PRESIDENT ASSAD/ JOURNALISTS UNION SPEECH (August 15, 2006)
"We adhered to the choice of resistance as long as peace has not been realized"
Speech of President Bashar al-Assad at Journalists Union 4th Conference
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The speech of President Bashar al-Assad at the 4th General Conference of the
Journalists Union- Al-Umawyeen Conference Palace, Damascus: August 15, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen members of the fourth general conference of the Journalists
Union, Ladies and gentlemen,
It gives me pleasure to meet you at the opening of the proceedings of your 4th
conference and to express my appreciation to you and through you to the honest
and honorable journalists who have been fighting a media battle no less
ferocious and dangerous than the battles fought by your brothers on the fields
of honour and dignity. Your battle aims at preserving the intellect and the
spirit of the nation and protecting its identity and heritage against the
systematic invasion which violates its dignity, tears apart it unity, distorts
its cause, and strikes at its will to resist by promoting a culture of
defeatism, submission and blind adherence to agendas set by the enemy and those
who support it and promote its projects.
I am glad to meet you in this new Middle East, new in the sense that we
understand and the shape we want, although it is not complete yet. It is new
with the achievements of the Resistance; new in that it drew clear lines between
the different forces; new in uncovering the games and conspiracies and lifting
their masks and fake terminology in an unprecedented manner. This is the new
Middle East which Syria has been promoting again and again as the only hope for
Arabs if they are to have a place under the sun in the political and material
sense. You all know that it was not easy for us to convince many people of our
vision of the future. We had to wait for the future to become the present and to
speak for itself. Today facts speak for themselves, not only as we imagined them
in the past but in a clearer and more expressive manner.
We meet today when the Middle East they aspire to and which is based on
submission, humiliation and on depriving peoples of their identities and their
rights, has become an illusion. It has actually turned into a popular uprising
throughout the Arab world, an uprising which is ban-Arab by nature,
characterized by dignity and the rejection of all pretexts and excuses for
keeping us submissive so that we are killed in silence in the same way that
sacrifices used to be offered in the past to avoid the wrath of the gods. But
offering sacrifices in the past was considered a form of wisdom. So, are we
supposed to adhere to that wisdom today? And does wisdom have a meaning if it
was separated from courage? If we are supposed to follow the lead of the
invasion of Iraq, the invasion which reminds us of humanity’s past, I believe
that this kind of wisdom is still a valid testimony to the fact that some of our
Arab sages still adhere to that wisdom today. For wisdom to exist, it has to be
coupled with courage in order to give the people the stability necessary to make
people wise. But when fear exists, there is no place for fake wisdom which leads
those who possess it to defeat and humiliation under the mask of wisdom. In our
present Arab world, we might achieve victory under another false assumption
which is adventure or recklessness. If wisdom has come to mean defeat and
humiliation in the lexicon of some Arabs, it is natural to find in their lexicon
that victory is equal to adventure and recklessness In order not get ourselves
absorbed in theoretical discourse, let us ask ourselves about what we have
achieved by being unwisely, irrationally and recklessly led by some of our
supposed Arab sages for many past decades. We have achieved a great deal, but
against our interests. Le us take the peace process as an example; and let us
ask whether it has succeeded or failed. We have been talking repeatedly recently
about the failure of the peace process. And all this talk about the failure and
death of the peace process is absolutely true; but it is more accurate to say
that the Arabs are the ones who failed in the peace process when they did not
understand the meaning of making peace a strategic choice. They did not
distinguish between making peace a strategic choice and making it the only
choice. When there is a certain strategic choice, it does not mean that there
are not other strategic choices, or there are not other tactical, if not
necessarily strategic, choices. Throughout the peace process, we the Arabs, have
adopted the only choice for peace and abandoned all the other choices. We then
replaced the spirit of the only choice with the choice of cheap or free peace.
Under this choice we offer everything to Israel and get very little in return.
