أوان حزب الله لإزالة أية شكوك حول أولوياته

دايلي ستار - 27/6/2007

Time for Hizbullah to remove any doubts about its priorities

By The Daily Star

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Editorial

Hizbullah's offer to help investigate the weekend attack that killed six Spanish Army peacekeepers in South Lebanon was a step in the right direction. Whether they know it or not, all Lebanese benefit from the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), so it deserves their support - and Hizbullah has important assets in that part of the country that could be instrumental in tracking down the perpetrators of Sunday's bombing. The onus is on the resistance movement, though, to do something far more dramatic in response to this latest assault on this country's increasingly fragile security situation: Hizbullah is uniquely qualified to  shore up national stability, but only if it moves decisively to demonstrate that its agenda 100 percent Lebanese.

There is a relatively easy way to accomplish this. The party has been insisting for months that Lebanon needs a national unity government, and rightly so. All the conditions that usually bring about this form of leadership are present in Lebanon: The political scene is very much in crisis, the country is undeniably in transition, and the basic rules of the political process (a new parliamentary election law, how to choose the next president, etc.) cry out for some heavy-duty re-engineering. The sticking point has been about numbers, specifically what percentage of seats in a unity Cabinet would be held by the opposition.

Numbers might have been worth arguing about in November 2006, but this is June 2007, and the intervening period has seen more political assassinations, several deadly riots, a bloody battle between the Lebanese Army and Sunni extremists, a series of bombings aimed at intimidating and/or murdering civilians, and now the criminal attack on UNIFIL. All the while, Lebanon 's ability to withstand such shocks without coming apart along one or more of its many seams has been diminished by the power struggle between the government and the opposition.

The current government is not a very good one. The ruling March 14 Forces coalition is an uninspiring lot that includes individuals and organizations whose commitment to democratic principles is - to put it mildly - highly suspect. It is not they, however, who would be the primary beneficiaries of a decision by Hizbullah to be magnanimous and set aside some of its conditions for returning to the Cabinet: It is the Lebanese people - the same people Hizbullah served with distinction by driving out Israeli occupation forces in 2000 and by staunchly resisting a new invasion last summer - who need reassurance and would most appreciate a break from the high tension of the past few months. The resistance should not let down now.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=83366&categ_id=17

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