09 September 2010

BEIRUT: Metn MP Sami Gemayel slammed his critics as part of “the same orchestra we got used to during the Syrian occupation,” reiterating that the Phalange party was not ashamed of Israeli assistance it received “when the knife was on our neck.”

“No one should blame us because we received arms from the devil to defend ourselves, this issue was over when the war ended in 1990,” Gemayel told a news conference he called at his residence in the Metn village of Bekfaya on Wednesday.

The young MP said anyone collaborating with another friendly or aggressive state against the interests of his country was an agent.

“Anyone who arrested a Lebanese, who was defending his country’s sovereignty and handed him to Syria is an agent; anyone who considers himself loyal to [Iran’s supreme leader] is an agent, and anyone who dealt with Israel against the interests of Lebanon is an agent,” he said.

A number of figures from the March 8 alliance criticized comments made by Gemayel regarding the Phalange party’s relations with Israel during the 1975-90 Civil War.

In remarks published by Al-Balad newspaper on Monday, Gemayel said that the Phalange party was not ashamed of the Israeli assistance it received in countering the Syrian presence.

The early years of the Civil War pitted the Lebanese Front, which comprised a number of right-wing Christian militia chiefs, among them the Phalange party, against a coalition of Lebanese and Palestinian leftist forces under the name of the National Movement.

Syria sent its army to Lebanon in June 1976 in support of the Lebanese Front after it had previously been a major backer of the National Movement, only to shift alliances again and clash with the Phalange party and its allies.

Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005.

MP Gemayel, a Phalange party official, is the grandson of Pierre Gemayel, the founder of the party.

Tyre MP Nawwaf Moussawi, a Hizbullah official, considered “Gemayel’s pride over collaborating with Israeli a sin, and the fact that he is not ashamed is a cover to existing collaboration [with Israel] or a potential one.”

Speaking to a news conference he held at his office in Tyre on Tuesday, Moussawi called upon the Lebanese judiciary to sue Gemayel.

Gemayel questioned on Wednesday reasons behind what he called “a [criticism] campaign that kicked off more than three days ago.”

“We consider that they want to divert attention from [their] use of arms inside Lebanon,” Gemayel said in reference to a recent armed clash in Beirut that pitted Hizbullah elements against supporters of of Al-Ahbash.

Gemayel went back to the early years of the Civil War, saying the Phalange party was forced to receive arms from Israel to defend itself. “We did not like to carry arms but we were forced to do so to defend ourselves and our homes and when [encountering] arms that surpassed our capabilities, when the Syrian Army and the Palestinians were on one side and the Lebanese resistance were on the other side,” he said.

“No one will make us feel ashamed that we defended ourselves when the knife was on our neck,” said Gemayel.

The lawmaker called for setting up criteria based on which people are classified as [foreign] agents.

Gemayel said he would file a lawsuit against his critics on charges of attempts to tarnish the reputation of a group and incite the public opinion against it.

Responding to Moussawi, Gemayel said he did not accuse the Shiite sect of constituting an “embracing atmosphere” for collaboration with Israel despite the fact that 70 percent of Israeli agents arrested recently in Lebanon were Shiites. – The Daily Star

 

Copyright The Daily Star 2010.