Salam says greatest help to Israel was provided by Hezbollah
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the greatest help to Israel was provided by Hezbollah after Sheikh Naim Qassem accused authorities of helping Israel.
Qassem had said on Tuesday in a televised address that direct talks between Lebanon and Israel would bring only "humiliation" for Lebanon, accusing Lebanese authorities of having "helped Israel instead of helping Lebanon's sovereignty" by continuing with negotiations that handed Israel "political gains".
At negotiations in Washington in June, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a framework deal that involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon's south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region.
Hezbollah has repeatedly rejected the direct talks and refuses to surrender its weapons.
Violence in Lebanon has decreased since the Lebanon-Israel deal, but Lebanon continues to report intermittent Israeli strikes, shelling and heavy demolitions in southern villages and towns.
"Shouldn't the systematic destruction of southern villages and towns... be reason for the political authorities to say, 'We don't want dialogue with the Israeli entity'?" Qassem said.
Salam hit back on X, saying "the greatest help to Israel was provided by those who unilaterally drew Lebanon into the adventures of futile wars... and granted it pretexts to attack our country".
"Those who unilaterally take the decision of war and try to continue to seize the state's decision-making, and to tie Lebanon to foreign calculations and axes, ignoring the interests of their community and the Lebanese in general, are not fit to lecture on patriotism, not to mention on sovereignty," Salam added.
The Prime Minister reaffirmed the state's commitment to end "the Israeli occupation... and secure the conditions for the dignified and safe return of people to their towns and villages", and to rebuild.
Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar criticized Salam for taking a sharp tone against Hezbollah while remaining quiet as Israel "violates our sovereignty, destroys villages, and razes homes, farmland, and infrastructure."
Ammar argued that the Prime Minister no longer distinguishes "between those who violate sovereignty and occupy the land and those who defend it".
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YOU are 100% Right!!!
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1,000% Right!!! Hezb is full of shit!!!
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No Ali Ammar, the Prime Minister clearly distinguishes "between those who violate sovereignty and occupy the land and those who defend it" ... Unfortunately, neither you, nor MP Raab, nor Fadlallah, nor the Lebanese who bend the knee before Qassem can admit that Hezbollah is the occupying force in Lebanon that repeatedly has violated the sovereignty of the Republic by gaming the representative institutions of Lebanese democracy and her governments to pursue the will of the Iranian expansionist projects.
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Hezbollah has not and today does not "defend" Lebanon or Lebanese from peril, rather it is Hezbollah that has led the country into destruction, poverty, and waste of the individual and collective strengths of her citizens and culture. Hezbollah did that, however unwittingly or for whatever higher purpose its members might claim, willingly and for its own benefit to the exclusion of all but adherents to Iranian objectives, projects, and payments. Even those Lebanese entrapped by Iran's corrupting forces have sold Lebanese virtue for but a few pieces of silver ... far less then 30 in number.
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Self loathing and an inbred sense of inferiority have led them all to waste .. perhaps their children will find salvation in the opportunities of Lebanon's free and egalitarian tradition being built in modern times by a wise government doing the people's business as they have expressed with clarity in elevating and supporting President Aoun, Prime Minister Salam, and the governmental institutions they are fashioning to serve Lebanese well.
He is 100% right. Anyone that denies this and still want to cling on to blindly following Hezbollah that are blindly following Iran: You are in danger of becoming a generation with keys to a house that no longer exists or a house that you no longer have access to permanently. My advice to you is to join the rest of Lebanon and search for a peaceful way out of this mess that Qassem and his gang brought us into. There is a window of opportunity now. While the situation is still fresh. While we have people in and around the White Hounse that cares for Lebanon.