In real fact, and in practice, we have offered a great deal, and some of us
offered everything, and got nothing in return. That is why we see the
Palestinians paying the price now, and that is why Syria refused, through its
vision, to abandon any of its rights. When we say that we have made peace our
strategic choice, it does not mean that we have cancelled the other choices. On
the contrary, the more illusive the realization of peace becomes, the more
important and necessary other ways and methods become in order to regain our
rights. On the other hand, we in Syria have stressed this choice, the peace
choice, from the very beginning of the peace process, but we adhered to the
choice of resistance as long as peace has not been realized, particularly that
the assumed partner in peace does not believe in this theory in the first place
and has given us one evidence after another in confirmation of this fact. If we
leave aside the many massacres perpetrated by Israel against the Arabs and other
evidence, there is a clear evidence stated clearly by former Israel prime
minister, Yitzhak Shamir at the beginning of the peace process when he said in
1991 that they will make the process last for ten years, which means that peace
will not be achieved. That is what happened. Today, and fifteen years later,
peace has not been achieved. Before the peace process, Israel used to say that
Israel wanted peace while Arabs wanted war. It was a surprise for them that
Arabs accepted to get involved in the peace process. That is why they reacted by
making this public statement. But the received Arab wisdom used to be that we
have to close our eyes in order to corner Israel before the international
community, which has been reduced into a few states which support Israel,
ignoring and neglecting the rest of the world which mostly supports our causes.
The result was that we have become embarrassed in front of our Arab people. We
lost our respect and credibility in front of our friends and enemies alike. This
was the Arab responsibility for the failure of the peace process. But what about
the responsibility of others, with the exception, of course, of Israel and the
United States.
The whole world got interested in the Middle East after the 1973 war. They
focused all their attention on our region and started to talk about peace. This
continued until we started the peace process in Madrid. This went, of course,
through different stages. When most countries of the world were assured that the
peace process has been launched through negotiations, they handed the whole
process over to the United States, which remained the sole sponsor of this
process. It, in turn, handed the process over to Israel. So, every proposal made
to the Arabs during that period was either and Israeli proposal or a proposal
approved by the Israelis. When most countries realized that the Arabs have
dropped the real choice for peace and replaced it with a peace at the pleasure
of Israel and the United States, they turned their back on the peace process and
on us. Only today, during these battles, they remembered the peace process and
remembered us. Of course we have to exclude Israel and the United States from
this category, because Israel is an enemy, and as I said, does not want peace.
Peace requires that Israel return the occupied land and return the usurped
rights, while it is an enemy which was built on the bases of aggression and
expansion. We have always said that the United States is necessary and essential
for the peace process based on its position as a superpower and through its
relations with different parties. But it is not any United States. This
administration adopts the principle of preemptive war that is absolutely
contradictory to the principle of peace. Six years on with this administration,
and there is no peace . Consequently, we do not expect peace soon or in the
foreseeable future. We ask here, have they remembered us lately because of the
death and destruction Israeli terrorism has caused in Lebanon? Of course not.
There have been years of killing and destruction against the Palestinians, yet
we have not heard of initiatives, solutions and extensive activity at the UN
Security Council as is the case today. Have they moved because they are afraid
of chaos or because of their concern for the security of the region which
concerns them directly? The region’s security is a sufficient cause for them to
move, but the region has been on the verge of an explosion for years, and they
have not moved. So, why did they move at this stage? The fact of the matter is
that they move only when Israel is in pain. And Israel is never in pain except
when we have power.
This means, in the final analysis, that the world does not care about our
interests, feelings and rights except when we are powerful. Otherwise, they
would not do anything. They push us towards peace with what they say, but push
us towards war with what they do. Here, the countries concerned with the peace
process, and they are mostly European, are responsible for what is happening. We
might wonder what motivates some officials in these countries to send messages
and make statements concerning an ill prisoner. They are so concerned for the
medical condition of this prisoner. What nobility! What humanity! What
greatness! We might ask as well, where are these same officials concerning the
massacres perpetrated in Lebanon? All those women, children and elderly people,
and all this destruction and we have not heard anything from them, no messages,
no protests, with the exception of some timid statements. I say that this has
struck at the heart of their credibility. This means that there are other
objectives for these messages. We know these objectives, but things have now
become very clear. We might also ask that French official with burning
enthusiasm, particularly concerning Syria, is he going to call for an
international investigation committee to investigate the massacre of Qana, not
to mention the other massacres, as he called for an investigation into the
assassination of prime minister Hariri? Is the reason here that in the first
case the suspect was Syria, and this is sufficient motive and justification, and
in the second the suspect is Israel, and nothing should be done. Or is it that
the children of Qana and other poor people do not deserve this official’s
attention?
We are convinced that the natural way to achieve peace is through negotiations.
But when this option fails, or when it is not available in the first place,
resistance, in its different forms, is the alternative for restoring rights.
