Aoun: Lebanon has no choice but negotiation with an enemy
President Joseph Aoun stressed Monday that Lebanon’s “only choice” is negotiations with Israel.
“Lebanon has no choice other than negotiation, seeing as in politics there are three work tools: diplomacy, economy and war. When war does not lead to any result, what can we do? The end of every war in the world has been negotiation, and negotiation does not take place with a friend or an ally, but rather with an enemy,” Aoun added.
“The rhetoric of negotiation is more important than the rhetoric of war, which we know what it has done to us, and also the rhetoric of diplomacy which we are all endorsing, from Speaker Nabih Berri to PM Nawaf Salam,” the president went on to say.
“I reiterate that the situation is good, seeing as the visit that Pope Leo will make to Lebanon and the international conferences in it reflect wellness, prosperity and stability,” Aoun reassured.
04 November 2025, 01:32
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He obviously thinks that if Lebanon needed an army, it would have to rely on Hezbullah.
04 November 2025, 02:50
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It looks like the broader Aoun family suffers from dementia.
This is insanity!
04 November 2025, 07:44
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If he really means that, what is he waiting for? One message across the common border and the teams can immediately have their first meeting.
04 November 2025, 14:42
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ignorance of a racist ↴
Letter to the editor: Gaining civil rights for Shias should be top priority
Posted February 5, 2015
Noam Chomsky says that Shias are the majority of Lebanon’s population, such that, if free elections were held and if Shias threw all their support to Hezbollah, it could form the government entirely on its own. Yet Article 24 of the Lebanese Constitution reserves half of parliamentary seats for Christians, who number, by my own guess, around a quarter of the population.
Here, in a nutshell, you have the Shia sense of grievance that makes Hezbollah so dynamic a force in politics, and yet also the solution to two problems.
Hezbollah militancy and Lebanese political instability would both be ameliorated if Hezbollah put its main effort into gaining civil rights and political representation for Lebanon’s Shias – and the U.S. could be on the right side of history by aiding that cause.
So go ahead and tell me why not, please.
Christopher C. Rushlau
