Gemayel: Lebanon should stand with Saudi Arabia - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2015/04/lebanon-amin-gemayel-president-vacuum-aoun-hezbollah.html
Did your dialogue with Hezbollah stop?
Gemayel: No, it did not stop. But it is happening away from the spotlight as long as the main matters are not yet ripe for resolution. But this dialogue and the dialogue between Hezbollah and the Future Movement protects the future.
An-Nahar: What are you discussing in the dialogue?
Gemayel: Two topics: the first is a principle that we cannot achieve in the current regional circumstances. It is about the situation in Syria and Hezbollah’s involvement in the war there, and the issue of weapons. The second deals with other points related to management, transparency, public affairs, and maintaining security and stability. Maintaining a dialogue with the basic components of Lebanese society is useful, and this is our choice. Warding off the threat to the [Lebanese] entity is achieved by putting the internal situation in order, through dialogue, and convincing everyone that the Lebanese mosaic cannot afford to get involved in the region’s conflicts. And if this mosaic is broken up, it would be very difficult to put back together, and everyone will pay the consequences.
We feel, through the political dialogues and the current political discourse, that we are being heard. We feel that a solution will require some time. These matters will be addressed when the suitable historic, national and regional moment arrives. The door is not closed. Looking at Hezbollah’s path since 1982, we notice a development in its behavior, starting from its full rejection of the Lebanese state by rejecting parliamentary and Cabinet participation, to participating in the state and in parliament, the Cabinet and the administration. [Hezbollah] is now [active] in daily administrative issues. The more [Hezbollah], or anyone else, gets involved in the Lebanese structure, the more it becomes convinced of the need to preserve it and the more it gets engaged in the democratic state project. This is not the first experience in Lebanon’s modern history.
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