape or something he agreed to. When national sovereignty is hijacked, either by ceding it as those in power are now doing or is taken by rape, the result is the same, namely that Lebanon has lost its sovereignty.

Q: In your interview with our colleague Fares Khashan of As-Safir newspaper, you criticized the Patriarch for receiving the President of the Republic, and you said, “When I deliver a speech in Bkerki and then turn around and welcome the abusive president who doesn’t respect my words and the demands I make, my words become meaningless”. Do you think that the Patriarch could have actually refused to receive President Lahoud?
Aoun: Of course. The Church represents a moral authority for an absolute defense of rights and an absolute defense of justice. I previously sent a letter to the Synod in 1995 in which I said, “Since politics pertains to humans and is primarily addressed to them, the Church cannot remain aloof, nor can it get involved in politics. Nor can it replace the political institutions. The Church is a “higher authority” and as such it is a fountain of rights and their guarantor. For this reason, it cannot enter into compromises, and if the Church has a position to take, it is the position of rights and justice. The transformation undertaken by Pope Benedict XV at the turn of the century, is nothing more than a recognition of the Church’s obligation to recuse itself of all temporal matters and dedicate itself to the respect of the values of peace, justice and fraternity. For the Church to involve itself in political conflicts, assisting one party against another, in Lebanon as in Poland, is nothing more than a cause for a social schism and a crisis between an institution and its faithful”.

Therefore, for lay and clerical intellectuals, especially Pope Benedict XV, there are limits to the actions of the Church. The Church is a moral authority which intervenes and takes as stand when there is an attack on rights and on those values that bring people together. But the Church should not take a political position, and when I criticize Bkerki I criticize its political position and this my right as a citizen. I do not criticize its spiritual standing.

Q: Still, it would have been possible for the Patriarch to receive the President.
Aoun: He could at least have confronted him.

Q: Who told you he didn’t?
Aoun: Let him declare it publicly. It is necessary for him to declare what he said to the President and what the President promised him. This is my opinion, I feel there is a drift and a retreat in the discourse, and it is my right to state my opinion. It doesn’t mean that it is a hostile position vis-à-vis the Patriarch. I have an absolute right as a citizen to criticize his political stance. Everything in Lebanon is headed toward a complete breakdown and someone must say, ‘enough, all of this must stop’. There has to be a stance.

Q: What do you want him to do?
Aoun: My friend, doesn’t he have the right to sulk? It was said long time ago, “if you cannot fight, then don’t stare”. Can you please tell me why is Habib Younes in jail?

Q: He was accused of a relationship with Israel and Abu-Arz.
Aoun: With Abu Arz??? Sultan Aboul-Aynain, who is sentenced to death in Lebanon, shows up on Lebanese television. Officials of Lebanon Television must then be arrested. Is there a law that prohibits you from talking to someone who is sentenced to death?

Q: Is it possible that you meet with Samir Geagea one day and forget the past?
Aoun: There’s an English proverb that says, “You’ve got to face your problems”. In order to settle something, you’ve got to dot the Is and cross the Ts. If we can face up to the past we can transcend it. Here I am talking about the notion of confession in the Christian faith and forgiveness. Forgiveness does not come for free. A person must admit their mistake and atone for it and agree to a certain behavior after confessing. If I did something that the Lebanese Forces party accuses me of, I am ready to confess and request forgiveness. But you’ve got to ask them the question too: Is he ready to confess and ask for forgiveness and say he erred? To this day, I see an insistence by the Lebanese Forces party and by the Qornet Shehwan Gathering for the Taef Agreement as if it were one of the Gospels, when in fact it was a trick in which they were led, and some of them have no idea how to get out of it, the reason being that they refuse to admit they were tricked and that their choice was erroneous.

Q: Did you yourself make a mistake vis-à-vis the Lebanese Forces party?
Aoun: Absolutely not. They accused me of much, but that doesn't mean it is true. They had ties and they were asked to foment troubles, particularly the latest problem following the Taef Agreement. Also, their constant focus in this juncture on the Christian situation is wrong. They say things like “prejudice to Christians” and “Christian frustration”. This is incorrect thinking.

Q: You don’t see that there is prejudice to the Christians?
Aoun: Prejudice is against all Lebanese, Christians and Muslims alike. Do you think that Hariri is really the head of the government? Is it the Muslims who rule in Lebanon, so we say that there’s prejudice to the Christians? It’s the Syrian who directs the show, at times lording Hariri over Lahoud, and at other times Lahoud over Hariri, playing us off one against the other. The Lebanese do not govern Lebanon. The Christians are under pressure, but definitely not from the Muslims of Lebanon. They are under pressure from the Syrians who want to tame us because our breath of freedom harms their regime.

Q: So, you don’t impugn the Muslims for the prejudice to the Christians?
Aoun: I impugn them for their silence. I impugn them for “hiding” behind certain things.

Q: I’d like you to describe your relationship with certain people.
Aoun:
President Gemayel: No political relations between us. His political orientation isn’t clear to me.
Mr. Nassib Lahoud: Under the Syrian umbrella
Ms. Nayla Mouawad: Under the Syrian umbrellaAll of the Qornet Shehwan Gathering is under the Syrian umbrella because it does not link its demands for a Syrian withdrawal to actions that would achieve the withdrawal. It merely attracts a fraction of public opinion and allows it to vent its frustrations.
Samir Frangiyeh: He moved from one region to another, from one position to another, and no one knows where he’ll be in the future.
Walid Jumblatt: He’s like a person who hides under the umbrella of the Taef Agreement. He’s afraid of a “hole” in the umbrella, which leads to his own “drenching”. So he fears exiting Taef and getting wet. When he’s able to walk under the “rain”, we could both walk on the same path.
Carlos Edde: He lacks significant experience.
Dory Chamoun: Good, but needs persistence and more effort on the job.
Lebanese Forces party: Prisoners of the past.
Patriarch Sfeir: I am unable to pinpoint him. He wavers a lot.
PM Hariri: he cares for two things, his position in power and his financial interests.

Q: I’ve named the fiercest opposition members, except for Hariri. Who are your allies in Lebanon? Don’t you have a single political ally?
Aoun: This political class must liberate itself. I am not looking for a role, and my hand is extended to everyone, but will any of them dare to meet me? They all visit Paris but have not had the courage to call me. They still hope for a Aounist phenomenon without Aoun, and they think they can drag the young people of the Tayyar [Free Patriotic Movement] into a regressive political discourse. They don’t know that in the Tayyar, if I were to change my political positions, the young members will abandon me and look for another leader. My thinking is no longer my property, it is the property of the twelve classes that have graduated from the university ranks. These are my allies, and they are the future of Lebanon. So do not constrain me with only the traditional leaderships.

Q: Who is preventing them from meeting you in Paris? Do you think it’s the Syrian?
Aoun: If it is not the Syrian, then it is self-censorship. The real distancing comes from self-censorship, and at present this is affecting some journalists. People tame themselves day after day. I wish for State censorship to stay so journalists write down their ideas which then get deleted and their articles appear as blank pages; this would be much better than the journalists themselves censoring a single word from their writings. Canceling oneself little by little will end up in a complete domestication of the human being who adopts the State’s posture without realizing it and without defending himself. This would be the worst of all censorships.

Q: Many achievements are credited to the current administration, from liberating the south to the visit of President Assad and the revival of the Higher Lebanese Syrian Council and the redeployment. Don’t you credit the administration for anything?
Aoun: Let’s begin with the south. The south is no longer in the hands of the government or under the rule of law and the legitimate Lebanese Armed Forces, so we cannot consider it as “liberated”. It is a land subjected to a militia. We now have moved from two occupations to one. I will state it for the umpteen time: The ties between us and the Syrian people are unambiguous, but the repercussions of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon are worse than those of the Israeli occupation because Israel occupied a border strip consisting of a few kilometers, but Syria sequestered the Lebanese decision-making and the country’s sovereignty and stability. Joining the south to the north has not recovered sovereignty; it didn’t even bring about Lebanese sovereignty over the borders. As for Assad’s visit, the reception protocol makes it look like a visit by a president to one of his provinces. The fact that administrators participated in welcoming Assad is evidence of this. This is in the form, but in the substance, it didn’t yield anything.

Q: Syria canceled half of Lebanon’s debts in electricity.
Aoun: Why are we indebted to Syria in the electricity sector? Under the Syrian presence, why is Lebanon incapable of collecting payments on electricity bills in areas under Syrian and partisan [Hezbollah] control? Where does the deficit in the electricity come from? From theft and waste whose profits go into the pockets of the Syrians. Why have the reforms much heralded by “His Excellency President Lahoud” stopped?

Q: They opposed him.
Aoun: Who did? Don’t you know that Gazi Kanaan is able to make elephants fly? Haven’t you heard this story about Mr. Nabih Berri? Some people came to see Mr. Nabih and said to him, ‘Is it true that elephants fly?’ and he answered them, ‘Shame on you, elephants that fly?’ So they said to him, ‘We were visiting with Colonel Gazi Kanaan and he told us that elephants fly’, to which Berri replied, ‘If Colonel Gazi says that elephants fly, then it is possible that they fly, but they don’t go too high’. It’s a joke that reflects a certain reality in Lebanon, which is that Gazi Kanaan can make elephants fly, and that you are compelled to believe it.

Q: What can you tell us about the Washington visit? We heard afterwards that you could be the [equivalent of] the Northern Alliance in Lebanon.
Aoun: I am neither Hamid Karzai nor is Lebanon Afghanistan. As for the visit, I was invited to deliver a speech in the Congress about the Middle East, peace, and terrorism. This invitation was from before September 11. The hearing was canceled because of the events, but the person who invited me insisted that I go. He told me that my visit has become very useful and that it will include many presentations instead of one, and this is what happened. I went and I met many congressmen and senators and institutions. We discussed the Lebanese question and the terrorism issue. Their idea about Lebanon was very bad, Lebanon is non-existent on their political map. The first to have contributed to canceling out Lebanon are the Lebanese and the Syrian ambassadors to Washington. The prevailing idea is that Syria is a factor of stability in Lebanon, and that without Syria the Lebanese will jump at each other’s throats. This is the propaganda by the Lebanese authorities and Ambassador Abboud. We very much discussed the history of the Lebanese crisis, its triggers and the interferences that took place in it. We discussed the organizations and everything, and I blamed Syria from A to Z, and I cannot deny it because Syria did undermine stability in Lebanon under the cover of protecting us from annihilation. My question is, who is it that wanted to annihilate us, and why is there still no answer to this question?

Q: Has your relationship with the Americans improved then?
Aoun: Of course, they got to know the person. They knew me in the past from Intelligence Services and from the lobby that is hostile to me.

Q: How is this relationship with Washington useful today?
Aoun: It is useful in that it restores Lebanon to its historic mission as a civilized spot in the Middle East because the new world order doesn’t rest solely on economic criteria. It also rests on a spiritual, cultural and civilizational criteria, on diversity and democracy.

Q: Are you an ally of the Americans?
Aoun: The question is not one of allies. I went there to demand Lebanon’s independence, and let’s not forget that America is the sole superpower. Its policies impact the politics of the entire world whether we like it or not. America has the balance of power, and if you could shift this balance in your favor you may be able to save your country. America and Israel have caused much harm to me, but I cannot ignore America’s power and its impact in the world. It must understand that a mistake was made vis-a-vis Lebanon and it must be corrected, as Lebanon has fallen victim to terrorism. I presented to them the timeline of assassinations and bombings in Lebanon, and I told them I am not accusing anyone, but go ahead and ask your own Intelligence Services and do not put the blame on political parties because they are associated with regimes. Those organizations that you consider terrorist are associated with regimes, and they should be disarmed. The regimes should become democratic, and it is necessary to develop poor countries. These are the points I discussed, and I also said that peoples cannot develop unless they adopt the Human Rights Charter, including the freedom of creed, non-discrimination between ethnicities. For example, I am considered Arab and from an Arab country, but when I go to Saudi Arabia, I cannot get its nationality no matter what I do, and I cannot pray on Saudi soil. What is the reason? Dialogue between civilizations requires freedom of creed; it is impossible to dialogue with a person burdened by pre-conceptions, who accepts and rejects only what was dictated to him. What is required is freedom of creed within Islam and within Christianity.

