The Political Document of Hezbollah

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and prayers and peace be upon the Seal of the Prophets, our master Muhammad, and upon his pure household and his chosen companions, and upon all the prophets and messengers.

God Almighty said in His glorious Book:

{And those who strive for Us, We will surely guide them to Our ways, and indeed God is with the doers of good.}

(Al-Ankabut: 69)

{O you who believe, fear God and seek the means of approach to Him, and strive in His path, that you may succeed.}

(Al-Ma'ida: 35)

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Introduction

The Political Document of Hezbollah

This document aims to set forth the political vision of Hezbollah, as it comprises what we see in terms of conceptions and positions and what we harbor in terms of hopes, aspirations and concerns. It comes, before anything else, as the product of what we have well experienced regarding the priority of action and the precedence of sacrifice.

In an exceptional political phase replete with transformations, it is no longer possible to approach those transformations without noting the special status that our resistance has come to occupy, or that bundle of accomplishments that our march has achieved.

It will be necessary to place these transformations in the context of comparing two contradictory paths and the growing inverse relationship between them:

1

The course of resistance and steadfast opposition in its ascending phase, which rests upon military victories and political successes, the entrenchment of the model of resistance popularly and politically, and steadfastness in positions and political stances despite the magnitude of the targeting and the gravity of the challenges, leading to the tilting of the balances of power in the regional equation in favor of the resistance and its supporters.

2

The course of American, Israeli domination and arrogance in its various dimensions, alliances and direct and indirect extensions, which is witnessing military fractures or defeats and political failures that have revealed the successive failure of American strategies and projects one after another. All of this has led to a state of confusion, retreat and incapacity in the ability to control the course of developments and events in our Arab and Islamic world.

These data are complemented within the framework of a broader international scene, which in turn contributes to exposing the American predicament and the retreat of the hegemony of the single pole in favor of a multipolarity whose features have not yet settled.

What deepens the crisis of the global arrogant order is the collapses in the American and global financial markets, and the entry of the American economy into a state of confusion and incapacity, which express the peak of the aggravation of the structural predicament in the arrogant capitalist model.

Therefore it can be said: we are in the context of historic transformations that portend the retreat of the United States of America as a hegemonic power, the dissolution of the hegemonic single pole order, and the beginning of the formation of the course of the accelerating historic decline of the Zionist entity.

The resistance movements stand at the heart of these transformations, and emerge as a fundamental strategic factor in this international scene, after having played a central role in producing or stimulating what pertains to our region among those transformations.

The resistance in Lebanon, including our Islamic Resistance, was foremost in confronting hegemony and occupation more than two and a half decades ago, and it held fast to this choice at a time when it appeared as though an American era was being inaugurated, which attempts were made to portray as the end of history. Under the balances of power and the prevailing circumstances at that time, some considered the choice of resistance to be a kind of illusion, or political recklessness, or a deviation contrary to the requirements of rationality and realism.

Despite that, the resistance proceeded on its jihadi march, certain of the rightfulness of its cause and its ability to make victory, through faith in God Almighty and reliance upon Him, belonging to the entire nation, commitment to Lebanese national interests, confidence in its people, and its elevation of human values of truth, justice and freedom.

Despite that, the resistance proceeded on its jihadi march, certain of the rightfulness of its cause and its ability to make victory, through faith in God Almighty and reliance upon Him, belonging to the entire nation, commitment to Lebanese national interests, confidence in its people, and its elevation of human values of truth, justice and freedom.

Over the course of its long jihadi path and through its renowned victories, beginning with the repulsion of the Israeli occupation in Beirut and the Mountain, to its flight from Sidon, Tyre and Nabatieh, and the July 1993 aggression, the April 1996 aggression, the liberation in May 2000, and then the July 2006 war, this resistance established its credibility and its model before it made its victories. It thus accumulated eras of the development of its project from a liberation force to a force of balance and confrontation, and then to a force of deterrence and defense, in addition to its internal political role as an influential pillar in building the capable and just state.

Concurrently with that, it was destined for the resistance to develop its political and humanitarian standing, so it rose from being a Lebanese national value to being also a radiant Arab and Islamic value, and it has today become a global and human value whose model is drawn upon for inspiration and whose achievements are built upon in the experiences and literature of all those striving for freedom and independence in all parts of the globe.

Hezbollah, despite its awareness of those promising transformations, and what it sees of the enemy's oscillation between the failure of its war strategy and the inability to impose settlements on its own terms, does not underestimate the magnitude of the challenges and dangers that remain present, nor does it minimize the ruggedness of the path of confrontation and the magnitude of the sacrifices required by the march of resistance, the recovery of rights, and the contribution to rousing the nation. Yet, in contrast to that, it has become more clear in its choices, more resolute in its will, and more confident in its Lord, itself and its people.

In this context, Hezbollah defines the basic lines that constitute an intellectual, political framework for its vision and positions toward the challenges posed.

Chapter One

Hegemony and Awakening

First

The World and Western and American Hegemony

After the Second World War, the United States became the possessor of the central and foremost hegemony project, and at its hands this project witnessed a tremendous development in mechanisms of domination and subjugation unprecedented historically, benefiting in this from a composite outcome of achievements multiple in their aspects and in their scientific, cultural, cognitive, technological, economic and military levels, and supported by a political, economic project that views the world only as open markets governed by its own laws.

The most dangerous thing in the logic of Western hegemony generally, and American hegemony specifically, is its consideration from the outset that it owns the world, and that it has the right of hegemony on the basis of superiority in more than one field. Therefore, the Western expansionist strategy, especially the American one, coupled with the capitalist economic project, became a strategy of global character, with no limits to its ambitions and greed.