Resistance is not necessarily or exclusively armed, it could be cultural or
political or might take different forms of rejection. So, supporting resistance
aims at achieving peace not war through deterring against aggression. If this
does not work, it might be through war in order to liberate the land. Resistance
is not contradictory to peace or an alternative for it. In our circumstances at
least, it is necessary for the achievement of peace. Otherwise, the result will
be that we will lose the battle of war and the battle for peace, particularly
that Israel and those who stand behind it have shifted completely to adopting
the military option based on preemptive war, while we the Arabs have remained in
our place discoursing and negotiating with ourselves convinced of a promised
peace with an illusory party which prepares itself on a daily basis for its next
aggression on the Arabs . This subject of resistance and its importance has been
under long discussions for over a decade now with foreign and Arab officials,
and in the stage that preceded liberating the largest part of the Lebanese
territories in 2000 we used to get into discussions with Arab and foreign
officials about this issue. Of course, it did not surprise us that foreigners
were not able to understand our logic, but in our deliberations with Arabs,
which is of interest to us, we used to tell them that this resistance will
liberate Lebanon and they, I mean some of them of course, used to answer that it
is more like cat scratching. In 2000 Lebanon was liberated thanks to the
resistance, which proved they were wrong and we were right. After 2000 once
again we started to have the same kind of discussion as we, Arabs, are fond of
repeating history with all its details without advancement sometimes. The same
discussion took place by exerting pressure on Syrian with regard to the same
issue. Our answer was that the resistance is a deterrent to any Israeli
aggression, a logic which they once again rejected. Now the most recent battles
prove the same logic. They were wrong and we were right, which means a double
mistake in mathematical terms. If we want to calculate the result of previous
discussions regarding other subjects starting by terrorism and going through the
war on Iraq and Iran, we would have scored a big number of mistakes.
The latest developments in Lebanon have proven the validity of that logic. As
aggression against Lebanon is not mainly linked to the abduction of the two
soldiers; rather it was pre-planned before with the objective of regaining
balance to the Israeli scheme that went under several relapses such as the
defeat of the Israeli army before the resistance strikes and its withdrawal in
2000 and the failure of its allies in Lebanon in carrying out the missions that
were delegated to them during the past short period of time. As for the
abduction, it was for them a mere justification to start this aggression before
the world. However, the result was more failure experienced by Israel, its
allies and its masters and more steadfastness of the national forces that
support the resistance, which made the concept of resistance more rooted in the
minds and hearts of hundreds of millions in the Arab and Islamic region.
Everyone knows now that the plan was prepared in advance and many wrote about
the fact that this plan, of the war, has been set years before. In the Western
and Arab media it is said that the Israelis have been well-prepared for these
battles and it is also said that the scheme took its final shape last June and
it was expected to be implemented next fall. Some say that considerations were
made about the tourism season, but of course it is not possible that Israel
would worry about the season of tourism, may be they would worry about the
interest of their agents in Lebanon. This reminds us of what I said in my speech
before the Parliament on March 5th, 2005 that what is happening now is the same
that happened on the 17th of May. Many of the young generation do not recall
what took place in the real 17th of May, 1983 where there were Lebanese forces
that worked as agents for Israel before the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Those
forces failed in their plans of hitting the joint Palestinian-Lebanese
resistance, so they started to incite and call Israel to save them by waging a
war. Indeed the war took place with the objective of hitting the resistance and
having Lebanon join the Israeli convoy. 17th of May failed. Today, the same
repercussions have taken place: Lebanese groups fail in achieving their
pro-Israeli scheme; so they incite Israel to come militarily in order to save
them from the predicament and hit the resistance, therefore having Lebanon join
the Israeli camp. In both incidents there is an Arabic coverage. That is why I
stress the 17th of May incident. When a product fails in the world of business,
it is reintroduced to the market under a new brand with certain superficial
amendments. Similarly, and no matter what name we give to those groups whether
we call them February or March forces, I would stress here that their product is
that of May the 17th and this is an Israeli product. This will, naturally,
invoke many attacks that you will hear on TV screens, which is helpful in
assessing the use of this speech.
The more violent the attack, the better the speech, I think. Of course we will
laugh a lot because there is a lot of political comedy now in the Lebanese
political class. Now we can establish the correlation between resolutions 1559,
1780. and1701, the assassination of Hariri, and the last war on the one hand and
the role of those Lebanese forcers and certain Arab forces on the other. The
link has now become clear. You remember that two years ago or less than that
before we used to say that resolution 1559 has nothing to do with the extension
of President Lahoud’s term of office. It was quite difficult then to convince
people of that. Now the same thing is happening once again. The war has nothing
to do with the capture of the two soldiers and the whole world acknowledges
this. Therefore, nothing has to do with anything. There is a pre-planned scheme
and whoever fails to see this reality after all these events and clarity of
matters must be suffering from a problem in their vision, what I mean here is
the vision of the mind rather than of the eye. Therefore, this resistance is
essential in as much as it is natural and legitimate. Its legitimacy stems from
the fact that the Israeli aggressions have not stopped since 2000 taking the
form of the almost daily violation of Lebanese air space by Israeli warplanes.
