For Immediate Release

Toronto – Canada

September 8, 2006

Israel has Lifted its Blockade. When will Hezbollah Lift its Own?

The lifting of the Israeli air, land and sea blockade over Lebanon will certainly please and calm the Lebanese people who, alone, had to pay the price for the fundamentalist Hezbollah’s monopoly over the decision to launch a futile war against Israel on behalf of Iran and Syria. The Lebanese people alone will, for years to come, bear the consequences of this destructive and inane war that turned the clock back 20 years on the Land of the Cedars and forced a quarter of a million Lebanese to leave their country for greener pastures.

Neither the Lebanese people nor their government had any say in the start of the war or its end. They had no say in the blockade or in its lifting, nor did they have a say in the drafting of UN resolution 1701 according to which the fighting stopped. This resolution which, unfortunately, was not passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, did not fulfill the dire need for imposing a complete and lasting peace.

It is true that the war has stopped and the blockade has been lifted, and it is true that the Lebanese Army has deployed in the South and along the borders with Israel with the support of the Blue Helmets. But it is even more true that all the root causes of the war and the blockade – namely the anarchy of the status quo of freely operating militias, their weapons and their mini-states, the porous borders with Syria, and the Jihadi culture of hatred and rejection of others – all remain extant, and in some cases have become more exacerbated.

The dangerous and worrisome in all that has happened is that Hezbollah remains stubbornly insistent on not surrendering its weapons under any circumstance, and Hassan Nasrallah has concocted yet another Jihadi mission for those weapons, which is that of “defending” Lebanon. Which means that the weapons have become, until further notice, preventive and not offensive. The Hezbollah Members of Parliament have officially confirmed that there is a binding understanding between the Siniora government and Hezbollah that the Lebanese Army will not interfere with the weapons of the party as long as these weapons remain hidden, inconspicuous and stored at sites known only to the Party’s leaders, and over which the State has no oversight or authority.

Therefore, the joy at the lifting of the blockade, like the joy at the truce and the cessation of hostilities, remains truncated. This joy can, at any moment, turn into sorrow, crying and teeth gnashing because all the causes of the war remain in place, particularly since the issue of Hezbollah’s security and military presence inside Beirut Airport, at the ports and border crossings of Lebanon has not been dealt with.

The strong State which Hassan Nasrallah is calling for with mere words, since in reality he is dedicated to weakening and dominating it, cannot rise to exercise its authority and obligations, enforce the law and dispense justice, while there continue to exist on Lebanese soil mini-states and security islands for Hezbollah and the armed Palestinian organizations, decision centers receiving their orders from abroad, and schools disseminating the culture of Jihad, death, and hatred. Similarly, the legitimate security forces of the Lebanese State cannot maintain order and stability and effectively protect the borders with fundamentalist militias and Jihadi armies in their back.