BEIRUT - A Lebanese Christian leader said on Sunday Hezbollah’s war with Israel was a disaster for Lebanon and rapped the Shia Muslim group for rejecting calls to lay down its arms. “We don’t feel (there was a) victory because the majority of the Lebanese people doesn’t feel victory,” Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces militia-turned-political party, said at a rally attended by thousands of supporters north of Beirut.
“The majority of the Lebanese people feel that a major catastrophe has befallen them, throwing their present and future up in the air,” he said. Geagea is a Maronite Christian and a member of a mainly Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian political coalition, which hold a majority in parliament and the cabinet.
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He said a strong state could only emerge after Hezbollah surrenders its weapons. “Betting on maintaining weapons through force is a wrong bet. ... No weapons will make us surrender to this de facto reality,” he said referring to Hezbollah keeping it arms.
Geagea led the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia at the time, during the later years of LebanonÂ’s 1975-1990 civil war. His anti-Syrian group surrendered its weapons at the end of the war but Geagea was jailed in 1994 for crimes during it. He was released last year, a few weeks after Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in the wake of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al Hariri. |