Add to this that Israel is still occupying part of the Lebanese territories and
still keeps Lebanese prisoners who have been in Israeli jails for a long time.
As for why this resistance is essential, let us just think of the direct
achievements of the latest battles on the ground. The greatest achievement of
those battles is that they came as a national response to the cowardly
propositions that have been circulated through our region especially after the
Iraq invasion. What made them more glorious is the reaction of the Arab people
in general which was marked by being a purely pan-Arab response to the
abominable, seditious propositions that we have heard recently and to those who
stand behind them. As though these people are saying to them, “we are Arab and
this is our resistance and those who do not support it are against us”. This
means that the national feeling is still there and has not been weakened as some
might claim. On the contrary, this feeling is at its peak now, thus exceeding
all the destructive thoughts that suspicious parties with well-known ends are
seeking to market among Arab citizens.
The glorious battles fought by the resistance with rare faith and competence
have proven a number of facts: The first is that military force, no matter how
great, produces defeat when it does not have faith and morals, and when it is
not based on legitimate rights and principled policy. The second is that the
resistance that has faith, determination and steadfastness and that encompasses
the vision, principles and goals of the people and is encompassed and adopted by
them produces victory. In this case the victory of the heavy-armed enemy does
not exceed being a destruction of stones and killing of civilians. And as every
occupation is an immoral act, then it is doomed to, and must, fail and meet
defeat. Israel is the best example here. Military force is not everything and
the destructive force of weapons is not everything. The only thing Israel
possesses is the destructive force at the military level and some other factors
at the international level, but at the same time it possesses a very big force;
namely the weakness of the Arabs, both morally and physically. When we decide to
overcome this gap, a decision that we ourselves can make, there is no doubt that
the balance is in our favour. Hence the third fact that stresses the limitation
of the Israeli force despite its superiority. This limitation is determined by
the intensity of our faith, steadfastness and will to fight, which must enhance
our self-confidence and erase all traces of psychological defeat fostered by the
enemy’s propaganda that sees the battle as being settled in advance in the
interest of Israel or that defeat is the destiny of Arabs. This fact has to
further motivate Israel to consider the future results of its terrorist policy
against Arabs. Here we can draw a comparison between what took place in between
the 1982 war 24 years ago and the last war in Lebanon a few days ago. In 1982
Israel started its war or land invasion of Lebanon on the 6th of June where it
reached Ba’abda that overlooks Beirut on June 13th, i.e. on the seventh day
Israel was very close to Beirut. Then they resumed the process of encircling and
occupying Beirut. Today, after five weeks almost, Israel is still struggling and
suffering to occupy several hundreds of meters here and several hundreds of
meters there, and they are trying to reach the closest point to the Litani
River, which is only six kilo meters, yet they fail. And I am sure that had
there been a spring or a stream of the Litani on the Palestinian-Lebanese
borders, they would have put their feet in the water and said, “we have reached
the Litani!”. They have become the subject of sarcasm and lost the credibility
which they have never enjoyed before. They say, “we have occupied a site”, then
they say, “we have bombed the site”. It is supposed to happen in the opposite
way. This is common sense that we first bomb a site then occupy it. Anyhow, what
is the difference between the first war and the second? In 1982 the technical
gap between Israel and the opposite Palestinian-Lebanese side in military assets
was smaller than the gap today. Israel’s force has doubled several times during
this time and there is a big gap between it and that of the resistance today.
But the difference is the will to fight. In fact, in 1982 there were tough
Palestinian and Lebanese fighters who fought in the real sense of the word. But
this is not enough as certain leaderships did not enjoy the will to fight at all
in 1982, while now the will to fight is there in the base and at the top and
there is a popular embracing of this resistance that helped it succeed.
This is a major difference that we have to know about the two wars. One of the
other positive sides of this war is that it has completely uncovered the Arab
situation. Of course if we asked any Arab citizen about the Arab situation
before this war, they will say that it is bad, which is true. But Arab citizens
used to see the Arab situation under makeup. Now they see it as it is in reality
without any cosmetics. This war prevented the use of such cosmetics as it
classified positions in a clear way. There was no room for half solutions in
such a war where it unveiled half men, or people with half positions as it
unveiled all late positions, i.e. those who were waiting to see where the scale
of strength will settle have fallen along with their positions. This is one of
the very important qualities of this battle. For all the above mentioned
reasons, this battle has been considered by Israel a matter of life or death,
because it makes Israel lose its dignity and its moral influence on us, thus
losing its historic role which it was created for and its mission for the West.
