Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah, a member of the “Loyalty to the Resistance” parliamentary bloc, said the Lebanese resistance makes its own decisions independently, stressing that its leadership is guided by its own will and assessment of the national interest, while Iran has supported Lebanon in confronting Israeli aggression rather than asking Hezbollah to support it in a confrontation with the United States and the Israeli occupation entity.
Fadlallah stated the resistance in Lebanon is a defensive force protecting its country and that its current mission is to liberate occupied territory, enable displaced residents to return home, secure the release of prisoners, and rebuild destroyed areas.
“The resistance’s decision is a Lebanese one, taken by its leadership, and no one from abroad or at home dictates it,” Fadlallah said.
He added that this had been the case under the leadership of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and remained so under Sheikh Naim Qassem and would continue to be the case in the future.
Fadlallah criticized those in Lebanon who repeatedly claim that the resistance makes decisions about confronting the enemy in response to external demands, describing such allegations as an underestimation of people’s intelligence, as well as distortion and misinformation.
Regardless of leaked reports about the resistance’s position, whether accurate or not, he said, its decisions stem from its own will, assessment, and understanding of the national interest. The resistance’s leadership announces its position when the time is right, he added, but always within the framework of the cause for which it fights: southern Lebanon, the liberation of the land, and the return of its people.
MP Fadlallah said the Islamic Republic of Iran had never asked Hezbollah, either in the past or at present, to support it in confronting US-Israeli aggression. On the contrary, he said, Iranian officials ask Hezbollah representatives about their needs and Lebanon’s interests when discussing support.
“This means that we are the ones who rely on Iran and its strength, and on the equation it seeks to establish to help us liberate our country from Israeli occupation,” he said.
Fadlallah made the remarks at a Hezbollah ceremony honoring fallen members of the Islamic Resistance in the southern city of Bint Jbeil. The event was held at the Imam al-Kadhim complex in the Madi neighborhood and attended by clerics, local figures, public figures, families of the fallen, and a large gathering of residents.
Fadlallah said the occupying power was responsible for starting the war, adding that decisions on war rested with the United States and the Israeli enemy.
He criticized those who keep repeating the slogan that decisions of war and peace must rest with the state, as though the state rather than the enemy held the power to make them. He also took aim at those insisting that weapons must be brought under exclusive state control while Lebanon remains under occupation and subject to aggression.
Such issues, he argued, should not be debated under occupation. Instead, they require dialogue based on national principles to address points of disagreement after the land has been liberated, residents have returned to their villages, reconstruction has taken place, and prisoners have been released.
Fadlallah identified the Israeli occupation of part of Lebanese territory as an existential threat, affirming the Israelis sought to seize and annex the land, as they had done in the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
Without the resistance, he said, the Zionist project would have been realized many years ago. He described the resistance’s continued presence as the factor preventing the Zionist enemy from achieving its historic ambition of controlling the area south of the Litani River.
He said this was why the enemy was committing crimes against Lebanese villages, particularly Bint Jbeil.
Fadlallah identified a second existential threat in those who, he said, were betting on Israeli aggression to restore Lebanon to an era of rule by the mutasarrifate and foreign consuls, establishing a sectarian mini-state dependent on outside powers.
He said two key factors were protecting Lebanon: the presence of the resistance and the Lebanese army’s national role, particularly in safeguarding domestic civil peace.
He argued that the repeated targeting of both the resistance and the army reflected efforts by those who routinely attack the military and question its role to undermine institutions they regard as obstacles to their project of fragmenting and partitioning Lebanon.
Confronting this existential threat, Fadlallah added, required awareness, wisdom, and a sense of national responsibility among state officials.
Rather than searching for a truck carrying weapons and explosives intended for use by the resistance against the Israeli enemy, officials should focus on those carrying “verbal, political, and inciting explosives”—people who threaten civil peace, national unity, and the state and the country and seek to destabilize Lebanon.
Fadlallah said a national solution lay in returning to the National Accord Document, the Constitution, and the law. He argued that these frameworks criminalize collaboration and communication with the enemy, as well as promoting its interests, while enshrining the Lebanese people’s right to resist occupation and criminalizing incitement to strife and sectarian tensions.
Anyone seeking to build a functioning state, he said, must begin with these principles rather than pursue proposals that are inappropriate under the current circumstances.
Fadlallah also said the political course pursued by the authorities in negotiations with the Zionist entity had reached a dead end and had aggravated the negative consequences without producing any solutions.
Instead, he said, the Zionist enemy had exploited the negotiations to commit further violations, relying on internal Lebanese divisions and those promoting strife to consolidate its occupation and advance its longstanding project of maintaining permanent control over part of southern Lebanon.
Source: Al-Manar Website