The control exercised by the forces of savage capitalism, represented chiefly by networks of international monopolies of corporations transcending nationalities and even continents, and the various international institutions, especially the financial ones, supported by overwhelming military force, has led to further contradictions and radical conflicts, not the least of them today: the conflicts of identities, cultures and patterns of civilizations, alongside the conflicts of wealth and poverty.

Savage capitalism has turned globalization into a mechanism for spreading division, sowing discord, destroying identities and imposing the most dangerous kinds of cultural, civilizational, economic and social alienation.

Globalization reached its most dangerous limit with its transformation into a military globalization at the hands of the bearers of the Western hegemony project, whose most expressive manifestations we have witnessed in the Middle East region, beginning with Afghanistan, to Iraq, Palestine and then Lebanon, whose share of it was a comprehensive aggression in July of the year 2006, and that by the Israeli hand.

The project of American hegemony and domination has not reached dangerous levels such as those it has reached recently, particularly since the last decade of the twentieth century until today, in an ascending course that took the fall of the Soviet Union and its disintegration as a starting point, for what it constituted as a historic opportunity in American calculations to monopolize leadership of the hegemony project globally, and that in the name of historic responsibility and that there is no distinction between the interest of the world and the American interest, which means marketing hegemony as an interest of the rest of the states and peoples and not as a purely American interest.

This course reached its peak with the current of the neoconservatives seizing the key junctures of the administration of "Bush" the son, this current which expressed its particular visions through the document "Project for the New American Century".

It was neither strange nor surprising that what this document most emphasized was the issue of rebuilding American capabilities, which reflected a new strategic vision for American national security. It appeared entirely clear that it was based on building military capabilities not merely as a force of deterrence but also as a force of action and intervention, whether for carrying out "preventive" operations by means of directing preemptive strikes, or for remedial purposes through dealing with crises after they occur.

The "Bush" administration found, shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, that it was before a favorable opportunity to exercise the greatest amount of influence and impact, through putting its strategic vision of unilateral hegemony over the world into application under the slogan of the "global war on terror." Thus this administration undertook attempts that were considered successful in their beginning, as follows:

1. Militarizing its relations and foreign policies to the maximum extent.

2. Avoiding reliance on multilateral frameworks, acting unilaterally in taking strategic decisions, and coordinating where necessary, and with allies who can be relied upon.

3. Settling the war in Afghanistan quickly in order to then devote itself to the next and most important step in the hegemony project, namely: control of Iraq, which was considered the principal pivot point for establishing a new Middle East commensurate with the requirements of the post September 11 world. This administration did not hesitate to resort to every method of camouflage, deception and outright lying to justify its wars, especially the war on Iraq, and against everyone who resists its new colonialist project, whether states, movements, forces or personalities. In this framework, this administration deliberately established an equivalence between the category of "terrorism" and the category of "resistance" in order to strip the resistance of its human and legal legitimacy, and thus to justify waging wars of all kinds against it, in the context of removing the last bastions of defense of peoples and states for their right to live in freedom, dignity and pride, and for their right to undiminished sovereignty, to building their own experiences, and to taking their positions and roles in the movement of human history, civilizationally and culturally.

The heading of "terrorism" has been transformed into an American pretext for hegemony through the instruments of: pursuit; seizure and arbitrary detention; the absence of the most basic elements of fair trials, as we find them in the "Guantanamo" detention camps; and through direct interference in the sovereignty of states and turning it into a registered trademark for arbitrary criminalization and the taking of punitive measures that strike entire peoples, extending to granting itself an absolute right to launch destructive and annihilating wars that do not distinguish between the innocent and the criminal, nor between the child, the old man, the woman and the young man.

The cost of the American wars of terrorism has so far reached millions of human beings, in addition to manifestations of comprehensive destruction, which did not strike stone and infrastructure only, but rather the structure and components of the societies themselves, which were dismantled and the course of their historical development reversed, in a process of regression that reproduced civil conflicts with sectarian, confessional and ethnic dimensions that do not end. This is without forgetting the targeting of the cultural and civilizational stock of these peoples.

There is no doubt that American terrorism is the origin of all terrorism in the world, and the "Bush" administration has turned the United States into a danger that threatens the entire world on all fronts and levels. If a global opinion poll were conducted today, the United States would appear as the most hated state in the world.

The failure suffered by the war on Iraq, the development of the state of resistance in it, the regional and international resentment at the results of this war, the failure of the so-called "war on terrorism," especially in Afghanistan, as well as the resounding failure of the American war on the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine through Israeli instruments, led to the erosion of American prestige internationally and to a strategic retreat in the ability of the United States to act or to embark on new adventures.

However, the foregoing does not mean that the United States will vacate the arena easily; rather, it will do everything necessary to protect what it calls "its strategic interests," because the policies of American hegemony rest on ideological considerations and intellectual projects, fed by extremist currents allied with an industrial military complex whose greed and ambitions know no limits.

Second

Our Region and the American Project

If the entire oppressed world groans under the yoke of this arrogant hegemony, then our Arab and Islamic world receives the largest and heaviest share of it, by reason of its history, its civilization, its resources and its geographic location.

Our Arab and Islamic world has for centuries been exposed to brutal colonial wars that do not end, but their most advanced stages began with the planting of the Zionist entity in the region, and within the framework of the project of fragmenting it into conflicting and mutually repelling entities under various headings. This colonial stage reached its peak with the United States inheriting the old colonialism in the region.