That is why, they have started working hard to make up for their military defeat
and failure in achieving their objectives on the ground by means of any
political, international achievement that justifies the survival of Israel and
its role before its citizens, leaders, and allies. As usual, the only outlet for
them is the Security Council which the USA has transformed from a council to
preserve security into one that destroys it by issuing a resolution that
responds to the demands of Israel and saves it from its predicament at the
expense of Lebanon, paving the way for further division and instability. If we
go back to the Security Council resolutions issued in the past two years, i.e.
resolutions 1559, 1860 and 1701, and those concerning Darfur for instance, among
other resolutions, we would completely comprehend where the Security Council is
heading to. It is heading towards interfering in the domestic affairs of member
countries and creating turbulence. Some people say the Security Council is
impotent, and this is not true. The Security Council was impotent when there was
an international balance. Had the Security Council been impotent at present, the
United States would not have relied on it to harm different places around the
world. The truth is that the rest of the world, or perhaps most of it, has
become impotent before the Security Council. We used to say “the international
community”. The international community is a group of countries, some of which
are members of the Security Council, and some are their allies outside the
Security Council. They fight us with or without the Security Council
resolutions, which means they will fight us anyway. Yet the Security Council
resolutions give them more freedom to move in this fight. On the other hand, our
weakness lies in the fact that when we speak of the Security Council -some
people in the Arab World and in the world at large say this is a Security
Council resolution, or this is what the Security Council wants- as if it were a
council with a divine power, or as if its resolutions were sacred or revealed by
God, and indeed this is dangerous.
Therefore, the solution, as I said at earlier stages when I talked about
resolution 1559 at Damascus University, is that the national decision is always
higher than any international decision even if this led to fight and war. We do
not have another option. This is what we recently expressed to whoever contacted
us, to whomever we contacted and to everybody we met during the hostilities. We
said that any resolution to be issued by the Security Council, whether under
Chapter VII or any other chapter, will either not be implemented or will lead to
instability if they try to implement it by force and against the will of the
countries of the region, and in the case of Lebanon outside the Lebanese
consensus. In such a case the situation will be different for the Security
Council. That is when all the countries decide that the national decision is the
higher, we wouldn’t feel afraid of the Security Council because it reflects the
balance of powers and we decide to be weak. Whereas when we decide to be strong,
this balance will change with or without resolutions. So, we shouldn’t waste
time and speak of a good or bad resolution in light of this international
balance. Here I will move away from the diplomatic expressions used by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as in its recent statement, to say that there is a
bad resolution, a worse resolution, and a less bad resolution as far as this
resolution has to do with Israel and the Arabs. And as far as the United States
is the antagonist and the arbitrator at the same time, the assessments will be
like this. But does this mean that resolution 1701 doesn’t have any positive
elements at all? No. It does have positive elements. The most important element
for us is to stop the war, stop destroying Lebanon and stop killing innocent
civilians, kids, women, the elderly and others. This is an essential goal for
the Arabs, Lebanon and Syria, and I believe for many countries and peoples
around the world. Yet, experience has taught us that positivity covers the form
and negativity covers the content. This is the only problem with this
resolution. It held the Resistance Movement accountable. I don’t want to go
through the details, but this point is one of the striking and stark facts which
we cannot accept. Naturally, who should be held accountable? I’m not expressing
a position here, but for everybody, even outside the Arab and Muslim region,
Israel is the party who should be held accountable. We still have to say that
those who encouraged Israel to attack Lebanon, stood by and supported it should
be held accountable as well.
The May 17 Group is responsible for the destruction, massacres and the war from
A to Z. Hence come resolution 1701 as a political lift for this group, aiming of
course at granting Israel political gains that it failed to achieve by military
means. The resolution came also as an international political lift, but why
international? Because there isn’t anymore a national lift that can lift these
people, and thus they were forced to find an international one. They will use
this lift to start attacking the resistance, and we have already seen that.
