Lebanese politician Charles Jabour, who heads the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces Party, recently claimed that the biggest mistake Lebanese ever made was violating the cease-fire agreement with Israel.
By Rachel Avraham
According to a recent report in MEMRI, “In recent weeks, there have been an increasing number of reports in the Arab and foreign media about U.S. efforts to advance negotiations between Israel and Lebanon that will lead, inter alia, to agreement on the land border between the two countries. Lebanese elements, primarily Hizballah and the Amal movement, received these reports with a mix of apprehension and opposition, seeing them as a step towards normalization with Israel.”
However, MEMRI noted that Lebanese journalist Charles Jabour, who heads the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces Party, “wrote an article in the Lebanese daily Nidaa Al-Watan rejecting the claim that these moves are a prelude to normalization and that this notion was invented by Hizballah in order to distract attention from its obligation to disarm as part of the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire that came into force on November 27, 2024. According to Jabour, the aim of the Lebanon-Israel contacts is to restore Lebanon’s control of its own borders and territory and to revive the implementation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements that Israel signed with Lebanon, among other countries, which he referred to as “the best decision” made by Lebanon that launched a political and economic “golden age” for the country.”
According to MEMRI, “Jabour went on to state that Lebanon was to blame for the collapse of the armistice, because it did not manage to control its borders and was forced by a series of elements to become a state hostile to Israel. These elements, he wrote, included the Palestinian factions, the Syrian regime headed by the Assad family, and the Iranian regime, that took over the decision-making centers in Lebanon, subjugated them to its will, entangled it in wars, and prevented it from existing as a sovereign state. Thus, he added, they, not Israel, are Lebanon’s true enemies.”
Jabour wrote, “The only conflict [with Israel] in which [Lebanon] participated was in 1948. It ended with the Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel, in 1949, which was honored by both countries until it was violated by the Palestinian organizations in the early 1960s, and completely collapsed following the [Six Day] War in 1967. It has been proven that the best decision Lebanon ever made in its history was to honor the Armistice Agreement, and that the political, financial, economic, cultural, and tourism golden age that [Lebanon] knew was between two signings: of the 1949 Armistice Agreement and of the 1969 Cairo Accord [allowing the PLO to operate from Lebanese soil].”
According to Jabour, “Hence, the Lebanese leadership at the time was brave and wise when it defined Lebanon as a country that supports the position of the Arab states, not as a state of conflict. When Lebanon was forced to become a state of conflict and its decision-making capability was de facto eliminated, it became an arena of death, chaos, wars and disasters. The eradication of the state’s [decision-making capability] made it possible for the Assad regime [in Syria], and, later, [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei, to take over its decision-making. The resistance [axis] has made Lebanon a frontline for the [former’s] destructive initiatives against the Palestinians and against the Lebanese.”
Jabour noted that the following facts should be presented in order not to distort history: “First: It was Lebanon that failed to uphold the [1949] Armistice Agreement, not Israel – because due to well-known domestic reasons, [Lebanon] was incapable of controlling its border and imposing its sovereignty, as Jordan was able to do.”
“Second: Israel left Lebanon voluntarily in May 2000… and Lebanon, instead of taking advantage of Israel’s implementation of [Security Council] Resolution 425 and returning to the Armistice Agreement, fabricated the [claim that] the Shebaa Farms – situated in Syrian territory that Israel occupied following the 1967 war and which is addressed by [Security Council] Resolution 242 – [are occupied Lebanese territory – such that Res. 425 is not fully implemented],” Jabour continued. “[However], the UN believes that if the Shebaa Farms are to be included in Resolution 425, there is a need to designate the borders between Lebanon and Syria, and to obtain written approval from Damascus that the farms belong to Lebanon, not [Syria]. This has not happened because the resistance [axis] does not seek an Israeli withdrawal [from Lebanon], but rather armed conflict in order to justify its weapons and its control over decision-making in Lebanon.”
“Third: Israel’s unilateral withdrawal [from southern Lebanon in May 2000] was a great surprise to [then-Syrian] president Hafez Al-Assad, because he realized that this move transferred the pressure to his regime to withdraw from Lebanon, because he had been using Israel as the pretext for leaving his army [there],” Jabour noted. “After the 1967 war, the principle guiding Assad [in Syria] was maintaining [a state of] neither peace nor war with Israel. At the same time, the principle guiding Assad, and Khamenei in Lebanon, vis-à-vis Israel, was one of [ensuring] regular conflict so that they could hold the ‘resistance’ card as their means to controlling Lebanon.”
According to Jabour, “Fourth: It was Assad and Khamenei who stopped Lebanon from returning to the Armistice Agreement [with Israel]. The Israeli army’s withdrawal [from Lebanon, in 2000], as the implementation of Resolution 425, was meant to lead to a return to the 1949 [Armistice] Agreement, but such a return [to the agreement would have] plucked the so-called resistance card from the hands of Assad and Khamenei. Therefore, Israel is not responsible for the failure to renew the Armistice Agreement.”
Jabour then went on to emphasize: “Fifth: It was Hizballah – not Israel – that sparked the July 2006 war when it attacked an Israeli army patrol… kidnapped two soldiers, and killed three others. Sixth: It was Hizballah – not Israel – that caused the October 2023 war [following Hamas’s October 7 attack], with the declaration [by then-Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah] of the so-called ‘war of support’ for the Al-Aqsa Flood war.”
Jabour stressed, “In light of all of the above, it becomes clear that the resistance [axis], in all its modes, has eradicated the [Lebanese] state and that from the mid-1960s to October 8, 2023, it has used Lebanon as a platform for attacking Israel. It was not Israel that refused to revive the ceasefire agreement stipulated by the Taif Agreement – it was the resistance that prevented Lebanon from implementing its [own] constitution. Had the ceasefire been maintained in the first place, Lebanon would not have been in Hell for the past 60 years.”
According to Jabour, “The facts make it clear that so-called resistance is [merely] the pretext for [the resistance axis’s] maintaining control of Lebanon as part of Iran’s expansionist plan, and that Lebanon’s de facto enemy is the one who is preventing the existence of a genuine state that has exclusive possession of weapons, and is the only decisionmaker regarding going to war and controlling its borders. The one who is doing this is the Assad regime, followed by the Khamenei regime – and not Israel.”
Jabour continued, “Therefore, Lebanon’s actual enemy today is the Iranian expansionist regime. Hostility vis-à-vis Israel is linked to the Palestinians’ right to statehood, and its solution lies in the implementation of the Arab Peace Initiative. As for the border with Israel, [the solution] lies in reviving the Armistice Agreement… which was violated by the Lebanese side, not the Israeli side.”
“The real enemy of Lebanon is the one that turned it into a [battle] arena, who prevented the constitution from being implemented, who prevented the state from being the exclusive possessor of weapons, the decisionmaker about war, and the controller of the borders and the territory,” Jabour concluded. “It is the one who rejected the revival of the Armistice Agreement, and who annexed Lebanon first to Assad’s Syria and then to Khamenei’s Iran. Lebanon’s real enemies are Syria, under Assad, and Iran, under Khamenei.”
Photo from Khamenei.ir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei#/media/File:Ali_Khamenei_14031102_(cropped).jpg