The most prominent central objective of American arrogance is control over peoples in all its forms: political, economic and cultural, and the plunder of their wealth, foremost among which is the plunder of oil wealth as a principal tool for controlling the spirit of the global economy, by all methods that abide by no ethical or humanitarian restraints or standards, including the use of excessive military force, directly or through proxies.

If the entire oppressed world groans under the yoke of this arrogant hegemony, then our Arab and Islamic world receives the largest and heaviest share of it, by reason of its history, its civilization, its resources and its geographic location.

Our Arab and Islamic world has for centuries been exposed to brutal colonial wars that do not end, but their most advanced stages began with the planting of the Zionist entity in the region, and within the framework of the project of fragmenting it into conflicting and mutually repelling entities under various headings. This colonial stage reached its peak with the United States inheriting the old colonialism in the region.

The most prominent central objective of American arrogance is control over peoples in all its forms: political, economic and cultural, and the plunder of their wealth, foremost among which is the plunder of oil wealth as a principal tool for controlling the spirit of the global economy, by all methods that abide by no ethical or humanitarian restraints or standards, including the use of excessive military force, directly or through proxies.

To achieve its objective, America adopted general policies and action strategies, the most prominent of which are:

1

Providing every means of guaranteeing stability for the Zionist entity, as an advanced base and pivot point for the American colonialist project of fragmenting the region, and supporting this entity with all factors of strength and continuity, and providing a safety net for its existence, which qualifies it to play the role of the cancerous gland that drains the capacities and energies of the Ummah, scatters its potentials and disperses its hopes and aspirations.

2

Undermining the spiritual, civilizational and cultural capacities of our peoples and working to weaken their morale, through broadcasting media and psychological wars that target their values and the symbols of their jihad and resistance.

3

Supporting the regimes of subordination and despotism in the region.

4

Seizing the strategic geographic locations of the region, for what they constitute as a nexus of connection and separation, by land, sea and air, and deploying military bases at its vital junctures in the service of its wars and in support of its tools.

5

Preventing the emergence of any renaissance in the region that would allow the acquisition of the means of strength and progress or the playing of a historic role at the world level.

6

Planting strife and divisions of all kinds, especially sectarian strife among Muslims, in order to produce internal civil conflicts that do not end.

It is clear that there is no room today to read any conflict in any region of the world except through a global strategic lens, for the American danger is not a local danger or one specific to one region rather than another, and therefore the front confronting this American danger must also be global.

There is no doubt that this confrontation is difficult and delicate, and it is a battle of historic scope, and it is therefore a battle of generations and requires making use of every presumed force. Our experience in Lebanon has taught us that difficulty does not mean impossibility; on the contrary, living and interactive peoples, and a wise and aware leadership prepared for all eventualities and wagering on the accumulation of achievements, make victory after victory. And to the extent that this holds true vertically through history, it also holds true horizontally in geographic and geopolitical extension as well. American arrogance has left our Ummah and its peoples no choice but the choice of resistance, for the sake of a better life, and for the sake of a better human future, a future governed by relations of brotherhood, diversity and solidarity at once, prevailed over by peace and harmony, exactly as its features were drawn by the movement of the prophets and the great reformers throughout history, and as it is in the aspirations and yearnings of the true and transcendent human spirit.

Chapter Two

Lebanon

First

The Homeland

Lebanon is our homeland and the homeland of the fathers and grandfathers, just as it is the homeland of the sons and grandsons and all coming generations, and it is the homeland for whose sovereignty, pride and dignity and for the liberation of whose land we have offered the dearest sacrifices and the most precious martyrs. We want this homeland for all Lebanese alike, embracing them, accommodating them, and standing tall with them and with their contributions.

We want it to be one and unified, in land, people, state and institutions, and we reject any form of partition or "federalization," whether explicit or disguised. And we want it sovereign, free, independent, proud, dignified, impregnable, strong and capable, present in the equations of the region, and a fundamental contributor to the making of the present and the future, just as it has always been present in the making of history.

Among the most important conditions for the establishment of a homeland of this kind and for its continuity is that it have a just, capable and strong state, and a political system that truly represents the will of the people and their aspirations to justice, freedom, security, stability, welfare and dignity. This is what all the Lebanese seek and work to achieve, and we are among them.

Second

The Resistance

"Israel" represents a permanent threat to Lebanon, the state and the entity, and an imminent danger to it, in view of its historical ambitions regarding its land and its waters, and inasmuch as Lebanon is a model for the coexistence of the followers of the heavenly messages, in a unique formula, and a homeland that is the antithesis of the idea of the racist state which is embodied in the Zionist entity. Moreover, Lebanon's existence on the borders of occupied Palestine, and in a region unsettled as a result of the conflict with the Israeli enemy, has made it imperative for it to bear national and pan-Arab (qawmi) responsibilities. The Israeli threat to this homeland began from the moment the Zionist entity was planted in the land of Palestine, and it is an entity that has not hesitated to declare its ambitions regarding the land of Lebanon, to annex parts of it, and to seize its bounties and its riches, foremost among them its waters, and it has tried to realize these ambitions gradually.

