By: Elias Bejjani/LCCC Chairman

January 30/2007

The Lebanese Canadian Coordination Council (LCCC) condemns the bloody coup-d’etat, militia-style riots perpetrated last Tuesday and Thursday in Lebanon which resulted in nine deaths, more than 250 injuries, and material damage in the hundred of millions. The LCCC also condemns in the strongest terms the expansionist, terrorist, and destructive plans originating from two members of the Axis of Evil, Iran and Syria. These plans target Lebanon in its existence, regime, culture, history, identity, and all its institutions. It also targets its freedoms, and the basis of its people’s coexistence, as well as the tenets of democracy and human rights.

Syria and Iran’s bridgehead in Lebanon is the Hezbollah fundamentalist and militia organization. Hezbollah grew during the despicable Syrian occupation of Lebanon between 1976 and 2005. Aided by financial and nursing guardianship from Iran along with massive logistic and military facilitations from Syria, Hezbollah erected a state within all the components of the Lebanese state. With external and internal financing, Hezbollah imposed security zones, built prisons, formed an army and a police force, organized intelligence and security services, and formed media outlets including TV, radio, internet and written press. Finally, Hezbollah created a service infrastructure which provided educational, medical, and social services. It even maintains its own diplomatic relations.

The chronology of the Syrian-Iranian master plan to rule Lebanon and merge it into their axis can be summarized as:

In 2005, when the Lebanese people along with the international community forced the Baathist rulers of Damascus to withdraw their Stalinist army of occupation from Lebanon in accordance with UN Resolution 1559, Iran which fully controls the command and decision making process of Hezbollah, directly and through its embassy in Beirut, assigned Hezbollah the mission of gradually attacking the new Free Lebanon regime emerging from the Cedars Revolution. This plan was gradual and executed in phases to empty, paralyze, and marginalize Lebanon’s institutions like the parliament, the presidency of the republic, the cabinet, and the judicial system to name a few. The objective being the replacement of the democratic, free, and coexistence-based , with a totalitarian one, a replicate of the oppressive Iranian Mullahs' regime.

An element of the Iran-Syria plan is behind Hezbollah’s staunch opposition to surrendering its formidable and superior weaponry (in numbers and quality), to the Lebanese state, and tying it to holiness, honour, and the existence of the state of Israel. Hezbollah then refused to cede its mini-state to the Lebanese central state. Last July, it even launched a war against Israel as ordered by Iran and Syria to serve their interests, with neither the knowledge nor the agreement of Lebanon's legitimate government. Hezbollah’s war lasted 34 days, resulted in 1500 deaths, a massive destruction estimated at 11 billion US dollars, and the displacement of one million Lebanese whose homes were destroyed during the fighting.

Within the same hellish framework, and following the deployment of the United Nations International (UNIFIL) Forces and Lebanese army troops into south
Lebanon last year in compliance with UN Resolution 1701 which ended that round between Hezbollah and Israel, and in conjunction with the imminent formation
of the international tribunal charged with the investigation of assassinated Lebanese former prime minister Rafik Hariri, as well as the remainder of the terrorist crimes that targeted scores of MPs, cabinet members, journalists, and politicians opposed to the Syrian occupation, in this juncture, Hezbollah conducted systematic disguised manoeuvres aimed to control the Lebanese government, abort its decisions, and specifically those concerned with the international court, UN Resolution 1701, and the Paris-3 economic conference.

When it failed to achieve these objectives, it withdrew its five Shiite cabinet members and deployed its crowd in the streets of downtown Beirut in destructive sit-ins paralysing the heart of the country's financial, business and government infrastructure. Hezbollah paraded along a number of its satellite groups with politicians who are orphans of the Syrian occupation era.

Hezbollah tied the halt of its protest to the resignation of the government, or its amendment by introducing new ministers members of a Christian parliamentary block headed by MP, Michel Aoun who allied himself with Hezbollah after reneging on his history and self-contradicting all his past positions, electoral and national platforms and programs, and focusing his attention solely on becoming president. Two months into the sit-ins, Hezbollah demanded a third of the cabinet seats under its command to sabotage any decision or laws that may be incompatible with the Iranian/Syrian instructions or that fail to serve their expansionist, terrorist, and
fundamentalist interests.

After two months of coup-d’etat sit-ins, Hezbollah and those behind it failed to achieve any of their Iranian/Syrian objectives. The Saniora government, despite all obstacles and conspiracies, stood steadfast backed by large, effective, and noticeable popular and international support, and reached with success the Paris-3 conference designed to help the Lebanese economy.

That is when the instructions arrived to Hezbollah and its agents from Teheran and Damascus. The order of the day was to topple the government through an internal
violent escalation, occupy the capital or surround it, suffocate it, paralyze its life, terrorize the people, and abort their work and services. Hezbollah did precisely that last Tuesday and Thursday first in the streets, then the university campuses, specifically Beirut Arab University. It followed the Khomeini Iranian tactics by killing innocent bystanders, blocking roads, lighting fires, and threatening citizens, erecting sand walls, ditches and obstacles on main arteries, and on to a psychological media war whose goals and methods are clear. Here too, the Syrian-Iranian plan failed again, and forced Hezbollah and its followers, especially the few in the Christian constituency to cancel their military demonstrations.

