Jaafari Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Qabalan invoked “the memory of the civil war” and said in a statement: “Because we are at the heart of a major national crisis, because the country’s internal reality is boiling intensely and is open to every possibility, because the civil war and preventing it are tied to the explosive causes behind it and to what is required to avert it, because those riding power today are trapped by commitments that sharply conflict with Lebanon’s national interests, because this country, as usual, moves from one mandate to another, because those riding power today are the product of the new American mandate, and because this fateful war is reshaping the country, the region, and the entire Middle East, it was necessary to present a critical review of the civil war that formed the core of Lebanon’s disasters.”
He added: “Here we say, with complete objectivity, that any critical review places us before the catastrophe of Lebanese catastrophes: the racist sectarian Lebanese authority that was formed through the occupying French mandate to serve France’s interests, not Lebanon’s. Despite the disastrous impact of this on Lebanese civil rights, those who mounted this authority at the time turned into racist kings and sectarian despots in every sense of the word. Faced with this kind of power practice obsessed with racism, the other sects were driven to seek their Lebanese interests outside Lebanon. The Palestinian issue can never be separated from the racism, despotism, and injustice of the Lebanese authority adopted by the French mandate. Whoever reads Charles Debbas, Habib Pasha al-Saad, Emile Eddé, and Alfred Naccache, then reviews the legacy of Beshara al-Khoury and Camille Chamoun up to Bachir Gemayel, will strongly understand what I mean.”
He continued: “Patching up national pacts has not revived the country and will not revive it, because the fundamental crisis lies in structural sectarianism and the political-financial elites that have worked and continue to work to exploit poisonous sectarianism through programs and policies that wrong their country and its people in favor of projects tied to filthy international and regional dependency. Even the Taif Agreement, as a transitional phase, failed to transform this farm-like country into a homeland, or even half a homeland, because of the complex of regional and international mandate mixed with political extortion and absurdities. Today, we must live the memory of the civil war through its causes and the nature of what is required in response to it, because history repeats itself through its causes. We are now at the heart of a tremendous upheaval and a moment open to every possibility. Those monopolizing power today are stumbling blindly and leaping over the most dangerous landmines that could blow up the country. In doing so, they are placing Lebanon at the center of a complex web of the worst causes of civil war. If this camp insists on antagonizing its nation’s interests and remains captive to its humiliating dependency on Washington—and what Washington means in terms of Tel Aviv’s interests—it will push the entire country toward an unprecedented civil war. Out of supreme necessity, this camp must realize that its bet on America and Israel is an absolute losing bet. The era of America as the world’s policeman is being buried in the Strait of Hormuz and beneath the rubble of American bases in the Gulf, while Israel’s mighty or major forces are being destroyed in Khiam, Bint Jbeil, and all along the front edge of south Lebanon, whose sovereign resistance this camp is fiercely trying to eliminate.”
He went on: “Because we are in the midst of highly slippery conditions for a major national crisis, I say this: any national catastrophe that strikes at the heart of Lebanon and its civil peace will be on the neck of this camp, which insists on prostrating itself before the dictates of America, defeated in the region’s war, and which is working to strip Lebanon of the elements of its strength and what is necessary to secure its interests as an independent state with a free decision. More dangerous still, it is preventing the Lebanese Army from carrying out the duty of defending its steadfast homeland and is using all its capabilities to turn Lebanon into a battlefield and a theater of operational interests for Washington and its terrorist ally, especially since the convergence of this camp’s projects with an internal camp gripped by Zionism places all of Lebanon at the heart of the mother of catastrophes.”
He stressed that “nothing can prevent Lebanon from exploding or stop the ignition of its major crises except the retreat of the authority or preventing it from slaughtering Lebanon. In the event of any major crisis, this camp must lose, not Lebanon. The confrontation here is political, not sectarian. Lebanon is Lebanon, not America’s or Israel’s, and its national policy must be so as well. Under no circumstances can we accept squandering decades of sacrifices and sovereign struggle in favor of a camp that is using all its capabilities to besiege those who liberated Lebanon, defeated Israel, and are still fighting for this country’s sovereignty, its civil partnership, and its internal peace.”
He concluded: “What is dangerous is that some are living with an empty delusion of grandeur. To those people I say: do not bet on fatigue or on utopian calculations, because nothing stands above Lebanon’s interest. The civil war, through its causes—and the authority that conflicts with Lebanon’s sovereign interests is among its greatest causes—requires that those causes be uprooted and that any camp placing us at the heart of Lebanon’s most dangerous crises be stopped.”