This entity began its aggression in 1948, from the border to the depth of the homeland, from the Houla massacre in 1949 to the aggression against Beirut International Airport in 1968, and in between, long years of assaults on the border areas, on their land, their inhabitants and their riches, as a prelude to the direct seizure of the land by way of repeated invasions, up to the invasion of March 1978 and the occupation of the border region and its subjection to its security, political and economic authority, within the framework of an integrated project, in preparation for subjugating the entire homeland in the invasion of 1982. All of this was taking place with full support from the United States of America, and with disregard amounting to collusion on the part of what is known as the "international community" and its international institutions, and amid a suspicious official Arab silence, and the absence of the Lebanese authority, which left its land and its people as plunder for the massacres and the Israeli occupation without bearing its national responsibilities and duties. Amid this great national tragedy, the suffering of the people, the absence of their state and the world's abandonment of them, the Lebanese who were loyal to their homeland found nothing but to exercise their right, and to proceed from their national, moral and religious duty to defend their land, so their choice was: to launch an armed popular resistance to confront the Zionist danger and the permanent aggression against their lives, their livelihoods and their future. In those difficult circumstances, where the Lebanese lacked the state, the march of recovering the homeland began through armed resistance, through the liberation of the land and of the political decision from the hand of the Israeli occupation, as a prelude to recovering the state and building its constitutional institutions, and most important of all, re-establishing the national values upon which the homeland is built, foremost among them: national sovereignty and dignity, which gave the value of freedom its true dimension, so that it did not remain a mere suspended slogan but rather the resistance consecrated it through the act of liberating the land and the human being; and these national values were transformed into a fundamental cornerstone for building modern Lebanon, thus securing its place on the map of the world and restoring esteem to it as a country that imposes respect for itself and whose sons take pride in belonging to it, inasmuch as it is a homeland of freedom, culture, knowledge and diversity, as it is the homeland of pride, dignity, sacrifice and heroism. These dimensions taken together were crowned by the resistance through the liberation it accomplished in the year 2000 and the historic victory in the July war of 2006, in which it presented a living experience in defense of the homeland, an experience that has turned into a school from which peoples and states benefit in defending their land, protecting their independence and preserving their sovereignty. This national accomplishment of the resistance was achieved with the backing of a loyal people and a national army, and it thwarted the enemy's objectives and inflicted upon it a historic defeat, so that the resistance emerged, with its mujahideen and its martyrs, and with it Lebanon, with its people and its army, with a great victory that founded a new stage in the region whose hallmark is the centrality of the resistance in role and function in deterring the enemy, securing protection for the homeland's independence and sovereignty, defending its people and completing the liberation of the rest of the occupied land. This role and this function are a permanent national necessity for as long as the Israeli threat lasts, and for as long as the enemy's ambitions in our land and our waters last, and for as long as the absence of the strong, capable state lasts; and in light of the imbalance in the balance of power between the state and the enemy, the imbalance that usually drives weak states and peoples targeted by the ambitions and threats of domineering and strong states to search for formulas that make use of the available capabilities and resources, the permanent Israeli threat imposes upon Lebanon the consecration of a defensive formula based on combining the existence of a popular resistance that contributes to the defense of the homeland in the face of any Israeli invasion, and a national army that protects the homeland and consolidates its security and stability, in a process of complementarity whose success the past stage has proven in managing the conflict with the enemy, and which has achieved victories for Lebanon and provided it with means of protection.

The will of the Lebanese to live together in full dignity and with equal rights and duties makes constructive cooperation imperative in order to consecrate genuine participation, which constitutes the most appropriate formula for protecting their diversity and their complete stability after an era of instability caused by the various policies based on the inclination toward monopolization, cancellation and exclusion. Consensual democracy constitutes a political formula suitable for genuine participation by all, and a reassuring factor of confidence for the components of the homeland, and it contributes greatly to opening the doors to entering the stage of building the reassuring state which all of its citizens feel exists for their sake.

Third

The State and the Political System

The fundamental problem in the Lebanese political system, which prevents its continuous reform, development and modernization, is political sectarianism. Likewise, the system's being founded on sectarian bases constitutes a strong obstacle to the achievement of a sound democracy in whose light the elected majority can govern and the elected minority can oppose, and in which the door is opened for a sound rotation of power between the loyalist camp and the opposition or the various political coalitions. Therefore the fundamental condition for applying a genuine democracy of this kind is the abolition of political sectarianism from the system, which is what the "Taif Agreement" stipulated, requiring the formation of a higher national body to accomplish it. And until the Lebanese are able, through their national dialogue, to achieve this historic and sensitive accomplishment, we mean the abolition of political sectarianism, and as long as the political system is founded on sectarian bases, consensual democracy remains the fundamental rule of governance in Lebanon, because it is the actual embodiment of the spirit of the constitution and of the essence of the pact of common coexistence.

Hence any approach to national issues according to the equation of majority and minority remains contingent upon the fulfillment of the historical and social conditions for the practice of actual democracy, in which the citizen becomes a value in himself. The will of the Lebanese to live together in full dignity and with equal rights and duties makes constructive cooperation imperative in order to consecrate genuine participation, which constitutes the most appropriate formula for protecting their diversity and their complete stability after an era of instability caused by the various policies based on the inclination toward monopolization, cancellation and exclusion. Consensual democracy constitutes a political formula suitable for genuine participation by all, and a reassuring factor of confidence for the components of the homeland, and it contributes greatly to opening the doors to entering the stage of building the reassuring state which all of its citizens feel exists for their sake.

The state which we aspire to participate in building together with the rest of the Lebanese is:

1

The state that safeguards public freedoms and provides all the appropriate conditions for exercising them.

2

The state that is keen on national unity and national cohesion.

3

The capable state that protects the land, the people, sovereignty and independence, and that has a strong, capable and equipped national army, and effective security institutions that are keen on the people's security and interests.

4

The state founded in its structure on the basis of modern, effective and cooperating institutions, which rests on clear and defined powers, functions and tasks.

5

The state that is committed to applying the laws to everyone, within the framework of respect for public freedoms and justice in the rights and duties of citizens, of differing sects, regions and orientations.

6

The state in which there is sound and correct parliamentary representation, which cannot be achieved except through a modern electoral law that enables the Lebanese voter to choose his representatives far from the domination of money, factional loyalties and various pressures, and that achieves the broadest possible representation of the various segments of the Lebanese people.

