Extinguish Lebanon's Inferno before it Burns You
By: Elias Bejjani*

What the Palestinian organizations or the Iranian and Syrian axis of evil regimes decide to do in a bid to serve their own tailored national causes, imaginary religious duties, ideologies, identities, existence, expansionism schemes and delusional liberation plans is simply their own business and not ours, the Lebanese people. They must be held fully accountable for their own acts of hostility, terrorism, destruction and enmity. The Lebanese people and Lebanon should not pay for the axis of evil's criminal acts.

These thugs should fight their own battles in and from their own countries and not from Lebanon and through the Lebanese. If and when they want to wage wars against Israel or on any other country or people, they have to be fully prepared to accept the repercussion of their own acts and not make the Lebanese scapegoats and Lebanon a battlefield.

As far as we are concerned, Israel is a legitimate and powerful country that the whole world officially recognizes and deals with as an independent and sovereign entity, including the majority of the Arab countries, either directly or indirectly. Many Arab countries exchange normal diplomatic relations with Israel including Egypt and Jordan.

Lebanon's official relationship with Israel since she was established has been governed by the Armistice Accord of 1946. All hostility activities executed by Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations against Israel from Lebanon are extreme infringements of this accord.

Meanwhile, the Shabaa farms that Israel has occupied since 1967 fall under the two UN resolutions, 424 (1976) and 338 (1973), that were issued in the aftermath of the two major Israeli-Arab wars.

These farms are Lebanese property, but were occupied by Syria from the mid-1950s. Israel occupied them with the Golan Heights in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Lebanon officially did not at any time before 2000 claim that these farms were Lebanese land that is occupied by Israel. The Syrians fabricated their Israeli occupation as a fake cause in 2000 after the Israelis withdrew from south Lebanon and fulfilled UN resolution 425.

The Syrians concocted this big bogus lie about Shabaa to justify their ongoing Stalinist occupation of Lebanon and to spare the Hezbollah militia from being disarmed and dismantled as was the case for all the other Lebanese militias in accordance with the Taief Accord of 1988 that put an end to the Lebanese civil war.

For years, Lebanon has been used and abused against the will of its own people as a battlefield by regional Arabists, fundamentalists, leftists, Syrians, Palestinians, Islamists and many other outlawed worldwide armed organizations to wage phony guerrilla wars against Israel. The outcome was the destruction of Lebanon, and the forced exodus (emigration) of more than one third of its own people, mainly Christians.

Since 1982, Iran and Syria have been building up their own armed proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. This terrorist organization greatly jeopardizes Lebanon's stability, peace, and the life of the Lebanese people on all levels and in all domains.

At the present time and since the withdrawal of the Syrian occupation army in 2005, this Iranian militant group fully controls the Lebanese government, as well as all the country's institutions including the armed forces. The Lebanese government can’t take and execute even one decision without Hezbollah's approval.

Our priority as Lebanese must focus on our own country and the affairs of our own people. We have had enough of allowing others to tread on our interests and use us as wood for their own fires. Let the Palestinians, the Syrians, and the Iranians fight their own wars in and from their own countries and with their own people.

Enough is enough, we can't keep on watching our own homes burn, while we stupidly work to extinguish those of our neighbors. For us, the Lebanese, Lebanon must be the priority, Lebanon must come first.

We are not against the Jewish or the Palestinian people. We fully support their right for self determination, but let them tackle their own conflicts and wars far away from our country and not on the account of our people and national interests. We and our country have been used and abused for thirty long years. Let those who advocate wars and destruction carry their own weapons and fight their own wars far away from Lebanon and her people.

We are not more patriotic than Egypt, Jordan, and all the other Arab countries that took care of their own affairs and forged peace accords with the Jewish state, some overtly and others covertly. We proclaim to those deranged Islamist fundamentalist fanatics who still rhetorically call for throwing the Israelis into the sea that the Lebanese cannot be Palestinians more than the Palestinians themselves.

We are sure that all these jihadists are fully aware that the late Yasser Arafat of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) did not ask for Lebanon's approval before he headed to Oslo where he negotiated and signed a peace accord with the Israelis in which he recognized their state and scratched from his PLO manifesto the armed resistance clause.

Since 1982 Iran and Syria have been using and abusing Lebanon and its multicultural communities through their armed terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, exactly the same venomous way the PLO used and abused it during 1975-1982.

This Iranian terrorist army, Hezbollah is systematically and steadily destroying the foundations of the country's mosaic fabric, destroying the life pattern of coexistence that distinguishes Lebanon from all the other Middle and Far Eastern countries, oppressing freedoms, cracking down on all forms of democracy, and breeding generations polluted with ignorance, confusion, fanaticism and jihadism.

Under the pretext of fighting Israel, Hezbollah is gradually devouring Lebanon piece by piece and forcing mainly its Christian citizens to sell their own estates and emigrate.

The majority of the Lebanese are peacefully fighting back fiercely and courageously. This Lebanese massive public rejection of Hezbollah was shown in the outcome of the last parliamentary elections. Hezbollah has ignored the will of the people’s votes and kept on forcing its agenda on the country through intimidation, terrorism and money.

Meanwhile, backed by both Syria and Iran, Hezbollah is waging a rhetoric and diplomatic terrorist campaign against all the UN resolutions related to Lebanon, especially 1559, 1860 and 1701 in a bid to deprive the Lebanese people from the international umbrella and sponsorship. What is sad and disappointing in this dilemma is that the Lebanese pro-Syrian president and the country's foreign minister who were handpicked by Hezbollah are among many other officials who are acting to fulfill Hezbollah's agenda and annul the resolutions.

The free world must be aware that the Lebanese people alone can no longer stop Hezbollah from taking over the whole country, topple its free and democratic regime and replace it by a replicate of the Iranian mullah's Islamic republic.

The free world and the moderate Arab countries must come to Lebanon's rescue because Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist army, threatens not only Lebanon, but also all the Arab countries and nations of the free world.

All these countries should understand that by helping Lebanon they will be helping themselves, because the same enferno that is now consuming Lebanon will reach them soon if not extinguished in Lebanon and the lunatic arsonist, Hezbollah, is disabled.
 

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