Before the blood of the victims dried, before anything else, and even before the
displaced headed back to their villages, the May 17 Group members started to
talk about disarming the Resistance Movement. This means that one of their
future tasks after the war failed is saving the current Israeli government and
Israel’s domestic front either through making a sedition in Lebanon, and
consequently transferring the political fight from inside Israel to inside
Lebanon, or through the possibility of disarming the resistance. But I tell
those people that they have failed and that their fall is looming. The battles
have also proved that Arabs’ words have no weight or importance in international
forums. It has been rare that we, Arabs, agree on something from A to Z, but we
achieved that in the Beirut meeting and an Arab delegation, representing all the
Arab countries without exception, flied to New York to face rejection and
neglect. Of course this neglect wasn’t directed at the delegation members but
rather at those who stand behind it, i.e. the Arab countries. Indeed, it was the
situation on the ground, and the steadfastness of the Lebanese people and of the
resistance and not the Arab political performance which modified the previous
draft resolution into the current formula, which is less bad. This is an
important fact we should comprehend. In all these matters we have come to the
conclusion that relying on the international situation doesn’t yield fruitful
results. As Arabs, if we do not search for points of strength, then we have no
weight or political performance, and all this talking is mere illusions.
In my belief, the real battle has just started but not in military terms. After
the uncovering of the post-war positions, the real battle has just started in
Lebanon. But we all listened to the speech of Hizballah’s Secretary General, Mr.
Hasan Nassrullah, who answered them. He who reads the messages understands the
content. We believe that not only the Syrians but also all the Arab people stand
by the resistance completely and unequivocally. In military terms, the
resistance achieved victory, whereas Israel, by all military standards, was
defeated, not at the end of the war but rather from the very beginning of it.
Yet wars bring woes and Lebanon paid a big price, material and humanitarian.
Arabs, therefore, must stand by Lebanon to build what was destroyed. Yet, the
question is: will the blood of the martyrs and civilians be lost without any
gain? As a bottom line, we have to change the military victory into a political
victory, at least in the peace process. The early results of the battles at the
political level were the talk about the necessity of realizing peace and
returning lands and rights to their owners. To this effect, we, as Arabs, have
been consulted on the issue, even after such a long time. This means that part
of this issue has come to lie in our hands now, but only a small part. This is
of course thanks to the resistance. Hence, standing by and supporting the
resistance will help us possess the bigger part of the peace file, which in turn
will make the concerned countries take our opinion and interests into account.
In other words, resistance and peace constitute one pillar rather than two
pillars, and he who supports part of it has to support the other part. Whereas
those who claim to have the experience and vision for peace, here we are… come
and show us your achievements in the field of resistance. Apart from that, any
experience is incomplete to learn from. And as we are living an exceptional and
historic period, there is no room for courtesies, bargains or settlements.
Rather, we have to speak frankly: We, in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, still
have occupied lands; this means we are the ones concerned with war and peace. In
the fist place we want from our Arab brothers to stand with us, and we welcome
anyone who wants to do so but only through our vision and evaluation of our
interests. We were the ones who suffered in war and in peace negotiations in the
last decades. As for those who do not share our vision, we only ask them to
stand aside so that we do what we have to do, and we won’t ask anyone to fight
with us or for us. I say this because every time there is turbulence, we come to
hear an X official saying, “Why did they drag us into this?” Nobody drags anyone
into anything. The truth is that every country is responsible for itself. They
didn’t of course say this to us; they said it to the resistance. But as a
general principle, everyone is responsible for his own country. Yet as a bottom
line, they must not adopt the vision of the enemy towards our issues, and their
roles shouldn’t be at the expense of our interests. We say this because anyone
never had experience in war is not entitled to assume the role of a guide or
instructor in peace. Resistance today will shape the political direction of
tomorrow, and the position towards it today is what will determine the roles to
be played tomorrow. In other words, the era of political opportunism and
political intrusion has come to an end, especially after these battles. If
anyone wants to play a role for domestic reasons at the expense of our issues,
this is rejected. And if anyone wants to play a role in order to appease the
West, this is also rejected. We, in Syria, haven’t yet decided to display our
cause in the international market or any other market for purchase. I don’t
think that the Palestinians either, after Oslo, Wye River, and Wye Plantation,
among other names, have decided to sell their cause, nor do we see such a thing
in Lebanon.
In the next stage, the role of the resistance will be basic at the Arab level. I
don’t mean the Lebanese resistance but rather resistance as a concept that has
hugely spread, especially recently. But let’s take the role resistance in
Lebanon played in the last meeting of the Arab Foreign Ministers. Three weeks
before this meeting, the ministers met in Cairo in a climate similar to the
climate that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq: An almost absolute division
among Arab countries. But suddenly, and within three weeks, and knowing that the
ministers were not replaced nor the governments were reshuffled, we come to
unanimous agreement. But on what did we agree? Or rather why? The reason is the
Lebanese consensus. The essence of this Lebanese consensus is the stand of the
resistance. Had the resistance said, “we won’t accept these points” or “we have
reservations on this or that point”, the ministers’ meeting wouldn’t mean
anything or even take place. Even if it took place and the resistance said after
it, “we reject your ideas”, the meeting would have failed and everything would
have failed with it. This is only one role of the resistance. Still there is a
bigger role that will be part of the domestic situation in the Arab countries.
