Alan Sarkis – Call of the Nation
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is going through his most difficult political phase. The man, who lived through the war and created the Shiite awakening and was always the one who invented ways out, seems shackled, unable to do anything after the winds of regional war blew and entered deep into the house he built.
Anyone who meets President Berri these days knows that what he declares is different from what he eats in cramped salons or what he sees. The man is one of the smartest politicians at this stage, and he knows perhaps more than anyone else what will happen to the country and the Shiite community. The thing that hurts Berri most is the scene of devastation and devastation in the south. The head of the “Amal” movement harnessed most of the state’s resources to serve the south and was the owner of the slogan “Hold on to the knife, watermelon.” Suddenly, with a decision from “Hezbollah” to support Gaza and then in retaliation for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and support for Tehran, the south entered into a devastating war that destroyed quarantine and displaced people.
The issue of the displaced, who are difficult to return during this period, is one of the issues that most worries Berri. The problem is not only reconstruction, but what is more dangerous is whether the people of the displaced villages will return to their villages? If they are allowed to return, when will this return take place, and who will finance reconstruction under Hezbollah’s policy, which has set itself hostility to all Arab countries and tried to destabilize their security and stability in the service of the Iranian project?
The “party” entered the war of revenge for Khamenei and plunged the Shiite community into the furnace of the black tunnel. Wild went crazy, but it cannot express itself. Its concern is the unity of the Shiite ranks, and any internal conflict will weaken the position further. He does not like to see some of Amal’s masses following the populism of the party and Iran, but he is unable to do anything because the militancy is greater than realistic, and the Iranian occupation of Shiite thought has become dangerous.
If the reality on the ground is going in the direction of recording a historic loss for the Shiites due to Hezbollah’s policy, Berri is trying as much as possible to address the situation through politics. The man cannot declare his support for direct negotiations with Israel, but everyone has become aware that the Lebanese state is proceeding with the negotiations and that Berri agrees to everything. The President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, puts it in every possible way, no matter how much Berri tries to deny it. What he says in public is completely different from what happens in closed communications, and no matter how much he tries to disavow the cup of negotiation, the condition of the truce before entering into negotiations was that Berri was his godfather, and he refused to negotiate under fire. He was the one who wanted it, and this is how it happened.
Berri cannot say that he does not agree to the negotiation, as he is embarrassed to the extreme. In public, he repeats the same song, and in secret, he supports the steps of Aoun and the Lebanese government, and therefore all the negotiations that take place in Washington are known to him. If he had actually disagreed, he would have resigned from the government and left it because he covered the government’s decisions that considered “Hezbollah” an outlaw organization and did not vote against declaring Beirut a demilitarized city.
Berri stands between the hammer of war and destruction and the internal and external position that rejects the behavior of “Hezbollah” and Iran, and between the anvil of “the party” which is waging a suicidal war through which it is sacrificing the Shiite community. He does not dare, until this moment, to say what a section of the Shiite community wants that rejects the “party’s” policies and Iran’s approach, and is trying to absorb everything that is happening because he does not want the war with Israel to calm down and explode internally.
Berri knows the seriousness of the situation, and he sent his aide, Representative Ali Hassan Khalil, to Saudi Arabia, and the American Ambassador, Michel Issa, visited him. He knows that the only lifeline is to go towards direct negotiations, otherwise the war will continue, and therefore the man who was supposed to retire, is here today fighting the most dangerous battles and the closeness of the existential battle. Will he emerge from it victorious?
