Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, urged the Palestinians Friday to continue their intifada and vowed that the resistance was preparing  “direct military interference” from Lebanon if necessary. In a keynote speech marking the first anniversary of the intifada, Nasrallah told an audience of 10,000 supporters in Haret Hreik that the Islamic world should not mistake President George W. Bush’s war against terror as a Christian “crusade” against Muslims. “We should not deal with this war as if it is a Christian war against Islam or that it’s a war that the Christians are to wage against Muslims,” Nasrallah said. “The Zionist desire is to see war and conflicts between Muslims and Christians. Do you want to achieve this desire of theirs?” he asked. In reference to the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in the United States, Nasrallah re-affirmed Hizbullah’s condemnation of “the killings of innocent people all over the world” but questioned the “hysteria” the attacks have created. “It’s unfortunate that it is required from all the world to enter a state of hysteria in condemning and deploring what happened just because the event took place in the US and just because most of the dead were Americans,” he said. “But this attitude changes when it takes place in Qana or Sabra and Shatila or the Harem Ibrahimi,” he said, referring to the 1994 killing of Palestinians by a Jewish gunman in Hebron. Nasrallah claimed that the United States intends to secure hegemony over the world via its anti-terror campaign. “Who is the terrorist?” he asked. “Bush says that you are either with America or with the terrorists. The world is entering a coalition without knowing where it is going and who the enemy is. The US has established this goal just as an excuse in order to have hegemony over the world to put its fleets and armies near the Caspian Sea and in the Gulf and this will only be for the interest of Israel. Therefore, it should be clear that it is not permissible for anyone to offer any kind of assistance to America against the Afghani people.” But, he said there was no reason to fear the future as many potential partners in the anti-terror coalition are already questioning its aims.
“We call upon everybody to put the fears and worry aside because many states in the world will not accept what is happening. Some of them … say we need a definition of terrorism and it should be differentiated from resistance, others are saying that goals should be defined and the UN Security Council should lead this fight against terrorism and not America. Others are saying you should produce evidence … I respect those who suggest these conditions.” Nasrallah said that Hizbullah was still committed to the intifada. “We will start to support our people in Palestine by getting fully ready for direct military interference from Lebanon if the interests of the Palestinian resistance says so.”
He also hinted at the possibility of a deal being struck soon to exchange Lebanese detainees in Israel for four Israelis held by Hizbullah since last October. “We are able to now make a swap operation but we insist that it will not be without Palestinian prisoners … and now we are negotiating about the number of Palestinian prisoners,” he said. Despite the possibility of Hizbullah being targeted in the future by the US war against terror, Nasrallah remained unruffled and said that it was business as usual for his party. “Everything we said before Sept. 11, we will continue to say. And everything that we used to do before Sept. 11, we will continue to do after Sept. 11. Sept. 11 might change the whole world, but it will not change our way at all.”