Salam: 'Preventing discord requires all citizens to feel equal before the law'

BEIRUT — Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who has enjoyed a surge of support in recent days, particularly within the Sunni community after the Raouche incident, reiterated again on Friday: "Preventing discord cannot be achieved at the expense of enforcing the law, on the contrary, preventing discord requires all citizens to feel equal before the law and protected by the state."

"Our project has always been and remains the reconstruction of the state. Just as there can be only one army for one state, there can only be one law, applied equally to all, with no one above it or shielded from accountability and responsibility," he also declared, in statements reported by the state-run National News Agency (NNA).

The day before, he had already stated, "I follow only one path: one state, one law, one army."

For the record

Why Hezbollah spares Aoun, and distances itself from Salam

A week ago, the projection of portraits of former Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah and his brief successor Hashem Safieddine onto the Raouche Rock took place in violation of an administrative decision by Beirut governor Marwan Abboud. On Salam's orders, he had banned any light projection of portraits of political leaders on this iconic Beirut landmark.

'No one can question my Arab identity'

In response to intimidation campaigns targeting him, especially from Hezbollah's grassroots base, who accuse him of being a "Zionist" or an "American puppet", Salam replied: "My conscience is clear, and these malicious campaigns will not alter my course." "No one can question my Arab identity or my consistent positions in favor of the Palestinian cause, which I have defended at the highest international forums, without ever making Lebanon pay the price," said the former renowned jurist, in a barely veiled jab at Hezbollah.

Hezbollah opened a "support front" for Gaza and Hamas after Oct. 7, which turned into an almost all-out war with Israel in Lebanon nearly a year later, destroying large areas of Beirut's southern suburbs, the Bekaa, and South Lebanon, where the Shiite community is in the majority.