Aoun’s MOU with Hezbollah dangerous for Israel and the USA

[WMR] Aug. 3, 2006 — On July 30, WMR reported that CIA and Mossad agents in Lebanon, working with forces loyal to Israeli ally and convicted murderer Samir Geagea, were stirring up trouble among refugees streaming into northern Lebanon from the south of the country. Geagea, who was once allied with former pro-Israeli Prime Minister Gen. Michel Aoun, has lost the support of his one time ally. According to informed Lebanese sources, the one-time fervently anti-Syrian Aoun continues to honor the memorandum of understanding drawn up between him and his Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Aoun controls the largest bloc of Maronite seats in the Lebanese parliament. After Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers prisoners, Aoun said Hezbollah had engaged in a “pure military action,” not a terrorist attack. Aoun also earned the ire of Israel and Washington by publicly calling for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to their original homes, something strongly resisted by Israel.

One of the reasons Israel is attacking Christian targets in Lebanon is to show its opposition to the tactical agreement between the FPM and Hezbollah. The attacks on Christian targets are a way to punish Israel’s one-time allies. The FPM, as well as most other Lebanese political parties, are also acutely aware of Israeli and American involvement in a series of “false flag” assassinations of Lebanese politicians and journalists in order to stir up resentment against Syria. Israel and the United States can only rely on Geagea and Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader. One of the men arrested by Lebanese police for working with an Israeli assassination team involved in killing Lebanese politicians is a Lebanese Druze.

Aoun’s MOU with Hezbollah is dangerous for Israel and the United States. Last November, Aoun was feted in Washington by neo-con members of the Bush administration and pro-Israel members of Congress for his leadership of the so-called “Cedar Revolution,” the movement to chase Syria out of Lebanon after it was falsely accused of being behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. It was a tactical agreement between Hariri and Hezbollah, similar to that between Aoun and Hezbollah, that largely contributed to Jerusalem’s and Washington’s decision, and Saudi Arabia’s acquiescence, to eliminate Hariri.

Aoun, as a one-time Israeli military ally, is well aware of Israel’s tactics. Israeli military forces have discovered that entering Lebanon is not the cake walk it was during the Lebanese civil war. Aoun is also extremely knowledgeable about the pro-Israeli cells operating within the Bush administration and the neo-con think tanks and contrivances in Washington. These are the very same elements that supported the Cedar Revolution and in_clu_de the American Enterprise Institute, where Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle nest; the neo-con supported US Committee for a Free Lebanon; Heritage Foundation; Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Hudson Institute; Hoover Institution; Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Source: WMR