Naim Qassem during a speech in November 2024. (Credit: Al-Manar/AFP)
Two days before the municipal elections in southern Lebanon on Saturday, Hezbollah's Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, called on the popular base of his party to participate massively in the vote "so that the victory is overwhelming," in a statement released Thursday evening.
Addressing the "resistant people of southern Lebanon," the head of the party asked to "maximize [the] presence and participation in the elections so that the victory is overwhelming," by voting for the "Development and Loyalty" lists of the Amal and Hezbollah tandem.
Following in the footsteps of the parliament speaker and head of the Amal Movement, Nabih Berri, Qassem drew a parallel between voting in southern Lebanon for the tandem and regaining and reclaiming the land of the South, the main theater of the armed conflict between Hezbollah and Israel for more than 13 months, from Oct. 8, 2023, to Nov. 27, 2024.
"You have rebuilt the South after the liberation in 2000, then again after the July 2006 aggression. Today, once more, you've outpaced the State and officials by returning to your land. You faced dangers and made sacrifices to reclaim your land and your homeland ... The municipal and mokhtars elections this year constitute one of the challenges of resilience, steadfastness, attachment to this land and its reconstruction by its inhabitants," stressed Qassem.
'Everyone betting on Israeli aggression is waiting for results'
The head of the party also stated that "everyone betting on Israeli aggression" to weaken the formation "is waiting for the results" of the election. Some experts note that the turnout in the municipal elections in a region largely acquired by the Shiite tandem will help assess the popularity of the two parties following the latest devastating war against Israel, especially for border villages. More than 70 municipal councils in the South have already been elected by default, thanks to the tandem, through compromises between candidates and parties supporting the tandem.
Triggered after Hezbollah opened a "support front" in Gaza and with Hamas, the war in Lebanon caused at least 4,000 deaths and 16,500 injuries according to official Lebanese estimates, the day after the cease-fire agreement was signed on Nov. 27, 2024. Since then, Israel still occupies five positions in southern Lebanon, in violation of the agreement, and bombards this region almost daily.
"We will not give up a single grain of our generous South, and we will not accept the Israeli occupation to subsist on a single inch of our land and our country," declared the Hezbollah leader, according to whom "strong participation in the elections ... is an integral part of the reconstruction process that we will undertake with the elected municipalities, and with the Lebanese state, which must take its responsibilities." Qassem consistently calls on the Lebanese state to start the reconstruction of areas destroyed by the war. The World Bank estimates the total damage at $6.8 billion in the regions affected by Israeli bombings.
The Hezbollah parliamentary group and Berri also encouraged southern voters during the day to vote for the tandem and advised candidates to secure compromises to achieve elections by default.
"On May 24, you are called to once again embody the scene of returning to your land and homes, as you did in the first moments following the cessation of the brutal Israeli aggression," emphasized Berri in a statement on Thursday. After the truce took effect, Berri called in a televised speech for displaced Lebanese to "return to [their] villages" and reunite with "their fig trees and olive trees." For its part, Hezbollah urged voters in a statement to vote for the tandem, "which will be a guarantee for the residents of the region, especially concerning the reconstruction of their villages."
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar expressed his determination to hold the municipal elections in southern Lebanon, reporting diplomatic contacts undertaken to ensure the smooth running of the vote, despite Israeli attacks.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
