The Guardians of the Cedars Party issued the following weekly communiqué:
No country in the world can tolerate two states on a single territory at any one time. Any speculation about a possible coexistence between such two entities is delusional, hot air or highfaluting theory. In the end, the discourse of confrontation will overwhelm the discourse of cohabitation until one is able to absorb the other. We have said this for a long long time, and we have paid the price for it with our blood and our lives, and we have been tortured, accused of treason, and forced into exile.
And now that the confrontation between the Lebanese State and the mini-State of the so-called Hezbollah is out in the open following the latest decision of the Lebanese government, which became the straw that broke the camel’s back, we ought to recall some facts in order to set the situation in its proper perspective:
1 – It has taken the Lebanese State very long to stand up to this anomaly represented by that party, and instead of addressing the problem from its inception and when it was able to do so, the State resorted to policies of pacification and procrastination, and to the anesthesia of oblivion, which gave ample time for Hezbollah to build its own private mini-State with all its military, security and civil institutions until it has become refractory to any solution or compromise. The responsibility for arriving to this dangerous situation of confrontation lies squarely on the shoulders of the successive governments from 1982 to this day.
2 – The substance of the problem with this party is in its weapons. The private telecommunications network, monitoring cameras and such other items of infrastructure are no more than natural consequences of the possession of weapons. Which is why the latest decision by the government, for all its daring, did not address the core of the ailment, only its symptoms.
3 – Addressing the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons today exceeds the limited capabilities of the State and the limited power of a politically brittle government. Therefore, and in order to get out of this very dangerous predicament, the government has no choice but to seek the immediate help of the international community and demand a rapid intervention to implement resolution 1559 by all means available, even if this leads to the internationalization of Lebanon and placing the country under the custody of the United Nations under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, as we have previously and repeatedly stated in our statements. Any attempt at a resolution outside this framework will remain a sterile and vicious cycle.
This is the government’s last opportunity and there is no turning back. Either it undertakes that step, benefiting from the backing of the international community, or it refrains from it and thus bears full responsibility for the persistence of the crisis and the bleeding to death of the Republic.
Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz