Strange accusations against Hizbollah

The London-based Al Quds al Arabi daily carried the following opinion piece by Chief Editor Abdel-Beri Atwan: "Many  things that are currently happening in Egypt are unfathomable due to their oddness and their illogical character, among them the statement issued yesterday by the Egyptian Public Prosecutor in which he accused the Lebanese Hizbollah of planning to carry out hostile operations inside the country and of training foreign elements on how to make bombs to use them in these operations.

"We do not know why Hizbollah would want to recruit agents in Egypt and carry out operations targeting its public institutions. Hizbollah has no underlying intentions toward Egypt, and its long history in resistance activities never witnessed operations against Israeli targets abroad, let along against Arab or Egyptian targets in particular. "We would have understood it, had the Egyptian prosecutor accused Hizbollah of attempting to smuggle arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip through Egyptian territories, considering that Hizbollah would never deny such charges. However, for it to be accused of trying to carry out terrorist operations against Egypt through the recruitment of Egyptian and Palestinian supporters is unbelievable."

Khalaf al Harbi, a regular columnist for the Saudi newspaper Okaz, wrote: "I was not surprised by the apology presented by the head of the Committee for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to the citizen who was slighted along with his wife. I was not  surprised by the committee's new measures to punish its members who commit mistakes because the committee, under its new head Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Hameen, is passing through a reform phase to return it to the original purpose for which it was formed.

"Thus the committee is endorsing a new wise policy based on recognising that its employees are only human and make mistakes and that they are state employees who receive their salaries from the state in return to serving the country and the society so they must be treated depending on their usefulness. "We must all side with right, justice, and humanity and it does not befit a good Muslim to insult people and accuse them of wrongdoing without proof. The committee is a government institution and it doesn't need the support of the thorny people who hide behind its cover to insult their compatriots and people and commit mistakes, whether intentionally or not."

Ahmad Amiri, a regular columnist for the UAE's Al Ittihad, wrote: "I don't know whether the politicians of the international community are serious or not about their call for the totalitarian regimes that are in violation of international laws, which were put in place originally by the great powers and accepted by most countries of the world, to change their behaviour, or if these calls come as some sort of joke."

"Whenever these regimes change their extremist faces with more moderate or smiling faces, or whenever they change their skins like a snake, the international community exploits this opportunity to bless this regime or that one and to call on them to change their behaviour. "But even if these regimes change their behaviour, akin to when a mass murderer recants his ways and asks for forgiveness, it is not of much use, except in regards to stopping the killing of others, because those who have been killed already cannot be brought back. "There is a price that has to be paid first and foremost. Then there are powers that are more important than the great powers of the world: the power of justice and the power of right who defeat all those who go against them."

The Lebanese daily Al Mustaqbal carried the following opinion piece by Wissam Saade: "Hizbollah said in the electoral programme announced by the head of its parliamentary bloc, Deputy Muhammad Raad: 'We have always called for Islamic unity in words and in action, and have always worked honestly and efficiently on securing national unity.' Indeed, its experience throughout the past years proved the importance of the concepts of Islamic unity and national unity in Hizbollah's political speech.

"However, this experience also showed and on more than one occasion that Hizbollah's understanding of Islamic unity goes against its understanding of national unity and that the status chosen by the party for itself made it weaken Islamic unity each time it proposed its vision for national unity and undermine national unity every time it recalls Islamic unity." * Digest compiled by www.mideastwire.com