00:11 Chadi Khalil: What I'm going to talk about this morning is a brief history of Lebanese resistance, which experienced many turning points along the years. In my belief — well, officially the Lebanese resistance movement was created in 1982 by several parties, one of which [was the] Lebanese Communist Party. And it's not a necessity that all these parties were leftist parties, or communist, or socialist; some of them were right-wing parties. But at that time they saw fit that it is an occupation of our capital, and the only thing we can do is resist it.
00:43 In our point of view the resistance really started back in 1948, the first time the Palestinian issue broke out. And the reason for that is not classical resistance and occupation: it was a matter of displacement of a whole nation, and not only stopping in Palestine — it was a plan to displace most of the nations of most of the countries in the region.
01:14 And that's when — not the whole of Lebanon, [but] a small part of southern Lebanon, where the Palestinians were displaced and shuffled to — started experiencing this kind of resistance. One, because they had sympathy with a brotherhood, or a neighbouring nation. Between Palestine and Lebanon, especially southern Lebanon, there's always been a relationship, a family relationship, a trading relationship, because people in the south used to trade to Palestine, not to Beirut or to the rest of the country.
02:14 So from there we believe that [there was] a sympathy, [and] a belief that this nation were slaughtered and displaced with no reason except that another nation thought that this is their promised land, and they want to take it, they want to expand all over it.
02:45 So it started from then, and the people of southern Lebanon started suffering and experiencing the brutality of occupation before physically their land was occupied — from bombardment, from [the shelling of] small towns and villages in southern Lebanon. At the time there was not a proper resistance from southern Lebanon, but I know that people used to go to Palestine to fight side by side with the Palestinians, and from all over the Arab countries, not just from Lebanon.
03:18 But mainly [the problem was] from the government in Lebanon. At the time there was a debate on the identity of our country. The government at the time, and the president in particular, [were] pro-Western, raw English and American [?]. They wanted this country westernised in the way they saw fit, which fifty, sixty years later is, the way we say it, a total control of our politics and our policies.
03:50 In 1958 a small revolution, which we were discussing earlier, broke out against such a government, from the same parties that years later created the resistance. It wasn't a form of resistance revolution at the time; it was more of freeing [the] government from a pro-Western government that did not see the country the way it should have been — an Arab state, a state of socialism, a state of human rights, a state of social services, which we have known at that time.
04:22 So in 1958 the revolution was successful and it turned over the government and president Camille Chamoun at the time. From there it didn't stop, it kept going on. The country experienced a few years of revolution — but it's not exactly a revolution, it was more of a freedom process, and making [a] democratic country, and elections and so on.
05:23 In 1968 — and I think that was the very first major turning point in the Lebanese resistance history — 1969, sorry. 1968 was the start of the PLO. In 1969 an agreement in Cairo was signed between the Lebanese government and the PLO, specifying a small part of southern Lebanon — a few villages combined together. At that time the Lebanese government gave permission to the PLO to practise their resistance and their operations through what was called Fatahland, which means [it] is part of the PLO.
05:54 Then and only then — and because I come from that part of the country — people started experiencing physical occupation, Israeli occupation, heavy and continuous bombardment of that town. So at that time people started not only sympathising with the Palestinian issue: they were practising the resistance, because it became part of their daily practice, because they were experiencing more and more what the Palestinians had been suffering for the last twenty years [inaudible].
06:57 From 1969 there was an agreement signed, yes, but this agreement was not carried out and was not respected by the Lebanese government, for many reasons. Their reasons were that the PLO were mispractising their authorities, in the rest of southern Lebanon in particular and the rest of Lebanon in general.
07:28 At the time we, as a party, and many other parties in what was called the left movement at the time — but, like I said before, it wasn't a totally leftist [group] combined — they were in that debate with the government. [Our position] was that, yeah, the PLO could be mispractising or misusing some of their authorities, or making mistakes, but the big issue here is the Palestinian cause, which we think and we've always thought is a cause of slaughtering a whole nation without any justified reason whatsoever.
