'If you want to commit suicide, do it alone — but leave Lebanon out of it!' Gemayel to Qassem

The leader of the Kataeb Party and MP Samy Gemayel issued a blunt response on Monday to a speech by Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem. “If you want to defend your master, go join him. If you want to commit suicide, do it alone — but leave Lebanon out of it!” he wrote in a post on his X account.

Earlier, Qassem stated that his party was “concerned with the need to face the American threat” against Iran and was “not neutral,” while remaining vague about what this entailed.

“We also consider (the threat) as directed against us, and we reserve full latitude to act as we deem appropriate,” the Shiite leader said during a speech broadcast on the party’s channel, Al-Manar.

Gemayel had repeatedly called for an end to the “support front” for Gaza, which Hezbollah unilaterally opened on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas’s attack on Israel. On the eve of Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination — killed on Sep. 27, 2024, in large-scale strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs — the Christian lawmaker urged Hezbollah to “return to the state and abandon regional adventurism.”

While Hezbollah refuses to disarm north of the Litani River, Gemayel held Hezbollah responsible in December “for delaying Lebanon’s transition to a new phase, obstructing the army’s work, and blocking international aid and reconstruction.”