7

The state that relies on those possessing scientific competence, practical skills and integrity, regardless of their sectarian affiliations, and that establishes effective and strong mechanisms to purge the administration of corruption and the corrupt without compromise.

8

The state in which there is a supreme judicial authority that is independent and far from the control of the politicians, in which competent, upright and free judges exercise their grave responsibilities in establishing justice among the people.

9

The state that builds its economy principally on the basis of the productive sectors, and works to revive and strengthen them, especially the agricultural and industrial sectors, and to give them the appropriate space in plans, programs and support, in a way that leads to improving production and its marketing, and that provides sufficient and suitable job opportunities, especially in the rural areas.

10

The state that adopts and applies the principle of balanced development among the regions, and works to bridge the economic and social gap between them.

11

The state that cares for its citizens, and works to provide them with appropriate services, from education, medical care and housing, to securing a dignified life, addressing the problem of poverty, providing job opportunities and so forth.

12

The state that takes care of the young and rising generations, and helps to develop their energies and talents, and to direct them toward humanitarian and national ends, and to protect them from deviance and vice.

13

The state that works to strengthen the role of woman and to develop her participation in all fields, within the framework of benefiting from her particular nature and influence and respecting her standing.

14

The state that accords the educational situation appropriate importance, especially with regard to attention to the public school, and the strengthening of the Lebanese University at every level, and the implementation of compulsory education alongside its being free of charge.

15

The state that adopts a decentralized administrative system that grants broad administrative powers to the various administrative units (governorate / district / municipality), with the aim of enhancing opportunities for development and facilitating the affairs and transactions of citizens, without allowing this administrative decentralization to be transformed later into a kind of federalism.

16

The state that strives to halt emigration from the homeland, the emigration of youth and families and the emigration of competencies and brains, within a comprehensive and realistic plan.

17

17. The state that cares for its expatriate citizens in every corner of the world, defends them and protects them, and benefits from their spread, their standing and their positions in the service of national causes.

The establishment of a state with these specifications and conditions is a goal for us and for every sincere and faithful Lebanese, and we in Hezbollah will exert all our efforts, in cooperation with the various political and popular forces that share this vision with us, in order to achieve this noble national goal.

Fourth

Lebanon and Lebanese, Palestinian Relations

The problem of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was, and still is, one of the tragic results of the emergence of the Zionist entity on the land of Palestine and the displacement of its people from it. These people moved to Lebanon to live there temporarily as guests of their Lebanese brothers until they return to their homeland and the homes from which they were expelled. What the Palestinians and the Lebanese alike suffered as a result of this refugee situation had as its real and direct cause the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the tragedies and calamities that resulted from it, which afflicted the peoples of the entire region and whose harm was not confined to the Palestinians alone.

Moreover, the suffering of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was not limited to the pains of forced migration and refuge alone; added to it were the brutal Israeli attacks and massacres that destroyed stone and human beings, as happened in the Nabatieh camp, which was completely destroyed; the harshness of life in the camps under conditions lacking the minimum requirements of a dignified life; the deprivation of civil and social rights; the failure of successive Lebanese governments to fulfill their duty toward them. This unnatural reality today makes it imperative for the responsible Lebanese authorities to shoulder their responsibility, and to build Lebanese, Palestinian relations on sound, solid and legal foundations that take into account the balances of right and justice and the common interests of both peoples, and so that this presence and these relations no longer remain subject to moods, whims, political calculations, internal tug of war and international interventions.

We believe that success in this task is achieved through the following:

1

Direct Lebanese, Palestinian dialogue.

2

Enabling the Palestinians in Lebanon to agree on the choice of a unified authority of reference to represent them in this dialogue, transcending the divergences existing in the broader Palestinian situation.

3

Granting the Palestinians in Lebanon their civil and social rights, in a manner befitting their humanitarian situation and preserving their character, their identity and their cause.

4

Adherence to the right of return and rejection of resettlement (tawtin).

Fifth

Lebanon and Arab relations

Lebanon, Arab in identity and belonging, exercises its identity and its belonging as a natural, authentic condition in the Lebanese societal composition. Likewise, the vital sphere, geopolitics, strategic depth, policies of regional integration and national (pan-Arab) interests, as strategic determinants of Lebanon's political position and its major interests, make it imperative for it to be committed to the just Arab causes, foremost among them the cause of Palestine and the conflict with the Israeli enemy.

Likewise, there is a certain need to join efforts to overcome the state of conflicts that splits the Arab ranks, since the contradiction of strategies and the difference of alliances, despite their seriousness and sharpness, do not justify being drawn into policies of targeting or engaging in foreign projects based on deepening division, stirring up sectarian bigotries and setting in motion the factors of partition and fragmentation, in a way that leads to exhausting the nation, serving the Zionist enemy and implementing American designs. The development of a political method based on containing disputes or regulating them and preventing them from getting out of control into the domain of open conflicts is an option worthy of adoption in order to ripen a qualitative and responsible approach in dealing with pan-Arab causes, as well as searching for commonalities in order to strengthen them and to provide opportunities for constructive communication at the level of governments and peoples, so as to achieve the broadest framework of solidarity serving our causes. Here the option of resistance constitutes an essential need and an objective factor for hardening the Arab position and weakening the enemy, regardless of the nature of the strategies or political bets adopted.

Based on all of the foregoing, the resistance sees no objection to generalizing the returns of benefiting from its option, so that it extends to the various Arab quarters, as long as the results fall within the framework of the equation of weakening the enemy and strengthening and hardening the Arab position. In this framework, Syria recorded a distinguished and steadfast position in the conflict with the Israeli enemy, supported the resistance movements in the region, stood beside them in the most difficult circumstances, and sought to unify Arab efforts to secure the interests of the region and confront the challenges. We stress the necessity of adhering to the distinguished relations between Lebanon and Syria, as a shared political, security and economic need dictated by the interests of the two countries and the two peoples, the requirements of political geography, the imperatives of Lebanese stability and the confrontation of common challenges. We also call for an end to all the negative atmospheres that have marred the relations of the two countries in the past few years, and for the return of these relations to their natural condition as quickly as possible.

Sixth

Lebanon and Islamic relations

Our Arab and Islamic world faces challenges that affect our societies, with their various components, which requires not taking their gravity lightly. Sectarian congestion and fabricated confessional tensions, especially between Sunnis and Shiites, the invention of national contradictions between Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, and between Iranians and Arabs, the frightening and terrorizing of minorities, and the continuous Christian hemorrhage from the Arab East, especially from Palestine and Iraq as well as Lebanon, all of this threatens the cohesion of our societies, reduces their immunity, and aggravates the obstacles to their renaissance and development.

Instead of religious and national diversity representing a source of richness and social vitality, it has been misused and employed as a factor of tearing apart, division and societal fragmentation. The situation resulting from this bad use is the product of an intersection of deliberate Western policies, American specifically, with internal factionalist and irresponsible practices and conceptions, in addition to an unstable political environment. Taking these facts into account appears urgent, and it is fitting and necessary to include them as one of the essential concerns in the programs of the basic forces and currents, including the Islamic movements, upon whose shoulders falls a special responsibility in confronting these challenges and addressing those problems.

Hezbollah stresses the importance of cooperation among the Islamic states in all fields, which grants them a strength of solidarity in the face of the arrogant (istikbari) schemes, and societal protection from cultural and media invasion, and urges them to benefit from their riches in exchanging various benefits among these states. In this framework, Hezbollah considers the Iran of Islam a central and important state in the Islamic world, for it is the one that, through its revolution, brought down the Shah's regime and its Zionist, American projects, supported the resistance movements in our region, and stood with courage and determination beside the Arab and Islamic causes, at their head the Palestinian cause.

The policy of the Islamic Republic in Iran is clear and firm in supporting the first and most important central cause of the Arabs and Muslims, namely the Palestinian cause, since the declaration of the victory of the blessed Islamic Revolution under the leadership of the Guardian Jurist Imam Khomeini (may his secret be sanctified), and the opening of the first Palestinian embassy in place of the Israeli embassy. This support has continued in all its forms to our present day under the leadership of the Guardian Jurist Imam Khamenei (may his shadow endure), which has led to the achievement of prominent victories for the first time in the history of the conflict with the Zionist invaders. The fabrication of a contradiction with the Islamic Republic in Iran by certain Arab quarters represents a stabbing of the self and of the Arab causes, and serves nothing but "Israel" and the United States of America.

Iran, which formulated its political doctrine and built its vital sphere on the basis of "the centrality of the Palestinian cause," hostility to "Israel," confronting American policies and integration with the Arab and Islamic environment, must be met with a will for cooperation and brotherhood, and dealt with as a base for revival, a center of strategic gravity, and a sovereign, independent and liberationist model supportive of the contemporary Arab, Islamic independence project, and a power that increases the strength and immunity of the states and peoples of our region. The Islamic world grows strong through its alliances and the cooperation of its states. We stress the importance of benefiting from the political, economic and human elements of strength that exist in each state of the Islamic world, on the basis of integration and mutual support and non subordination to the arrogant powers. We recall the importance of unity among Muslims. The Exalted said: {And hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of God, and do not become divided}, and of being wary of what causes division among them, such as confessional provocations, especially between Sunnis and Shiites. We are counting on the awareness of the Islamic peoples in confronting the conspiracies and seditions being woven in this regard.

Seventh

Lebanon and international relations

The criteria of difference, dispute and conflict in Hezbollah's vision and method are based first and foremost on a political, moral foundation, between an arrogant oppressor (mustakbir) and an oppressed (mustad'af), between a dominator and one subjugated, and between a tyrannical occupier and one seeking freedom and independence. Hezbollah also considers that unilateral hegemony overturns global balance and stability and international security and peace. The unlimited support of the American administration for "Israel," its pushing it toward aggression, its cover for its occupations of Arab lands, in addition to the American administration's domination of international institutions, the double standards in issuing and implementing international resolutions, the policy of interference in the affairs of other societies, the militarization of the world and the adoption of the logic of mobile wars in international disputes, and the stirring up of turmoil and unrest in every part of the world, place the American administration in the position of being hostile to our nation and our peoples, and also assign to it a basic and primary responsibility in producing imbalance and disorder in the international system.

As for the European policies, they oscillate between impotence and lack of effectiveness on the one hand, and unjustified attachment to American policies on the other hand, which effectively leads to hollowing out the Mediterranean orientation in Europe in favor of the dominance of the Atlanticist orientation, with its colonial backgrounds. Attachment to American policies, especially in the phase of their historic failure, constitutes a strategic error that will lead only to more problems, stumbling and complications in European, Arab relations. Europe has a special responsibility by virtue of the colonial legacy that inflicted grave damage on our region, from whose results and effects our peoples still suffer. And because European peoples have a history in resisting the occupier, Europe's moral and humanitarian duty, before the political one, imposes on it recognition of the right of peoples to resist the occupier, on the basis of distinguishing between resistance and terrorism. In our view: the requirements of stability and cooperation in European, Arab relations necessitate the building of a more independent, more just and more objective European approach. It will be impossible to build a common vital sphere, politically and in terms of security, without this transformation capable of addressing the points of dysfunction that generate crises and instability. On the other hand, we look with much interest and appreciation at the independence and liberation experience rejecting hegemony in the states of Latin America, and we see wide areas of convergence between its project and the project of the resistance movements in our region, leading to the building of a more just and balanced international order. Meeting that experience constitutes a stimulus for promising hopes at the global level, based on an inclusive human identity and a common political and moral background. In this context, the slogan "the unity of the oppressed" will remain one of the pillars of our political thought in building our understanding, our relations and our positions toward international issues.

