Action to end the inhumane Gaza siege has started from Lebanon, says the Hezbollah resistance movement.
On Friday, Lebanon, the country of resistance and patriotism, raised its voice in response to Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s call, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people amid a ‘suspicious’ Arab and international calm.
On Monday, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah called upon all Arabs and Muslims to start actions against the siege.
His eminence called on all Lebanese, regardless of political affiliation, to take part in the action given the importance of the central cause of Palestine.
‘I call on all the Lebanese, regardless of whether they are loyal to March 8 or 14, to participate in the demonstration that Hezbollah will organise on Friday at 2pm,’ Nasrallah said.
The response was quick. Lebanese from all regions answered the call on Friday.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians took part in the first announced step in the massive movement to protest at the inhumane siege, call for the freedom of Gaza and reject the official Arab calm.
The central protest took place in a southern suburb of Beirut. Even before 2pm, protesters flocked to the Sayyed al-Shouhadaa’ complex before marching through the streets of Dahiye.
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Kassem delivered Hezbollah’s speech and criticised Arab silence saying Gaza should not be treated like this.
He said: ‘The child of Gaza is more honourable than you and your positions and he will triumph, God willing.
‘The people of Gaza will never be defeated because they’ve chosen the path of resistance.’
His eminence stressed that ‘we are not with the humiliating settlement – we are with the resistance.’
‘Freedom for Gaza’ was the main slogan of the demonstrations.
‘Death for America, Death for Israel,’ they shouted in one high voice. ‘Palestinians will stay in Palestine, Zionists are the ones who will go out,’ the protestors also shouted.
The splendid scene witnessed in the southern suburb of Beirut was also reflected in other regions from the North to the South, where the Lebanese and the Palestinians answered the call and raised their voice.
In this context, Saida, the capital of the South, witnessed one of the major movements.
MP Oussama Saad addressed the crowds, saying that officials in all Arab states should possess the will of confrontation and resistance, the will of safeguarding Arab dignity as well as the blood of the martyrs.
He called on all free and noble people in Lebanon and the Arab world to stay united against the Gaza siege.
The Beka’a region also witnessed massive rallies in solidarity with besieged Gaza.
Under the slogan ‘silence was siege in itself’, the Lebanese and the Palestinians took part in the demonstration and called on their fellow Arabs and Muslims to join them.
Hezbollah Shura Council member Sheikh Mohamad Yazbek stressed Allah will undoubtedly render Gaza victorious as its people has shown a high level of steadfastness and patience.
His eminence also underlined the fact that Israel will cease to exist.
He declared: ‘Gaza is decrying the weakness that has plagued the Arab and Islamic nations and regimes.
‘Arab silence is encouraging the others to do what they are doing now.’
Sheikh Yazbek expressed regret that the government of Egypt continues to close the Rafah crossing.
In Tripoli, north of Lebanon, the head of the Islamic Work Front Sheikh Fatho Yakan urged all Palestinians to unite and stop internal bloodshed.
He called on the Palestinians to engage in a united resistance project ‘to gain back honour’, by following the example of the resistance in Lebanon.
The Front’s branch in Beirut observed a sit-in in solidarity with Gaza.
Sheikh Dr Abdul Nasser Jabri stressed the necessity to support the Palestinian people with every possible means.
‘We should press all Arab and Islamic regimes as well as the free international community to end the siege of Gaza,’ he said.
Several villages in the Iqlim Kharroub region in south Beirut observed a sit-in with the participation of opposition party officials following Friday prayers.
Muslim scholars across Lebanon focused on the siege of Gaza during their Friday sermons and expressed support to the steadfast Palestinian people.
No matter what their religion was, Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Deputy of Muslim Shi’ite Higher Council, Sheikh Abdul-Amir Kabalan, Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Kabbani and Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Nasser Al-Din Gharib all voiced their support to the Palestinian cause and called for the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade suffocating Gaza since June 2007.
Fadlallah said that the Gaza blockade has become a political blockade that paves the way for another Palestinian displacement on the one hand and forces Palestinians to yield to Israeli conditions.
This blockade, Sayyed Fadlallah said, continues under the eyes of the official Arab and Western worlds to an extent that every human right has been breached in Gaza.
‘The Israeli enemy has dared to bar the UN Human Rights Commissioner from entering the occupied territories after they detained him for thirty hours; something that caused the UN Secretary General, solely, to express regret and concern,’ his eminence added.
Deputy Head of the Muslim Shi’ite Higher Council Sheikh Abdul-Amir Kabalan called on Arabs and Muslims to hold popular conferences in the holy city of Mecca, Cairo and Tehran and come up with a programme to rescue the Palestinian people who are sacrificing and suffering from the Israeli occupation.
In his Friday sermon, Sheikh Kabalan urged the Palestinian people to gather at crossing points and ask for help, adding that ‘it’s shameful for us to stand helplessly in front of the Palestinian people who are screaming in vain’.
For his part, Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Kabbani said that ‘starving the people of Gaza would stimulate a more powerful Palestinian resistance which will have unlimited damage on Israel’.
Kabbani called on the United Nations and the Arab League as well as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference for ‘immediate action to lift the inhumane blockade of Gaza’ and urged them to raise their voices against the crimes against humanity committed by Israel in the Strip.
‘For how long will the Arab leadership and big countries undermine the Palestinian and Arab rights?’ Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Nasser Al-Din Gharib wondered.
Sheikh Gharib also urged the Palestinian people to unite in the face of the Zionist enemy’s conspiracies.