08:31 And yeah, we can deal with the mistakes that people practise, but we will not be driven away from the real cause and forget about this. At that time, what was known by the government since 1943 [as] the freedom — not the freedom, the independence — we think it was the creation of a kind of a government, not a real government, which was appointed by the French [Mandate] at the time.
09:02 So in 1975 — we think [there were] several stages; one of them in 1975 was the assassination attempt on Pierre Gemayel. Not the late Pierre Gemayel who was assassinated last year, but his grandfather. We think it was the spark that started the fifteen years of civil war.
09:32 A civil war [in] which, on the one hand, it was a government that was still pro-Western and, in our opinion, were dealing or had dealings with Israel, which in any way, shape or form was not acceptable — because at that time we thought that Israel is occupying part of our land, is slaughtering the Palestinian people, and we will not accept our government to be dealing with the Israelis. So there was a big conflict and fight and arguments over the fact that the government should not have such a deal.
10:33 The civil war started in 1975 — I think I said 1976; we got to 1975, that was what sparked the civil war. And from 1975 to 1978, which was the first major and physical occupation by Israeli troops of southern Lebanon. In 1975 the attempted assassination of Pierre Gemayel resulted in a retaliation that killed more than twenty Palestinian civilians on a bus passing through eastern Beirut at the time.
11:05 And from there the events and the actions started to increase rapidly, which caused an intervention of the Syrians as well. At first it was [what] was called combined Arab troops at the time, but they withdrew, and Syria intervened — like Mr Achcar said [?] — to divide and rule. They did not intervene to stop the civil war, or to stop people from fighting, but in our opinion they intervened so they can keep the parties divided, and the Lebanese people divided equally, without letting any party win or overturn the other party, and keep the war going without a winner.
12:09 So in our opinion the intervention of the Syrian troops in 1976 played a major role in the Lebanese civil war. In 1978, as I say, the first major Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon took place, and UN Resolution 425 was issued at the time, which demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. They did withdraw, but not totally: a very small portion of that part of the country was still occupied.
12:40 Another turning point that took place at the time: a part of the Lebanese army troops that was sent to the south to communicate with the occupation forces — basically to be the liaison between the Lebanese government and the occupation — took sides at that time, and disobeyed orders by the government, and started to have dealings with the occupation itself, believing that, again, the PLO is the reason for what the country is going through.
13:11 And another strong line of resistance took place in 1982. Between 1978 and 1982 Israel was trying everything in their power to control the PLO and the Lebanese resistance, from one side; and from the other side the Syrian forces in Lebanon, in their own way, were trying as well to rule the PLO and the Lebanese resistance, in a way to control them and use this card in their negotiation on a peace process with Israel.
14:14 Which resulted, in 1977, over a difference of opinion between the head of the Lebanese leftist resistance movement at the time, Kamal Jumblatt, and the Syrians, in his assassination. In 1982, after they had a strong hand in the Lebanese government — especially in what's so-called the Christian Maronite politics and policies, and in particular an assassinated president later, Bachir Gemayel — Israel decided to invade Lebanon, which they said [was] to create a zone of forty kilometres within southern Lebanon to prevent the PLO and the Lebanese resistance doing any kind of operation on the border between Lebanon and Palestine. Which anyway they used, the same reason, in 2006 in the war on Lebanon, telling the whole world that you want to create a safety zone that prevents Hezbollah from launching their missiles into our settlements.
15:17 In 1982 the invasion did not only take place for forty kilometres: in fact it invaded the whole of the country in less than twenty-four hours. It was that easy to walk in — everything was open for them, except West Beirut, which took some resistance to occupy.