Chapter Three

Palestine and the settlement negotiations

First

The cause of Palestine and the Zionist entity

Since its usurpation of Palestine and the displacement of its people from it in the year 1948, under the sponsorship and support of the forces of international hegemony at that time, the Zionist entity has constituted a direct aggression and a serious danger affecting the entire Arab region, and a real threat to its security, stability and interests. Its harm and damage have not been confined to the Palestinian people or the states and peoples neighboring Palestine alone. The attacks, tensions and wars that the region has witnessed as a result of the Israeli aggressive tendency and practices are nothing but the proof and witness to the extent of the injustice that has befallen the Palestinian people and the Arabs and Muslims as a result of the crime against humanity that the West committed when it proceeded to plant this alien entity in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world, so that it would be a hostile penetration and an advanced position for the Western arrogant project in general, and a base for control and hegemony over the region in particular.

The Zionist movement is a racist movement in thought and practice, and it is the product of an arrogant, despotic, domineering mentality, and its project in its origin and foundation is a settler, Judaizing, expansionist project. Likewise, the entity that emerged from it arose, established itself and continued through occupation, aggression, massacres and terrorism, with the support, sponsorship and embrace of the colonial states, particularly the United States of America, which is linked to it by a strategic alliance that has made it a real partner in all its wars, massacres and terrorist practices.

The conflict that we and our nation are waging against the Zionist, colonial project in Palestine is a fulfillment of the duty of self defense against the Israeli, arrogant occupation, aggression and injustice that threatens our existence and targets our rights and our future. It is not based on religious, racial or ethnic confrontation on our part, even if the owners of this Zionist, colonial project have never refrained from using religion and employing religious feelings as a means to achieve their aims and ends. And what the American President "Bush" and his successor "Obama" and the leaders of the Zionist entity along with them have gone to, in demanding that the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims recognize the Jewishness of the "State of Israel," is nothing but the clearest proof of that. The natural and inevitable result is that this usurping, fabricated entity lives an existential impasse that troubles its leaders and its backers, since it is an unnatural newborn, an entity incapable of life and continuity and liable to vanish. Here the historic responsibility falls upon the nation and its peoples not to recognize this entity whatever the pressures and challenges may be, and to continue working for the liberation of all the usurped land and the recovery of all the plundered rights, however long the time and however great the sacrifices.

Second

Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque

The entire world recognizes the standing and sanctity of the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Aqsa Mosque is the first of the two qiblas, the third holiest sanctuary, the destination of the Night Journey of the Messenger of God (may God's prayers and peace be upon him and upon his family), and the meeting place of the prophets and messengers (may God's blessings be upon them all). No one denies its great status among Muslims as one of their most sacred landmarks, nor the depth of its connection to Islam as one of the most important Islamic symbols on the face of the earth. The city of Jerusalem, with the Islamic and Christian holy sites it embraces, enjoys a lofty status among Muslims and Christians alike.

The continuation of the Israeli occupation of this holy city, along with what accompanies it of Judaization plans and projects, the expulsion of its people, the confiscation of their homes and properties, surrounding it with Jewish neighborhoods and settlement belts and blocs, and strangling it with the racist separation wall, in addition to the continuous American-Israeli efforts to establish it as the eternal capital of the Zionist entity with international recognition: all of these are aggressive measures that are rejected and condemned.

Likewise, the continuous and repeated grave assaults on the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque, the excavations carried out within its precincts, and the plans being prepared to destroy it, constitute a serious and real danger threatening its existence and survival, and portend grave repercussions for the entire region. The duty of supporting Jerusalem and liberating it, and of defending and protecting al-Aqsa Mosque, is a religious duty and a humanitarian and moral responsibility incumbent upon every free and honorable person among the sons of our Arab and Islamic nation and upon all the free and honorable people of the world. We call upon and demand of the Arabs and Muslims, at both the official and popular levels, and of all states that are keen on peace and stability in the world, to exert efforts and capabilities to liberate Jerusalem from the yoke of the Zionist occupation, and to preserve its true identity and its Islamic and Christian holy places.

Third

The Palestinian Resistance

The Palestinian people, as they wage the battle of self-defense and struggle to recover their legitimate national rights in Palestine in its historical meaning and its geographical reality, are exercising a legitimate right affirmed and mandated by the heavenly messages, international laws, and human values and norms.

This right includes resistance in all its forms, foremost among them armed struggle, and by all the means that the Palestinian resistance factions are able to use, especially in light of the imbalance in the balance of power in favor of the Zionist enemy, armed with the most modern weapons of carnage, destruction and killing.

