Lebanese Forces accuse Hezbollah of undermining sovereignty in response to Qassem's remarks

BEIRUT — The Lebanese Forces (LF) issued a statement Tuesday in response to comments made Monday by Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, who called for support for the Lebanese Army while rejecting disarmament of his own party. The LF said Hezbollah — not the authorities following the American roadmap — violates Lebanese sovereignty.

“Sheikh Naim called on the government to hold meetings to discuss how to restore sovereignty, whereas the decisions taken by the government on Aug. 5 and 7 [when the Salam cabinet endorsed the American plan] had already paved the way for restoring the sovereignty violated by Hezbollah, which has confiscated the state’s strategic decision and dragged Lebanon into wars to serve its own interests and those of Iran,” the LF said. “It is Hezbollah that violates Lebanese sovereignty, and it is because of them that Israel entered Lebanon and violated its sovereignty,” they added.

The LF added: “Sheikh Naim challenged the government by declaring that he will not give up weapons. But the government has made its decision, and it will be implemented in the interest of Lebanon and all Lebanese. When the state is present, every other threat will disappear. This is just one of many examples of his positions radically contrary to Lebanon’s higher interest, and which constitute a continuation of the Iranian violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”

On Monday, Brigadier General Iraj Masjedi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, said the “American-Zionist plan” to disarm Hezbollah “will never be implemented.” Last week, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran “will continue to support Hezbollah” and that the group is currently “rebuilding.”

‘It is the resistance that handed Lebanon over to Israel’

The LF also rejected Qassem’s claim that the government’s decision is unconstitutional and dictated by the United States and Israel. “It seems obvious he is ignorant of the meaning of constitutionality as it exists between Christians and Muslims. The government made its decision with the agreement of the majority of Christian and Muslim ministers [bar the Shiite ministers who didn't vote]. As for what he calls dictates, they are nothing more than the explicit application of the Constitution, which Hezbollah overturned 35 years ago,” the LF said.

“In reality, it is precisely this resistance that has brought Israel to Lebanon several times and given it the right ... to target the party’s members and positions whenever it wants. It is those who claimed and still claim to be able to confront Israel, when reality proves otherwise, who handed Lebanon to Israel. Sheikh Naim claimed that without the resistance, Israel would have reached Beirut, while in reality, without Hezbollah, Israel would never even have entered Lebanon in July 2006 [during the 33-day war], and without them, it would not have returned after Hezbollah opened a support front for Hamas,” the LF claimed.

Finally, the LF criticized Qassem’s reference to cooperation between the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah in 2017 during the “Dawn of the Jurd” operation against the Islamic State near Ersal on the Syrian border. “The so-called resistance has never been an ally of the army. It has always acted as a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which seeks to limit the Lebanese Army’s role and prevent the Lebanese state from regaining its authority,” the statement concluded.