MP Michel Aoun’s failure in his own Christian districts was clearest when his own milieu soundly rejected and reprimanded his stances and refused to follow his path nor abide by his destructive pro-Syrian/Iranian choices. So he lost his nerve and started accusing randomly and hysterically left and right. His rants included attacks against His Beatitude the Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Sfeir and the Council of the Maronite Bishops.

It is very important that all parties concerned with Lebanon and the Middle East along with the free nations such as our dear Canada, and the Lebanese Diaspora everywhere, that they understand that the fundamentalist Hezbollah is an Iranian-Syrian army par excellence, and is an obedient instrument in the hands of the leaders of these two nations deployed in the Lebanese arena. Through Hezbollah, they will continue their systematic, gradual, and military attempts to overthrow the Lebanese regime and replace it with a regime controlled by Hezbollah as a carbon copy of the Iranian Mullahs regime.

As to all the demands and justifications behind which Hezbollah hides, such as participation in the government, rights, elections, and national unity, they are smoke screens designed to blind the Lebanese and the world from seeing the real objectives, paramount among them is a regime change.

Therefore, the status of opposition as measured by the standards of democracy, civility, and peace, does not apply to Hezbollah, its followers and agents. The Hezbollah crowd is rather insurrectionist by design, its members pursue their plans and objectives in servitude to external powers. These groupings are either fundamentalist and armed militias such as Hezbollah, or local profiteering and selfish personalities estranged from their society such as the MP, Michel Aoun and the likes.

In order to defeat the fundamentalist armed militias and profiteers plans, and to maintain Lebanese social peace, freedoms, democracy, and coexistence, and to dismantle Lebanon the fighting arena, and save it from the jaws of the Evil Iran-Syria Axis and the adventures of their agents, the Lebanese Canadian Coordination Council requests the following:

1- The security control issue of the Lebanese-Syrian borders. This matter is of extreme importance to enable the Lebanese State to exert its authority over all the national territory. Consequently, the delineation of these borders with the effective assistance of the international community, as well as their control to prevent weapons smuggling and armed infiltration from Syria into Lebanon, as required by UN resolution 1701 are all essential and pivotal tasks that must be focused on by the international community and the Security Council. Lebanon will never know peace, security or stability without the control of these borders by international forces equipped with all the necessary equipment to executer the mission, provided they are given the international mandate to do so with a resolution issued under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

2. The Security Council amends resolution 1701 at the earliest possible and re-classify it under Chapter Seven of the United Nations charter, so that the international forces supported by the Lebanese army can disarm Hezbollah and the rest of the Lebanese and Palestinian militias, and give the legitimate Lebanese armed forces the sole monopoly over arms, and end for good the autonomous cantons and all the security districts in favour of the central Lebanese state.

3. The banning of all Lebanese parties that do not recognize or pledge allegiance to the Lebanese Constitution and the Lebanese identity and the withdrawal of their permits.

4. The enactment of an electoral law that allows all the varied components of Lebanese society their full right to chose their representatives in parliaments. There should also be acknowledgement that the Lebanese of the Diaspora are also citizens with equal rights to run and vote in elections.

5. Resolution of our political refugees in Israel through an amnesty public law enacted by the parliament similarly to how other groups and individuals were granted this kind of amnesty.

6. The implementation of all UN Resolutions regarding Lebanon, amongst them the international tribunal, and especially SCR 1559, and 1701.

7. Strong and effective judicial emphasis should be placed on the assassinations, terrorist, and criminal files which have reached many Lebanese, individuals, groups, or institutions, in order to uncover the assassins who planned and executed the crimes and bringing them to justice.

8. Lebanese, regional, and international entities would deal with terrorists in accordance with international laws and resolutions.

Finally, while some praised Sheik Hassan Nasrallah’s Fatwa (Islamic religious decree ) promulgated Thursday night, ordering his followers to vacate the streets, stop their attacks, and leave the security in Beirut in the hands of the Lebanese army, we however see in this Fatwa a scary symptom of a very dangerous phenomenon that clearly describes the cultural and fundamentalist condition, narrow confessionalism, and rejection of the other, that Hezbollah succeeded in spreading in its society within the security districts where it established its mini state. This trend is also practiced within the Hezbollah educational, religious, and social institutions which it controls totally, infrastructure, management, and curricula with massive financial support from Iran where whole generations are being produced under the doctrine rule of the High Shiite Clergy Governance (WELAYET AL-FAKIH)

Hezbollah's General Secretary, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's Fatwa should be a warning to all Lebanese, and to all the free world countries to work together seriously and immediately to stop the spread of the culture of death, isolationism, and fundamentalism and promote the culture of life, openness, and the acceptance of the other.
 

*Elias Bejjani
Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com
LCCC Web Site http://www.10452lccc.com
CLHRF Website http://www.clhrf.com