Hezbollah:State cannot be built with the ‘mentality of militias’

“There are ideas that have been proposed which we hope will bear fruit and which we hope allies in the Cabinet formation will respond positively to in order to speed up the government formation that would allow the country to rise “Sheikh Naim Qassem deputy chief of Hezbollah commented over the delay in government formation during an annual ceremony organized by the Association of Islamic Religious Teaching for Girls.

commenting on WikiLeaks reports Qassem said “WikiLeaks documents have revealed the presence of militias in Lebanon that sought to acquire arms in order to incite sedition and civil war.”

“This is what was being plotted in May 2008, according to these documents,” Qassem went on to say.

In May 2008 Hezbollah , which claims to be a resistance movement aimed at defending Lebanon against Israel pointed its guns against the Lebanese people when its gunmen invaded and occupied the western part of Beirut and tried but failed to occupy Mt Lebanon.

He stressed that the State cannot be built with the “mentality of militias,” alleging that the rival March 14 camp had been seeking to build militias during the infamous May 2008 events to “triumph over the other camp militarily through civil strife and domestic chaos, so that it rules Lebanon alone and prevents others from participating in building the State.”

According to Antoine Najjar, a political observer the 2008 events proved that only Hezbollah is armed and only Hezbollah has the ‘mentality of militias” , because March 14 alliance is the only alliance that is calling for building the state and its institutions. The observer noted Hezbollah led March 8 led alliance has not been able to form a government in nearly three months because its parties are acting like gangs.

Commenting on Qassems’s statement that State cannot be built with the “mentality of militias” Najjar said this applies to Hezbollah more than any other organization in Lebanon and added :”How can you build a state when the the so called resistance is more loyal to Iran than Lebanon”. He went on to say:” Look what happened in 2006 how did that war with Israel benefit Lebanon… instead of liberating Shebaa farms and Kfarshouba we lost Northern Gajar …while 158 Israeli’s were killed 1200 Lebanese were killed and mostly civilians….over 1 million Lebanese were displaced and mostly Shiites and over 120,000 homes were destroyed .” He added :”Instead of saying sorry Hezbollah occupied downtown Beirut and tried to bring down the government “