Q: Is a strike against Hezbollah required?
Aoun: Absolutely not. Our appeal to Hezbollah is always peaceful. We have told them that your liberation role has ended now, so do not be a tool in the hands of others and play your political role. It is true that I reject much of their ideas, because they have ideas that are somewhat strange to our society and incompatible with Lebanon’s traditional mission. But they are part of the Lebanese community. I ask them not to be an extension of outsiders in Lebanon, but rather a Lebanese extension to the outside. I do not care that their religious affiliation is in Qom or in Iraq, for this is a religious reference we have nothing to do with. But what is rejected is that any Lebanese group, Christian or Muslim, be an extension of the outside in Lebanon.

Q: When will you return to Lebanon?
Aoun: My return depends on some change on the ground in Lebanon.

Q: In ten years maybe?
Aoun: In ten years Lebanon would be finished, and you will be coming here.

Q: Aren’t you confident about Lebanon’s fate?
Aoun: I am confident about the Palestinian people’s fate because they are a vigorous people. But I am not confident in the fate of the Lebanese people because they act passively with their problems. The Lebanese have to give priority to their cause, and despite the fact that I have all the elements of optimism this does not absolve people from responsibility. Only people who are present can benefit from the elements of change. We must be present to recover our rights.

Q: What keeps you from returning to Lebanon?
Aoun: First of all, my freedom of political action is restricted. Rallying the world’s public opinion is really necessary to make our cause succeed, and this is what I am currently doing with lectures, meetings and contacts, and I don’t want this to stop. Then there is a basic question for me, which is that you cannot trust your life to a State that confiscates your material rights. If a thief is stealing your money, would you put him as your guardian and trust him with your life?

Q: Whatever happened to attorney Mohammad Matar and the file they talked about?
Aoun: I’d like to ask that question, and I please ask you to pose this question to PM Hariri at the first opportunity.

Q: Hasn’t he contacted you?
Aoun: Never, and he hasn’t said anything. In any case, be sure that if they had found something against me, they would have made it public on the spot. Not one of the politicians fears for my reputation.

Q: Could you surprise the Lebanese by returning to Lebanon like President Gemayel did for example?
Aoun: It is possible that they did not place any conditions on him to return, but they have conditions on me to return.

Q: What are they?
Aoun: Didn’t you hear Walid Jumblatt and his appeal to me, “but only under the Taef umbrella”?

Q: He is not putting a condition, he prefers that you be under the Taef umbrella.
Aoun: I don’t like to “hide”, I like to “get wet”.

Q: What are your last words to the Lebanese?
Aoun: Hopefully we will surprise them by returning to Lebanon. And before we return, God willing, we will surprise them with another thing that will determine the international and regional environment for Lebanon. We are seeking many things that we hope to materialize and that they produce results.

Certainly, my return is against no one, it is a coming-together of the Lebanese around the idea of a sovereign, free and independent Lebanon that does not exclude any of its people, even if they do not share our way of thinking. We are first to sanctify the right to difference, and Lebanon will be a democracy, and all options will be presented to the Lebanese people to choose from and not be imposed on them, or that others claim to speak in their name. Soon we will exercise freedom in all its forms, and the Lebanese can then distinguish between how they used to live and how they are living now. I hope that we have the culture of freedom and the culture of life in the near future.

[Note: Translated from Arabic by Joseph Hitti]