Lebanese cleric Fadlallah urges Arabs, Muslims to learn from prisoner swap deal

Text of report by Lebanese National News Agency website

["Sayyid Fadlallah: The value of the resistance lies in the fact that it forced the world to recognize our rights; the prisoner exchange was a shock to the world, and it rehabilitated our people vis-a-vis the Jews" - NNA headline]

Beirut, 17 Jul (NNA) - Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah has stressed the need for Arabs and Muslims to benefit from the experience of the Lebanese resistance in the new prisoner exchange deal to force the arrogant world and the so-called international community to recognize our rights.

This experience, he said, rehabilitated the Arab and Muslim human beings, who were ignored by their governments and who were treated by the international organizations as sixth-class humans after these organizations placed the Jews on top of their priorities.

He said it is shameful for the Arab governments to ignore their prisoners in enemy prison, or to be afraid of raising their cases although some of them were buried alive, or to re-imprison the ones they receive from Israel.

He said the value of the resistance in Lebanon lies in the fact that it inspired the Arab and Islamic peoples, rehabilitated them and their causes, and forced the world to recognize their rights.

In a statement discussing the latest prisoner swap operation and its significance, Allamah Fadlallah said: "The exchange deal with the enemy entity, in the way it was done and with the conditions that the resistance imposed, rehabilitated our Arab and Muslim people, the people whom governments abandoned and international establishments treated as sixth-class humans after they placed the Jews and the Israelis on top of their priorities and took their interests into consideration in all the international resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The countries of arrogance also drew up their foreign policies on the basis of respecting the inclinations of the Jews and Israelis and meeting their conditions.

"The resistance in Lebanon helped the Arab and Islamic world regain balance and presence vis-a-vis the legendary image that the regimes and their agencies painted and worked to implant in the popular memory to prevent our peoples from playing their role in confronting the occupier. It was really shameful for the Arab regimes to abandon their prisoners and detainees, or for some of them to accept the enemy conditions and transfer their prisoners in shackles from the enemy prisons to their prisons. We also know that some Arab officials were indignant that some media raised the issues of their prisoners and highlighted the enemy's brutality of burying them alive.

"Therefore, the value of the resistance in Lebanon, through this latest exchange, lies not only in the renewed inspiration it provided for our Arab and Islamic peoples, but also in its ability to rehabilitate their causes, rights, and human beings, and to force the world to recognize these rights and causes and to appreciate these human beings, whom the world wanted to remain within the cycle of weakness, kidnap, imprisonment, consumption, backwardness, and ignorance."

He added: "The exchange came as a shock to this arrogant world and to the so-called international community. Not only did this world remain silent on the destruction of Lebanon and the killing of its children, women, and old people during Israel's war on Lebanon in July 2006, but it also worked to provide all the necessary political, media, and even security climates for Israel to legitimize its war on Lebanon so as to end the resistance and kill the spirit of opposition in the nation. We have seen how this world remained silent on all Israel's crimes and massacres in that war, and how it was disturbed only by the resistance's capture of the two enemy soldiers. It continued to demand their unconditional release, disregarding the Lebanese detainees and thousands of Palestinian and Arab detainees in enemy jails."

Fadlallah said: We have to learn from this distinguished experience for the resistance in Lebanon "in our relations with this arrogant world, with a view to driving it to acknowledge our rights and respect the will of our peoples. We also should insist on our commitment to the principles that safeguard our causes, especially with regard to the Palestinian and Iraqi questions despite all the pressure that is being applied in the Arab world and elsewhere to drive us to offer concessions that might harm our causes and our dignity and Arab and Islamic character."

The Iranian Delegation

Allamah Fadlallah also received the Iranian delegation that attended the celebrations on the liberation of the prisoners. The delegation is headed by Hoseyn Sheykholeslem, first adviser to the Iranian foreign minister, and Ghazanfar Roknabadi, director general of the Middle East and North Africa desk at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. The talks dealt with the general situation in Lebanon and the region and the latest developments of the peaceful Iranian nuclear file.

Fadlallah said that "the Zionist entity, through the Jewish lobby in the United States, is still trying hard to push the US Administration towards a war with Iran on its behalf." He said this file has entered a new stage where pressure on Iran might escalate but without it being able to drive Iran to give up its right to uranium enrichment. He saw "indications that many concerned parties are acknowledging these rights while trying to impose some face-saving conditions in this file in particular and in the file of the relations with the West in general."

Source: Lebanese National News Agency website, Beirut, in Arabic 1140 gmt 17 Jul 08