MAARAB, Lebanon (AP) — The head of a main Christian political party in Lebanon blasted the Shiite militant group Hezbollah for opening a front with Israel to support its ally Hamas, saying it had harmed Lebanon without undermining the Israel’s crushing offensive in 2017. the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday evening, Samir Geagea of the Lebanese Forces Party said Hezbollah should withdraw from areas along the border with Israel and that the Lebanese army should deploy to all points where the Iran-backed group’s militants have taken up positions.
His comments come as Western diplomats attempt to negotiate a de-escalation of the border conflict, amid fears of a wider war.
Hezbollah began launching rockets toward Israeli military posts on October 8, a day after the surprise attack by Hamas-led militants in southern Israel that sparked the crushing war in Gaza.
The almost daily violence is mainly limited to the border area and international mediators are struggling to prevent all-out war. The fighting killed 12 soldiers and 10 civilians in Israel. More than 350 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 273 Hezbollah fighters and more than 50 civilians.
“No one has the right to control the fate of a country and a people alone,” Geagea said from his heavily guarded headquarters in the mountain village of Maarab. “Hezbollah is not the government of Lebanon. There is a government in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is represented.” In addition to its military wing, Hezbollah is a political party.
Geagea, whose party has the largest bloc in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament, is seeking to position himself as the leader of the opposition against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah officials said that by opening the front along Israel’s northern border, the militant group had reduced pressure on Gaza by keeping several Israeli army divisions on alert in the north rather than participating in the several-month offensive in the enclave.
“All the damage that could have happened in Gaza… happened. What was the advantage of the military operations launched from southern Lebanon? Nothing,” Geagea said, highlighting the death toll and massive destruction in Lebanon’s border villages.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, caused widespread destruction and displaced hundreds of thousands of people to the town of Rafah along the Egyptian border. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to launch an offensive against the southern Gaza town of Rafah, despite international calls for restraint.
Geagea said Hezbollah was seeking through ongoing fighting to benefit its main backer, Iran, by giving it a presence along the Israeli border and called on the group to withdraw from border areas and deploy the Lebanese army in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution that ended the 34 Two-Day War between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Geagea also spoke about his party’s campaign to repatriate Syrian refugees who fled the war to Lebanon.
Those calls intensified after a Syrian gang was accused of being responsible for last month’s killing of Lebanese Forces official Pascal Suleiman, allegedly in a carjacking gone wrong, although many suspected initially politically motivated.
Lebanon, with a total population of around 6 million, hosts, according to the United Nations refugee agency, nearly 785,000 Syrian refugees registered with the UN, 90% of whom depend on aid. to survive. Lebanese authorities estimate there could be between 1.5 and 2 million, of whom only around 300,000 have legal residence.
Human rights groups say Syria is not a safe place for mass returns and that many Syrians who have returned there – voluntarily or not – have been detained and tortured.
Geagea, whose party is adamantly opposed to President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, insisted that only a small percentage of Syrians in Lebanon are genuine political refugees and that those who are could travel to the areas controlled by the opposition in Syria.
The Lebanese politician suggested his country should follow in the footsteps of Western countries like Britain, which last week passed a controversial law aimed at deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“In Lebanon, we should tell them, guys, go back to your country. Syria exists,” said Geagea, who led the largest Christian militia during Lebanon’s civil war from 1975 to 1990.
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