Experience, which has formed a conclusive proof leaving no room for doubt or suspicion throughout the course of the conflict and confrontation between our nation and the Zionist entity since its usurpation of Palestine until our present day, has proven the importance and efficacy of the option of jihadi resistance and armed struggle in confronting aggression, liberating the land, recovering rights, achieving a balance of terror, and closing the gap of strategic superiority, through the equations that the resistance has imposed with its available capabilities and its will and determination in the field of confrontation. The best witness and proof of that is what the resistance in Lebanon achieved of successive victories, and the field, military and moral accomplishments it accumulated throughout its jihadi experience, especially through compelling the Zionists to carry out the great Israeli withdrawal in May of the year 2000 from most of the occupied Lebanese territories, or through the resounding failure of the Zionist army in the July 2006 aggression, in which the resistance achieved a divine, historic and strategic victory that radically changed the equation of the conflict, inflicted the first defeat of this magnitude upon the Israeli enemy, and brought down the myth of the army that cannot be defeated.

The other proof of that is what the resistance in Palestine achieved of continuous accomplishments through the experience of the Palestinian revolution and the option of armed struggle that it adopted, and through the first intifada of the stones and the second al-Aqsa intifada, leading up to the forced retreat of the Israeli army through the complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the year 2005, without restriction or condition, without negotiation or agreement, and without achieving any political, security or geographic gain. That was the first field, geographic, qualitative victory of this size, this level and this significance for the option of resistance in Palestine, being the first compulsory Israeli withdrawal brought about by the resistance within the borders of historical Palestine; and the implications this carries are of the utmost importance in the course of the conflict between us and the Zionist entity at the strategic level. Likewise, the magnificent steadfastness of the mujahid Palestinian people and their resistance in Gaza in facing the Zionist aggression in the year 2008 is a lesson for generations and an admonition for invaders and aggressors.

If this is the efficacy of the resistance in Lebanon and in Palestine, then what has been the efficacy of the negotiated settlement option? And what are the results, interests and gains achieved by the negotiations in all their stages and through all the agreements they produced? Is it not more Israeli arrogance, domination and intransigence, and more Israeli gains, interests and conditions? As we affirm our permanent and steadfast stand alongside the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause, with its historical, geographic and political constants, we affirm decisively and categorically our backing, endorsement and support for this people and for the Palestinian resistance movements and their struggle in confronting the Israeli project.

Fourth

The Settlement Negotiations

Our position was, still is, and will remain, toward the settlement process and toward the agreements produced by the Madrid negotiating track through the "Wadi Araba Agreement" and its annexes, the "Oslo Agreement" and its annexes, and before them the "Camp David Agreement" and its annexes, a position of absolute rejection of the origin and principle of the option of settlement with the Zionist entity, which is based on recognizing the legitimacy of its existence and conceding to it what it usurped of the land of Arab and Islamic Palestine.

This position is a fixed, permanent and final position, not subject to retreat or bargaining, even if the whole world recognizes "Israel." From this standpoint, and from a position of brotherhood, responsibility and concern, we call upon the Arab officials to commit to the choices of their peoples, by reconsidering the negotiating option, conducting a review of the results of the agreements signed with the Zionist enemy, and decisively and finally abandoning the illusory, unjust settlement process falsely and mendaciously named the "peace process," especially since those who wagered on a role for the successive American administrations as a partner and an honest and just mediator in this process have seen, beyond any doubt, that it has failed them, practiced pressure and extortion upon them, displayed hostility toward their peoples, their causes and their interests, and sided completely and flagrantly with its strategic ally, the Zionist entity.

As for the Zionist entity, with which they imagine it is possible to establish peace, it has shown them at every stage of the negotiations that it does not seek peace and does not strive for it, and that it uses the negotiations to impose its conditions, strengthen its position, achieve its interests, and break the edge of hostility and the psychological barrier among their peoples toward it, by obtaining free and open official and popular normalization that achieves for it normal coexistence and integration into the regional order, and the imposition of itself as a fait accompli in the region, its acceptance and the recognition of the legitimacy of its existence, after the Palestinian land it usurped has been conceded to it.

Hence, we call upon, expect and hope from all Arabs and Muslims, at both the official and popular levels, to return to Palestine and Jerusalem as a central cause for them all, around which they unite and to the liberation of which from the filth of the brutal Zionist occupation they commit; and to carry out what their religious, fraternal and humanitarian duty dictates to them toward their holy places in Palestine and toward its oppressed people; and to provide all the requirements of support to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and enable them to continue their resistance; and to reject all projects of normalization with the Zionist enemy and bring them down; and to adhere to the right of return of all Palestinian refugees to their lands and homes from which they were expelled; and to categorically reject all the alternatives put forward, whether resettlement, compensation or displacement; and to work immediately to lift the siege imposed on the Palestinian people, especially the comprehensive siege of the Gaza Strip; and to adopt the cause of the thousands of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, and to lay down practical plans and programs to free them from captivity.

Finally

The Conclusion

The Conclusion: This is our vision and our conceptions; in seeking them out we were keen to be seekers of right and truth. And these are our positions and our commitments; we strove to be people of truthfulness and fidelity in them. We believe in the truth and speak it, and we defend it and sacrifice for its sake unto martyrdom, seeking in that nothing but the satisfaction of our Creator and our God, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and hoping from that for nothing but the welfare of our people, our nation and our community, and their good and their happiness in this world and the hereafter.

O God, You know that what came from us was not a competition for authority, nor a seeking of any of the trivial trappings of this world; rather it was a reviving of the truth and a putting to death of falsehood, a defense of the oppressed among Your servants, an establishment of justice in Your land, and a seeking of Your satisfaction and nearness to You. Upon this our martyrs passed away, and upon this we proceed and continue our work and our jihad, and You have promised us one of the two good outcomes: either victory or the honor of meeting You stained with our blood.

And our promise to You, O Lord, and to all Your oppressed servants, is that we shall remain the men who are truthful in their covenant, awaiting the promise, steadfast, who have not changed in the least.