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The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
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Get Syria out of Lebanon Now! national |
miscellaneous |
news report
 Friday July 26, 2002 20:08 by Free-Lebanon
 · fulfill the terms of the Taif Agreement in 1989, requiring Syria to leave Lebanon; · live up to U.N. Security Council Resolution 520; · halt its abuse of human rights in Lebanon; · stop its support of terrorist groups; · restore Lebanon to its structure of self-government by allowing freedom of worship and free elections; · aid the people of south Lebanon who face grave economic dislocation under Syrian occupation It has been more than a year since Israel withdrew its defense forces from Lebanon, yet the Jewish state's northern neighbor is still the only nation in the world currently under occupation. Though Israelis were, for the most part, enthusiastic about getting out of Lebanon - and hopeful it would be a step toward peace - the pullout has proved to be an unmitigated disaster. First of all, Syria hasn't budged. Some 35,000 Syrian troops deny Lebanon - one of only two Middle East nations with a recent history of republican self-government - its sovereignty and freedom. In addition to the military force, Syria has encouraged the emigration of some 1 million of its citizens to Lebanon, straining the economy and altering the demographics of the country. Syrian domination has resulted in the worst imaginable human-rights abuses. People just disappear off the streets. Lebanon once boasted the freest press in the Middle East. Today, it's gone, replaced by official and semi-official voices only. For years, Syria used the presence of Israeli troops in southern Lebanon as an excuse to maintain its own armed forces in the country. Now Syria has run out of excuses - and that's all they ever were. What justification is there for this continuing hegemony over a peaceful neighboring state? None. But that doesn't bring an end to the occupation. Syria has occupied Lebanon since 1976. President Hafez Assad has died and his son has assumed control in Damascus. Yet there is not even the slightest indication that Syria is interested in negotiating a withdrawal - let alone proceeding in the direction of a good-faith, unilateral pullout. We still hear much about United Nations resolutions in discussions of Middle East problems. I don't put much stock in the U.N. or its resolutions, but why is it that we hear so little about Security Council Resolution 520, unanimously passed Sept. 17, 1982, calling for the evacuation of all non-Lebanese forces from the nation? Worse yet, given the developments in Israel since last fall - notably the Arab uprising - it is clear that Yasser Arafat interpreted the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as a sign of weakness. It has neither prompted Syrian good intentions, nor a willingness on the part of Arafat to negotiate seriously and in good faith. Additionally, attacks on Israel's northern border from Lebanese territory have only increased since the withdrawal. These attacks could not take place without the tacit support of Damascus - which rules Lebanon with an iron hand and which provides safe haven to the Hezbollah terrorists. Now, even the port city of Haifa - the third largest municipality in Israel - is not safe from Katyusha rocket fire. Hezbollah also has a deal with Arafat to provide training and arms to the Palestinian Authority. Most Israelis - including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - have made the connection between the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and the intifada. It has been a real education to them. But foreigners haven't - least of all U.S. policymakers who continue to delude themselves that more Israeli concessions represent the key to peace in the Middle East. There will be no peace in the Middle East until Syria pulls out of Lebanon. There will be no freedom nor independence for Lebanon until Syria packs its bags and goes. And there will be no withdrawal by Syria without far more pressure internationally on Bashar Assad. The United States wields a great deal of influence. It actually still sends military aid to the faux Lebanese government. It's time for a complete break with the old policies. It's time to get tough with Syria. The free Lebanese opposition is speaking out more visibly and forcefully than ever before. It must be encouraged, incubated and protected. President Bush must break with the failed diplomatic policies of the past if he expects any Mideast breakthrough during this term. Here's what Washington ought to demand of Syria as the cornerstone of its Middle East peace agenda: · fulfill the terms of the Taif Agreement in 1989, requiring Syria to leave Lebanon; Bush can make Syria's illegal occupation of Lebanon the centerpiece of international debate - and he should. He must.
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 6 5 4 3 2 1http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Middle_East/Lebanon/Society_and_Culture/History/Syrian_Occupation/
http://www.gotc.org/syrian_occupation_of_lebanon.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/stratfor001006.html
http://www.meib.org/articles/0103_l1.htm
You are adviced to look at this websites:
http://www.wlo-usa.org/core.htm
FREE LEBANON'S PAGE-A movement dedicated
To the FREEDOM, INDEPENDENCE, and SOVEREIGNTY of LEBANON
To the self determination of its Christian people, as well as to human rights and democracy for all people in the Middle East.
