 As progress was being made in ending Lebanon's Cabinet crisis, MP Walid Jumblatt launched a fiery attack against Hizbullah Sunday, questioning the party's determination to maintain its arms indefinitely. Jumblatt indirectly addressed the resistance, saying: "To those who hold the rifle today we say, 'thank you, the South is free'; to whom is your allegiance now, Lebanon or other countries?"
| Wally's on a roll. It looks like he's made up his mind... |
"We don't want to be in the middle of an axis that starts in the Mediterranean and ends in Tehran," Jumblatt added, in reference to the Shiite party's relations with Syria and Iran.
| What? There's an elephant in the living room? When did that get there? |
| .com sez it's a dead rat, and it's starting to smell. |
Jumblatt demanded that Lebanon's Shiite ministers - who walked out of a Cabinet meeting in early December and subsequently suspended their participation in the government in protest against a decision to request an international investigation into the series of assassinations targeting the country over the past year-and-a-half - should explain their recent positions. "We tell them you left the meeting maybe to escape, because the Syrian regime does not want an international tribunal," he said. "We knew when we asked for an international tribunal the ruler of Damascus will not accept it. If they want the truth, why are they dodging the call for an international tribunal?"
| And why are Leb factions supporting them? |
The Druze leader further implied a possible link between the series of killings and Hizbullah. "There are 'security islands' that harbor a load of wired cars ... and as we all know, the state cannot investigate or interrogate people in some of the areas inside these security islands," he said. Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamade, a member of Jumblatt's parliamentary bloc, said recently he had information proving the car used in his assassination attempt was wired in Beirut's Southern Suburbs - Hizbullah's heartland. "We tell them a party that was able to defeat Israel can help the Lebanese investigation in uncovering the truth ... Unless they have something to hide," he said. "We say if your conscience was clear, you would facilitate [the request for an] international tribunal."
| Which is to say that everybody knows who dunnit and no one's admitting it. If we can guess the culprits from here, I'm sure it's a lot more obvious to the guys down the block from them. |
The Druze leader also said the Shebaa Farms are not Lebanese, and condemned the recent use of the term "Shebaa area" instead of Shebaa Farms by Hizbullah in a draft agreement with the Cabinet majority. "We used to talk about the Farms, and then these farms expanded and turned into an area ... those who know the area know that the Shebaa area is a region that starts in Shebaa and ends in (the Syrian) Golan Heights, which means that there is an attempt to stretch the struggle forever under the slogan of freeing Shebaa Farms, which is not Lebanese, not Lebanese, not Lebanese," Jumblatt asserted. |