15:48 In 1982 Bachir Gemayel was elected, in September 1982, as president, [and] was the man [of choice] for Washington and Israel in the country [?]. Apparently, as things happen, he decided: I am the president now, I'm going to demand ten thousand four hundred and fifty-two square kilometres — [that] is the whole landscape of the country — I don't want any foreign forces on my land, including the Syrians [and] the Israelis. So they felt that he had a change of heart about the whole issue, [the reason] that they came into the country, and he was assassinated in September 1982.
16:18 [Then] a formal Lebanese resistance movement was created, which resisted so hard against the Israeli occupation forces that it resulted in the freedom of Beirut after three months of the occupation, and resulted further in the freedom of a big part of the south, to the borders that they had withdrawn from.
16:50 In May 2005, a major withdrawal, as a result — we think — of a continuous occupation, [against] which the resistance between [1982] and 2005 had a lot of changing and turning points along the way: the creation of Hezbollah in 1982; the heavy intervention of the Syrian forces and politics and policies, supporting one side of the resistance, which [was] represented by Hezbollah, and mainly the Shia movement, and putting lots of pressure on the other parties resisting — just for one reason and one reason only: their aim was to control this resistance, to use this resistance to their best interest, and use it in every possible way in their negotiation with the peace process with Israel.
18:23 After 2000 — sorry, after 2000, the total withdrawal of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, except Shebaa Farms — which we thought at that time [the] resistance was taking to extreme measures, and misusing the great victory of 2000, in the form that the resistance was happening in Shebaa Farms.
18:53 As Mr Achcar said [?], in 2005 Mr Hariri was assassinated, the Syrian troops had to withdraw, many resolutions were [passed]. And in 2006 the war was waged on Lebanon. The reasons, or the targets, of the war — the reasons given were the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, which everyone knows was only an excuse. The war was pre-prepared way before July 2006, and it was just waiting for a reason to happen, and the kidnapping of the soldiers was only a small portion of it.
19:24 The targets that Israel put for the war [were] the disarmament of Hezbollah, the setback of Hezbollah at least to that safety zone, to the north of the Litani river, so they cannot launch their missiles on Israel. Every single target that Israel had appointed for the war, they failed to achieve.
19:56 Yeah, Lebanon was destroyed over a massive thirty-three days of war, very destructive and human-killing, thirty-three days of war. But in our opinion, in everyone's opinion — in Washington's opinion, in Israel's own opinion — they lost the war, because they could not achieve any of their targets. Except, unfortunately, [that] a few American and a few of Washington's allies inside Lebanon, inside the Lebanese government, think we lost the war and it was a disaster on all levels, including the targets that Israel had set for the war.
20:58 But we think it was a victory. It was a victory for many reasons, one of which [is that] for the first time Israel is defeated — this whole myth of the Israeli army forces in the Arab world. In the open Arab–Israeli conflict since 1948, it was really and in reality defeated [?] in every way. In 1982, as we said, they could [take] the capital; in 2006 they could not occupy a very small village, Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon, for more than a couple of hours. So in our opinion Israel was defeated big time in Lebanon, and in everyone's opinion except a few of our politicians.
21:28 Unfortunately this victory, for [various] reasons [?], did not last at the level [it should], and is lost in many ways in the inside politics of Lebanon: between opposition and government, between changing governments, between changing the prime minister, or expanding the government with two or three ministers more or less for this party or the other.
22:01 Again, in our opinion, we think we lost the victory. We won it in a war with Israel, but we lost it in our internal politics, big time — basically because none of the parties that is having the conflict inside Lebanon have a clear and open vision of a democratic and modernised government that everyone is dreaming of.
22:32 Therefore we, as a party, and one of the very rare parties at the moment, we are not sided with any of the two sides, of the opposition or the government in Lebanon. Because in our opinion, after what's happened after all these years in Lebanon, after the war, after a victory that we've always wanted and we have achieved, we do not want to lose such a victory in our internal minor politics, which is not going to get us the democratic state that we've always dreamt of. Thank you.
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