Hezbollah leader delivers defiant speech

[bemildred]

BEIRUT — Hezbollah’s leader delivered a defiant speech on Tuesday that sought to dispel any notion that his Lebanese Shiite group was strained by its intervention in Syria, warning that it could still confront Sunni extremists as well as Israel.

In a televised address marking the annual Shiite Ashura observance, Hasan Nasrallah defended the decision made about two years ago to deploy thousands of Hezbollah fighters to bolster the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Nasrallah described Hezbollah’s role in the three-year-old Syrian civil war as “a great victory,” but the intervention has angered many in the Arab world, especially Lebanon’s Sunnis, who support Assad’s largely Sunni opponents.

Hezbollah’s forces have suffered hundreds of battlefield deaths in Syria, but Nasrallah, speaking to Shiite worshipers in Lebanon and audiences across the region, said the group is “stronger than before” and had gained serious wartime “experience.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hezbollah-leader-delivers-defiant-speech/2014/11/04/5da02d85-6ef0-4abc-afd0-4d3aa28ed0d6_story.html

[bemildred]

1. Why Hezbollah leader chose Shiites' Ashura to reach out to Lebanese Sunnis

Beirut — With sectarian tensions soaring across the Middle East, Hezbollah's leader has used the emotive Shiite commemoration of Ashura to deliver a message of conciliation to the nation’s Sunnis – and a word of caution to his fellow Shiites.

On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiites marked the religious occasion amid unprecedented security. Ashura, the most significant date in the Shiite religious calendar, often serves as a powerful and overt motif of communal identity, replete with flags, banners, and rhythmic chanting to commemorate the death of a revered Shiite figure.

Yet with Hezbollah battling Sunni extremists in Syria, and an uptick in Sunni militant attacks on Shiite areas of Lebanon, the militant Shiite movement this year asked followers to tone down some of their commemorative activities in religiously mixed neighborhoods in order to prevent provoking Sunnis.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/1104/Why-Hezbollah-leader-chose-Shiites-Ashura-to-reach-out-to-Lebanese-Sunnis

[bemildred]

2. Minister Fires Back: 'We Will Destroy Lebanon to its Core'

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) on Tuesday evening responded to the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who made a rare appearance the day before in which he threatened to close Israeli sea and airports with rocket barrages in the next war.

"To remove doubt, the boastful coward Nasrallah should know: an option like that doesn't exist as far as we're concerned," said Katz. "If a scenario like that happens, we will destroy Lebanon to its core, and return it to the stone age - and him (Nasrallah) under the stones."

In his speech broadcast on the Lebanese TV station Al Manar for the Shi'ite holiday of Ashura, the terror leader said his organization is fighting for Syrian President Bashar Assaid in Syria to prevent a "Zionist hegemony" in the region, warning Israel not to get involved.

"We need to open our eyes on Israel," said Nasrallah. "We are completely ready in southern Lebanon despite the presence of our fighters in Syria, and we have the capability to hit every point in Israel."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187026

[Jefferson23]

3. Things are just spiffy, aren't they? n/t

[bemildred]

6. Charming.

Nasrallah is a little less "earthy" about it, but dick-waving is dick-waving, in my view. We've come a long way since our simian forefathers, eh?


I read an interview with Yaalon today in which he says Israel's attitude towards the Syrian Civil War is they want to stay out of it. Just when you think they are as crazy as shithouse rats they come along and say something sensible.

[Jefferson23]

9. ha ha, maybe one day we'll evolve enough to impress..I hope so too!

Well that is important he said that, my comment was more about how many train wrecks do we
have going now and what's next? Such a freakin' mess all over.

[bemildred]

10. Well, I was hijacking the subthread, really, Yaalon is sort of unrelated to the OP.

But then it's my OP.


A quite agree about the mess.

[sabbat hunter]

4. Hezbollah is

not supposed to be armed at all, to battle neither Sunni's or Israel.

It is an illegal militia/terror group within Lebanon. It is not the official army of Lebanon, and was supposed to have long ago been disarmed, but the UN failed to deliver in its obligation to do so, as did the official Lebanese army.


It does worry me that Hezbollah has gained a lot of experience on the ground in Syria battling rebels there (both sunni extremists and moderates/secular). I also worry that if the situation in Syria stabilize, Hezbollah will be emboldened to attack Israel.

[shaayecanaan]

5. The UN has no jurisdiction to interfere in the internal affairs of any state

therefore, the UN has neither the ability nor the obligation to disarm Hezbollah. Whether Hezbollah should disarm or not (depending on your interpretation of the Taif accords), that is a matter for Lebanese law and Lebanese authorities.

[Mosby]

7. the UN security council disagrees with you

The taif agreement does not supersede or affect UNSCR 1701 in any way shape or form.

[shaayecanaan]

8. You wouldn't know the Taif Agreement if it bit you on the tuchus...

The Taif Agreement was signed in 1989, before UNSCR 1701.

From UNSCR 1701:-

8. Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a longterm solution based on the following principles and elements:

(snip)

– full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of 27 July 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State;

And that is all the Security Council can do. The Security Council cannot make laws for Lebanon. All it can do is "call upon" parties to follow Lebanese laws.

As for the Taif accord, it was signed in 1989 as a resolution of the Lebanese Civil War, and was intended to provide for a permanent ceasefire between the sixteen confessional groups in Lebanon.

At the time, Hezbollah pointed out that Israel remained in occupation of south Lebanon. While it supported the end of hostilities between religious groups in Lebanon, it stated that it could not down arms against Israel as long as Israel remained in occupation of Lebanese territory.

Israel, for its part, continued to arm and support a rival group, the Christian South Lebanon Army until shortly before Israel finally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Its therefore quite hypocritical for Israel to invoke the Taif Accord in its favour when it never respected the document during its long occupation of Lebanon.

Hezbollah argues that its forces are not sectarian militias within the meaning of the Taif Accord, but resistance forces exclusively committed to the defence of Lebanon against the state of Israel. Unfortunately, there have been instances since in which Hezbollah has deployed against fellow Lebanese, most notably in 2008. But by and large it has restricted itself to fighting Israel, as well as Syrian rebels more recently.