Your "brave resistence movement" burns churches
and ethnically cleans Christians in south Lebanon.
The south of Lebanon is now occupied by the Hizbolla terror organization.
The Lebanese want Hizbolla and the Syrians out of their country:
In a rare challenge to the country that dominates Lebanon, the popular Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar demanded Thursday that Syria begin withdrawing its troops. An-Nahar also insisted in its bold page one editorial, signed by managing director Gebran Tueni, that Lebanon not be sacrificed to Syria indefinitely as the price for peace in the Middle East.
Tueni's Letter
Tueni's open letter to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's son, Bashar, who is in charge of Lebanese matters, called for Damascus to begin pulling some of its 35,000 troops out of this country. It should start by implementing the 1989 Taef accord and moving the troops out of Beirut, he said. "Doctor Bashar, the people here are asking themselves about Lebanon's future, about the need for the Syrian military presence and wonder if the price of peace in the region is definitive Syrian control over Lebanon." If that is the solution, "no one will agree to it, especially after 20 years of war and sacrifice" by the Lebanese, Tueni warned.
Broaching a subject about which few here have dared to speak openly, Tueni said the Lebanese "believe that Syria never recognized, will never recognize and will not want to recognize that Lebanon is a sovereign, free and independent state." "I'm taking the liberty of addressing you in this letter although we don't know each other ... at a delicate and decisive time for the region," Tueni wrote, just ahead of Sunday's Syrian-US summit on the Israeli-Syrian peace process and, say analysts, on Lebanon. The editorial asked that Lebanon be a full partner in peace talks with Israel as soon as they resume. Tueni explained that he was addressing himself to Bashar al-Assad because since he took over the Lebanese portfolio in Damascus, "we felt a change" "which has made us relinquish our hostility" toward the Syrian presence and led us to expect positive steps. But the Lebanese "reject lists of parliamentary candidates drawn up in Damascus" and "the imprisonment of Lebanese in Damascus's prisons." As an initial goodwill gesture, a "gift" to President Emile Lahoud, Syria should implement "the Taef accord clause stipulating a Syrian military redeployment." The agreement was concluded to end Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war and provided for Syrian troops to leave Beirut two years after Lebanon's constitutional reforms were adopted. Those "asking for this redeployment are neither traitors nor enemies but persecuted citizens who want answers that will dispel their justifiable fears," the letter said. In order "to convince the Lebanese that there is a new Syrian policy," Syria must help its "allies" in Lebanon, "especially President Lahoud," and not just its "acolytes," Tueni added.
Those who have dared to challenge Syria's presence in Lebanon have been rare, with the notable exception of supporters of former prime minister and general Michel Aoun, who has been in exile in France since 1990. Maronite Catholic Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir has been alone over the years in speaking publicly on the need to implement not only UN Security Council Resolution 425, which calls for Israeli troops to end their occupation of southern Lebanon, but also 520, which includes the Syrians as well.
Lebanon Bulletin's Comment
Commenting on Mr. Tueni's editorial, the editor in chief of Lebanon Bulletin, Mr. Mike Abboudy said " we truly appreciate the courage of our colleague Mr. Jubrane Tueni, particularly that he wrote that article from Syrian-occupied Beirut. Mr. Tueni has rightly indicated that Syrian troops are occupying Lebanon, and are harassing its civilian population. Besides, Mr. Tueni had the courage to address Dr. Bashar el-Assad (son of President Hafez Assad) directly avoiding the channel of the po-Syrian politicians in Beirut. We cannot but praise Jubrane Tueni for writing and publishing an editorial openly calling for a withdrawal of the Syrian Army from Lebanon. But at the same time we may differ on the basis of that call for withdrawal. For while Mr. Tueni is asking the Syrians to pull out as allies, as a way to save future relations with their Lebanese allies, we demand a Syrian unconditional withdrawal based on the fact that the Syrians are occupiers and must simply leave Lebanon. The Syrians, as occupiers of Lebanon, cannot be considered as allies but as enemies as long as they remain on Lebanon's national soil and intervene in Lebanon's internal affairs. Their withdrawal is a moral and political right to all Lebanese, and it must come as a result of the implementation of UN resolution 520. Therefore as we endorse Mr. Tueni in his call for Syrian withdrawal, we insist on considering the Syrians as occupiers until their full pull out from all Lebanese territories."
The Zionists were eager to leave the Lebanon thanks to the courage and self sacrifice of the Lebanese resistance. The economy of South Lebanon was devasted by the Zionists not by anyone from Damascus.
Remove this crap