Beirut - The leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement
Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, charged Wednesday that Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent speech contained the seeds
of an Israeli-US 'scheme' being plotted against the Mideast region.
'What is happening in the region is a US-Israeli plan. There is a
scheme with a clear division of roles between the US and Israel to
divide the Arab region,' Nasrallah said during a night rally in
Beirut's southern suburbs.
'We should defend our country against what is being plotted for
the region ... which includes a possible relocation of the 1948
Palestinians to Lebanon,' Nasrallah said.
Premier Netanyahu last Sunday offered conditional support for the
establishment of a Palestinian state and refused to bring a halt to
divisive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The Israeli premier said the Palestinian refugee problem would
have to be resolved outside the Israeli state, but he did not mention
relocating refugees to Lebanon, so it was unclear what Nasrallah was
referring to.
He also imposed new conditions on peace talks, demanding that
Palestinians explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish state and agree
not to have an army.
On Monday, Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman described
Netanyahu's stance as 'rigid.'
He called on the world community to 'further press the Israeli
government to accept just and peaceful initiatives.'
Beirut backs a 2002 Saudi peace plan that offers Israel full
normalization of ties with Arab countries in return for a withdrawal
from Arab land seized in the 1967 Six-Day War, and a return of
Palestinian refugees to their ancestral homes.
There are some 6 million Palestinian refugees living in the
diaspora, most of them in Jordan but also in Lebanon and Syria. The
refugees left their country in 1948 after the birth of the state of
Israel.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story