The Jaafarite Mufti Ahmad Qabalan. (Credit: NNA)
"Being part of an axis is today an essential factor in local resistance, and Lebanon is a shining example of this since we are unable to elect a president because of American and Western pressure, which wants to impose a personality who is the guardian of American and Zionist interests." During his Adha sermon on Monday in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Jaafarite mufti Ahmad Qabalan was quick to aim his arrows at opponents of the moumanaa (pro-Hezbollah bloc in Lebanon).
"Lebanese political forces should have come together to preserve national interests through political compromise," he continued. However, he added, some "continue to understand only the language of the Zionist enemy, and others remain nostalgic for the 1982 [Israeli] offensive (which reached Beirut)."
Lebanon has been without a president since the end of Michel Aoun's mandate in October 2022, and a year has passed since the last parliamentary voting session for a president. The axis to which the Jaafarite mufti is close, that of Hezbollah, remains committed to the candidacy of Marada leader Sleiman Frangieh, while the majority of other political forces, including some of their allies such as the Free Patriotic Movement, are opposed.
"The era of Zionist domination is over, the battle today is for national decision and Lebanese interests," said the Jaafarite mufti. Democracy, he said, is "sacred, unless it becomes the enemy of Lebanese interests." "Democracy in Lebanon is based on consensus, not numbers, and we have complied to protect the Lebanese family, otherwise the country would have been very different," he said.
He added: "Lebanon is too big to be divided, the civil war is definitively over and a united Lebanon is eternal."
'Don't make the wrong strategic choice'
Sheikh Qabalan also addressed the ongoing war in southern Lebanon, between Hezbollah and Israel in his preaching. "The resistance's fight on the southern front is dedicated solely to protecting a united Lebanon, far from narrow confessional considerations and deadly dreams of federalism," he declared.
He castigated "those who make the wrong strategic choices" and those "who continue to build hopes on a burning Israel," in a thinly veiled allusion to some opponents' voices denouncing the opening of the front by Hezbollah, since Oct. 8, 2023, "in support" of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
'It's the moumanaa that's preventing the election'
The response of the Lebanese Forces (LF), one of the opposition parties targeted by Sheikh Qabalan, did not take long to come. In a press release, the LF deplored "Sheikh Qabalan's speech, which employs the logic of threats, division and accusations of treachery." The party said, however, that it wished to respond on only one point: The allegations that the United States was preventing the presidential election in Lebanon.
"The United States cannot prevent the election. On the other hand, the moumanaa camp is the one that neutralized twelve voting sessions in Parliament by withdrawing at the end of the first session. Should we interpret this behavior as complacency with any American will or the result of American pressure?"
The text continued: "The one preventing the election is none other than this camp, which rejects successive voting sessions [until a president is elected] or even the possibility of a consensus around a third candidate, given its inability to get its own elected."
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
