Source: NowLebanon, 21-03-2008
In his sermon on Friday, leading Shia cleric and intellectual Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah elucidated the "historical controversy" which had taken control of regional regimes and provoked debates over attendance at the upcoming Arab Summit in Damascus.
The reluctance of some Lebanese factions to participate in the summit, Fadlallah added, was revealed by the reduction in the level of official representation and the imposition of "unrealistic conditions," in addition to explicit American instructions for Arabs to boycott the summit as a penalty for Damascus. These instructions "extended to Lebanon to increase the votes of a particular group to refrain from attendance," he continued, even though the summit was Arab and not Syrian and dealt with central issues in Lebanon and Palestine.
"We first note that the summit, like other Arab Summits, cannot achieve any Arab objectives... in light of the collapsing Arab League. Secondly, to discuss the Palestinian issue (at the summit)would embarrass some countries which hold a negative stance regarding the massacres carried out by 'Israel' in Gaza and the West Bank while working to denounce the resistance in Al-Quds and supporting the siege imposed on Gaza," Fadlallah stated. He added that such Arab countries stood idly by as spectators while the Palestinian people were systematically uprooted.
Sayyed Fadlallah pointed out that Lebanese attendance or non-attendance at the Arab Summit made little difference, as certain Arab countries had "nothing to do with Arabism or the Arab initiative" and chose to follow their personal and rugged ways rather than stand in solidarity with Palestine.
"This makes the issue of Lebanese attendance ineffective either way, but perhaps it is better to boycott so as to avoid new complications in the Arab reality," he stated.
The Lebanese remain fatally confuse, the cleric said, because their internal political center was still occupied by personal, factional and sectarian struggles. Such struggles, he went on, invoked "much immorality" and contradicted the educated, open nature of Lebanon, adopting instead the "Bedouin mentality."
"We want a free, sovereign Lebanon which practices tolerance and openness. We do not want an enslaved Lebanon which waits to receive instructions from forces which only consider the interests of their own nations."
"Perhaps the sardonic joke is that some are talking about the international community as if it were a sacred symbol, while we know that this community is subject to American pressure, which refuses to denounce the massacres in Qana and Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan," Fadlallah noted.