We all, as Arab officials, want our countries to be stable, but such stability
cannot be realized or continued under the constant contradiction between the
official stands and the public stands. This contradiction has reached its peak
in the present era. Most of the Arab people have clearly and almost completely,
as there is nothing absolute, taken the side of the resistance and challenged us
as officials. They challenged the silence of some of us and the bias of others
and decided to move into this direction. Therefore, I call upon all Arab
officials to stand by their own people, and consequently stand by the resistance
as people constitute the basis of stability which we are talking about and
seeking to achieve, especially in these circumstances and after the war on Iraq
and the schemes of partition of the region. Experience has taught us that the
international hegemonic powers, upon which some people may rely, use officials
and governments for their own interests against the interests of those same
governments and sometimes in the interest of their enemies. Those powers even
throw such officials in the first pit to appear after exploiting them to the
utmost where they would have lost both internally and externally.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The last war was surrounded by many propositions which sometimes exceeded the
limits of the acceptable, yet they were very close or identical with the limits
of what is forbidden nationally and morally. This may suggest or refer to either
dubious backgrounds or enormous ignorance with the facts of different things.
Thus, it is wrong to yield in our evaluation of this war to narrow-minded
visions which separate this confrontation from the general context of the
Arab-Israeli conflict and the peace process and its relapses. This narrow-minded
visions deal with the confrontation away from the evaluation of Western and
American contents and what is happening in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon during
the recent years. All these points confirm that this aggression was
pre-prepared, and clarify that the aggression is an Israeli aggression in tools,
but it is an American aggression in decision shared by certain Western
countries. However, when others think that it is a reaction to the abduction of
two soldiers, then this is an unprecedented silliness. Most of these
propositions were mentioned in certain writings and statements, like saying that
the resistance should take permission from the government. In fact, resistance
movements take a cover and legitimacy from the government and the people; they
do not take permission from the government. If we assume that it will do so, the
answer will obviously be that the circumstances are not suitable now; there will
be no resistance if it wants to depend on the government. The word "adventurers"
was mentioned; if the men of resistance were adventurers, then can we say that
Yousif AlA'zma, Sultan Basha Al-Atrash, Hasan Al-Kharat, Ibrahim Hanano and
sheikh Saleh Al-Ali are adventurers?! Can we say that Sa'ad Zaghlul in Egypt,
Suleiman Al-Halabi, a Syrian, who killed the British High Commissioner in Egypt,
and Joul Jammal, another Syrian, who exploded himself in a French ship and
conducted the first martyrdom operation in the Arab region – are also
adventurers?! If the situation is like this, then let us ask the education
ministries in the Arab World to change the curricula and all these
terminologies. Of course, this is not accepted. We always notice the
discrimination in certain Western propositions which still exist against the
Arabs; they say that the Israeli reaction is disproportionate and unbalanced
which means that if Israel reacted according to a certain proportion, its
aggression is accepted. They are not against the principle of aggression; they
are against the volume of this aggression. There will come a day when they put
us tables in which they specify what is accepted to be achieved by Israel
regarding the killing and destruction in order not to be considered as
surpassing the political, human, or moral aspects, or various international
conventions.
It was also proposed that Israel has the right to defend itself as a reaction to
the aggression committed by the resistance. Here we see the policy of double
standards. If we implement the same idea by a mathematical equation on the
Palestinians; if they want to react, so to what extent they have the right to
destroy and kill in Israel?! If we practically implement this idea, nothing will
remain in Israel. At any rate, what the recent events revealed regarding the
interrogations of the agents network captured lately in Lebanon and linked this
date to the positions of Mat 17th group before and after the aggression, confirm
that this scheme – as I said before – is pre-prepared, and we divide it into
three tracks: The first track is the resolution No. 1559, the assassination of
prime minister Hariri, the pressures on Syria and the resistance for compliance.
