The Guardians of the Cedars Party - The Movement for Lebanese Nationalism issued the following communiqué:
Parliament can pass all the laws that it wants, but it cannot force the Lebanese to accept them, including the law the MPs voted last Tuesday in which they granted the Palestinian refugees the right to work and to end-of-service pensions and social security.
The Lebanese had hoped from their honorable MPs to focus instead on addressing their own people's needs, their daily pressing concerns about their livelihood, the economy, social issues, security, and others, before addressing the needs of others. First, it makes sense that the Lebanese people should at least be given priority for such acts of kindness. Second, because the danger of the permanent settlement of the refugees remains alive and well. And third, because the wounds of the Lebanese people have not yet healed from that filthy war that those same Palestinian refugees waged against them, and whose destructive consequences continue to haunt the country to this day.
The Lebanese people had expected that the MPs would pass this law with some strings attached, the least of which would be to compel the Palestinians to surrender their weapons to the Lebanese authorities in compliance with the decisions of the national conference, and to dismantle their terrorist networks that are spread like a cancer inside their autonomous enclaves, before they are granted "civil rights." Particularly since those weapons are not suitable for use externally, but are suitable for domestic use as the experience of the Lebanese with them has amply demonstrated. The evidence to the accuracy of this fact is that the Palestinians insist on carrying light, medium, and heavy weapons, and stash them only on Lebanese soil and in no other country.
This law will also have the disastrous consequence of raising unemployment among the Lebanese, and shrinking the labor market for the young Lebanese who will continue to emigrate in droves. In contrast, the law will open wide the doors for the relatively cheap Palestinian labor and in turn encourage the young Palestinians to remain in Lebanon.
As for the talk by some MPs about giving the Palestinians the right to own property in Lebanon, it is extremely irresponsible and dangerous, and is a step further toward their permanent settlement. This, in fact, is what worries the Lebanese the most, namely that the permanent settlement process has now started to be implemented on the ground, and that the Palestinians' stay in Lebanon with the passage of time will become an inescapable fait accompli in a country that is almost suffocating under its own population density on its tiny patch of territory. In other words, the Lebanese entity is inevitably on its way to vanishing.
We can only draw the attention of Lebanon's politicians – who continue to victimize their own country – and before it is too late, to the fact that repeating the tune of rejecting the permanent settlement of the Palestinians is not enough unless it is coupled with a serious and unambiguous plan to be executed over stages and in accordance with a specific timeline, whose purpose would be to send away the refugees to those countries that are better capable of absorbing them than Lebanon. The problem of the refugees is not Lebanon's responsibility; it is the paramount responsibility of the international community. If Lebanon's politicians do not get their act together on this issue, then the slogan of rejecting the permanent settlement is an empty one, and simply a means to tame and trick the Lebanese as has always been the case.
Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz