Nasrallah Says Ready to Confront Existential Threat Facing Lebanon: Those Considering ISIL a Joke Are Detached from Reality
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned on Friday of a “real existential danger” threatening Lebanon and the region, calling for putting all differences aside to face the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“We have to believe that there is a real existential danger threatening us all and it is not a joke,” Nasrallah said during a televised speech he gave on the occasion of the July 2006 war “victory.”
He elaborated: “The so-called ISIL is a group that has now seized large geographical areas in Syria and Iraq and taken control of resource fields and main water dams... This group has committed massacres, killed prisoners and civilians in Iraq and Syria, and also killed people close to ISIL, like al-Nusra fighters, and then assassinated people of other Islamist factions in Deir Ezzor and Reef Aleppo (in Syria) and Iraq.”
“The massacres that have been committed harmed Sunnis primarily and ISIL did not spare anyone in Iraq like Kurds, Yazidis, Shiites, Christians, Turkmen... this example has nothing to do with Islam,” he added.
“This group has a project and is threatening and terrifying people.”
“Is this scene a joke?” he asked. “We must be aware of this threat's potentials. Those who say nothing is happening are completely detached from reality.”
Nasrallah was referring to Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea who slammed in a televised interview on Wednesday ISIL as a “big lie” and assured that the extremist groups' atrocities in neighboring countries will not be repeated in Lebanon.
The Hizbullah chief then called on the “Lebanese and all people of the region to put all differences aside.”
“I call on every Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian and any Gulf national to leave sectarian intolerance behind and think that this phenomenon is not a threat against Shiites only,” he said. “No one should regard this battle as a sectarian one, it is a takfiri war against anyone who opposes it.”
Nasrallah then denied that Hizbullah's withdrawal from the Syrian war would change this reality and eliminate the takfiri threat.
“If Hizbullah withdrew from Syria, would this eliminate the danger? Would this erase Lebanon from (ISIL chief Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi's map? Is this beneficial?” he wondered.
He also denied that international force deployment along the border would protect the country from jihadist fighter influx.
“UNIFIL troops need someone to protect them,” he jokingly remarked.
He continued: “Does the disassociation policy protect Lebanon? If ISIL seized control of Syria and reached Rashaya (in Western Bekaa) and Baalbek (in the Bekaa) and the North, would the disassociation policy protect the country? Is this a realistic approach? Is this approach correct in the first place? We did not implement it, but others did not as well.”
He went on to say that “when the country is facing an existential threat the priority becomes facing this danger.”
Nasrallah reiterated that what protected Lebanon is the army-people-resistance equation.
He called for mobilizing financial and moral support for army troops and security forces, stressing that they are the bodies in charge of protecting the country.
“The Lebanese army and the security forces are the first factor to be invested in to face this danger. They protect the state and the towns, not Hizbullah,” he assured.
“The state should stand by the army all the time to release its kidnapped troops. Any moment that passes with soldiers still in captivity is a humiliation to the state,” he considered.
The Shiite leader also commented that safeguarding the country would be achieved through “preserving the current cabinet and preventing it from collapsing.”
"Despite all differences, we must preserve the cabinet as it is the only effective authority at the moment,” he pointed out.
S.D.B.
Source: Naharnet
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