The second track is the failure of American occupation in Iraq. The third track
is the burying of the peace process, switching to the military option in order
to subjugate Arabs and as a natural result to absolve Israel of all its
obligations towards Arabs. In front of this tragic reality, the resistance
movements emerged in the Arab arena as a single solution to restore the usurped
rights. After all what is being said, Israel should conclude something, but is
seems that they are not analyzing; they did not analyze the resistance situation
and power. It seems that when a human being becomes very strong, he looses
balance and can not see reality rationally and accurately. Israel has tried for
decades to be part from this region through a scheme which was called in the
past the Greater Middle East – I don’t know if it is the same as the New Middle
East or with some modifications, but this proposition is an old one – where
Israel is the dominant power in the Arab region and the Arabs are just money,
slaves and satellites rotating in the Israeli orbit. They depended on a basic
idea that each new Arab generation will accept Israel more than the previous
one, and thus be more obedient. Therefore, it is an issue of time and time is on
the side of Israel! Let us see the reality: if we assume that the time
separating between two generations is 15-20 years, I consider myself
representing the third generation which came after the occupation of Palestine.
Now, part of the fourth generation is present with us in this hall and it
represents the youth who have become politically mature. The fact that Israel
should know is that each new generation will hate Israel more than the
generation which preceded it. The word "hatred" is not a good one; we do not
hate or encourage people to hate, but Israel did not leave room for any feeling
but hatred. For example, we read about the massacre of Deir-Yasin and other
massacres done by Israel against Arabs, but my generation and I lived and
witnessed Sabra and Shatilla massacres and first Qana massacre, and now we are
living the second Qana massacre. The fourth generation remembers the first Qana
Massacre and the second Qana massacre. Children are asking now why these
children are dying?! They get their awareness of life through the second Qana
massacre. Therefore, Israel should know that time is not on its side. On the
contrary, there will come a generation which is more determined on hitting
Israel and avenging all actions it did in the past. At that time, Israeli
children will pay the price. I would like to speak out of the reality we live
in; if Israel wants to analyze, it should analyze the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948,
1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, the confrontations with the resistance in 1993, 1996,
and the last war. If they analyze these wars, they will notice that these wars
represent the four generations. They will notice that the Arab fighter has
become more determined; these battles and wars reflect the Arab status towards
Israel. Therefore, we say to them that you have experienced humiliation in the
recent battles in Lebanon. Your weapons, warplanes, rockets and even your atomic
bombs will not protect you in the future. Generations are developing and the
future generations in the Arab world will be able to find the way to defeat
Israel in a fiercer manner. Thus, the Israeli leadership should stop their
foolishness and arrogant, and should know that it is in front of a historic
juncture now; either to go towards the peace and returning rights or to go
towards continuous instability until one of the future generations puts an end
to this.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The heroic Lebanese national resistance has written with its blood and its
people’s sacrifice an eternal epic in the history of the nation, destroyed the
legend of the invincible army, buried under its feet the policy of surrender and
humiliation and proved that the power of faith in land and homeland can defeat
the power of armaments. I express may appreciation and admiration to the men of
resistance; I salute with great reverence our noble martyrs and I salute the
brotherly Lebanese people whose steadfastness was the incubator of this
resistance. We say to those who accuse Syria that it stands by the resistance,
and this accusation is not a new one at all. We say to those who accuse Syria
that if standing by the resistance is a mortifying sin, then it is an honor and
a source of pride for the Syrian people. This resistance is a badge of honour on
the chest of each Arab citizen not only in Syria. By each drop of sweat, each
drop of blood, each rocket that destroys a tank and by each Israeli soldier
defeated in Lebanon, we consider that there is a badge of honour to be worn on
the chest of Arab citizens. I would like to say to the Syrian Arab people that
the word "proud" is not enough at all to express what a human being feels
towards the greatness of your support to our Lebanese brothers. You were great
when some persons wanted you to look small overwhelmed by malevolence. But, the
great people of Syria always surprises the adversary by what is not expected.
You dealt a blow to those who wanted to create a division between Syria and
Lebanon. You were magnificent in your comprehending the magnitude of the
conspiracy, and you were very strong in your reaction towards this conspiracy.
In brief, you were the beating heart of Arabism with every sense of the word
regarding the heat that will rise and the meaning which will be more powerful
when we liberate the Golan by our hands, will and determination. The destiny of
Syria is to be proud of Arabism and to defend and maintain it because it is the
only base for a bright and honorable future we build for our children. We have
to implant in our hearts and minds that there is no place in this world but for
the strong. Strength starts by the power of mind, will and faith and this is the
base of resistance and the only way to achieve victory. However, waiting for
others to solve our problems, keeping faith in the international community as an
alternative to the faith in our abilities, and yielding our mentality to fear
and our will to others, is not only the adverse of wisdom but absolute
ignorance. I would like to repeat my salutations to the journalists and I wish
your conference all success.
Thank you.
INTERVIEWS
SPEECHES DOMESTIC ISSUESNATIONAL ISSUESINTERNATIONAL ISSUESNEWS & ANALYSESPICTURES
HOME
Back