Ex-PM: Hezbollah rally in Beirut a massive hoax

JERUSALEM -- The giant Hezbollah rally that drew nearly half a million purported supporters of Syria's occupation of Lebanon actually was a staged hoax with non-Lebanese citizens, Syrian workers, students and municipal employees coerced into joining the protest, former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview this morning.

"Yesterday's huge protest calling for Syria to stay made it look to the world like a large segment of the Lebanese population actually wants to live under Syrian occupation," said Aoun, speaking to WND from Paris. "But the protest wasn't what it appeared to be. It was an elaborately staged affair."

Hundreds of thousands packed into a central Beirut meeting square yesterday, chanting support for Syrian troops to maintain positions in Lebanon and denouncing America in what has been called a massive show of strength by Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Protestors held signs, in English, reading "Thank you Syria'' and "No to foreign interference," a reference to American intervention. The crowd sang the national anthem and many waved red-and-white Lebanese flags, some holding posters with pictures of pro-Damascus Lebanese and Syrian presidents.

Attendance at the rally greatly outnumbered recent demonstrations led by opposition figures against Syria's presence in Lebanon and was billed by Hezbollah speakers as a sign Syria enjoys popular support among the people of Lebanon and should therefore keep their nearly 20,000 troops inside the country. Damascus has been under daily fire from the U.S., Europe and many Arab countries demanding an end to its occupation of Lebanon.

But Aoun told WND Hezbollah and Syrian officials used deceptive and coercive techniques to orchestrate the protest.

"This was not a Lebanese showing, and many of those who actually were Lebanese were not there because they support Syria. We know that at least three Palestinian camps were present. And there are 700,000 Syrian workers inside Lebanon, many of whom are not even supposed to be there. They were urged by Syria to attend so it looks like many Lebanese are protesting. Plus Syria bused in their own citizens from Syria through the border into Lebanon to join the rally."

The former prime minister also accused Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Lebanese intelligence forces of coercing students and municipal workers to attend.

"They shut down the schools and all the government and public buildings and pressured students and workers to get to the rally," he said.

Similar charges were made to WND this morning by a spokesperson for Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party.

Aoun said Hezbollah was able to legitimately bring some of its own followers. The Lebanese militant group maintains a sizable constituency of the Shia population, to which it provides social welfare services ranging from education to medical care. In the outlying heavily Shiite regions of the Bekaa Valley and the south, Aoun says, Hezbollah "drove through the streets with loudspeakers urging followers to get to Beirut for the protest."

"In all, it was a real multinational rally," joked Aoun. "Even watching protestors being interviewed, you hear they had Palestinian and Syrian accents. This was not the Lebanese people expressing their will."

"Yesterday was not a spontaneous outpouring; it was planned and orchestrated," he said. "You see in the opposition rallies that they happen every day. People are going because they want to, and they are going regularly."

Officials have been speculating the past few weeks how Hezbollah will react to the growing international pressure on Damascus to immediately withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and to what degree the group enjoys support from the Lebanese people.

Hezbollah's weak response to former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination, for which Syria has been blamed, and its refusal to join the opposition's push to get Damascus out of Lebanon has brought many Lebanese to question Hezbollah's ultimate allegiances, analysts say.

Some experts contend a growing number of Lebanese believe Hezbollah's armed wing has not been needed since Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000, and many see the group's resistance as, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, a pariah.

But Hezbollah boasts the largest Shia party in Lebanon, supported by a third of the Shiite Muslim population. With parliament almost evenly split between pro-Syrian loyalists and the opposition, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, with 12 seats, may hold the deciding votes.

In recent remarks, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a major force of the anti-Syrian opposition, has gone out of his way to praise Hezbollah's head, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, as a "great leader," and repeatedly has called on him to join the opposition.

But yesterday's rally served to solidify Hezbollah's union with Syria, explained Aoun.

Aoun also said recent information has shown Syrian and Lebanese forces have been trying to stir up violence with the opposition in hopes of precipitating a confrontation that may delay Syria's announced withdrawal of troops.

"There have been shootings in residential areas yesterday and the day before by Syrian backed forces to try to provoke violence with the opposition," said Aoun.

Syrian officials announced last week troops would withdraw from mountain and coastal areas in Lebanon in line with a 1989 agreement signed while Aoun was in office, but there has been no sign of such a redeployment. U.S. President George W. Bush said the time for delaying tactics by Damasacus has passed and set a May deadline for Syria's full withdrawal from Lebanon.

"We are not expecting much from Syria," said Aoun. "They are considering the American pressure very seriously, but we haven't seen clear signs Syria will withdraw now."

Aoun is no stranger to revolt against Syria. While prime minister in 1989, he launched a "war of liberation" against Syrian military forces which earlier had invaded Lebanon. The war was highly popular with Lebanese citizens but failed to garner the international opposition needed to successfully oust Syrian troops. It ended in a cease-fire and the signing of the American and Saudi backed Ta'if accord, which required Syria to redeploy its troops to the Bekaa valley and confer with Lebanon on further redeployments.

Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the American government garnered Syria's participation in the U.S.-led coalition against Baghdad, and critics charge in return the previous Bush administration gave Damascus a green light to complete its conquest of Lebanon, allowing it to launch an invasion of East Beirut and the surrounding areas controlled by Aoun's government, forcing Aoun into exile in France.

Despite his exile, Auon has remained a highly popular leader in Lebanon, considered by many to be the country's most prominent opposition figure. There have been calls throughout the decade, both from the Christian community and from a significant portion of the Lebanese Muslim population, for his return to power.

Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief, whose past interview subjects have included Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, Shlomo Ben Ami and leaders of the Taliban.

but 12 seats in Parliament says they have some but not majority support, if they are supported by one third of the Shia Muslims, that means two thirds of the Shia Muslim in Lebanon do not support Hezbollah and what portion of the Lebanese population, without the Syrians (who are mainly Sunni Muslim I believe) is Shia?

I suspect neither the majority of the Lebanese nor even the Syrians want an Islamist state which is Hezbollah's main goal for Lebanon (I'm sure they got their eyes on Syria next)

Saddam Hussein was able to muster up these kinds of protest and we knew Saddam forced those people out and we've also found out since Saddam paid persons for anti war protests outside of Iraq

in fact the Democrats did the same thing when the mayor of Philadelphia (?) made all the city employees attend that Clinton Kerry rally, after giving them the afternoon off

I'm curious about the stats. Of the 3.6MM you reference do you know if that is the "Lebanese" population or if that is the total number of human beings presently residing in Lebanese territory. I'm not challenging your number ... I would really like to know because I have heard of nearly a million Syrian "guest workers" and of an unspecified but very large "Palestinian refuge" population. If there are 3.6MM true Lebanese but 0.8MM Syrian nationals and another 1MM "refuges" then the non-voting foreigners represent a substantial proportion of people there. If the 3.6MM includes the foreigners then there appear to be as many foreigners in Lebanon as Lebanese. Either way I feel sorry for these people.

"Attendance at the rally greatly outnumbered recent demonstrations led by opposition figures against Syria's presence in Lebanon and was billed by Hezbollah speakers as a sign Syria enjoys popular support among the people of Lebanon "

What it shows is that the majority of Lebanese are terrorists. One cannot support Hezbollah without being a terrorist.

Here is what I've got so far: according to the CIA Factbook there were, as of July 2004, 3.8MM in Lebanon. There were 0.4MM Palestinian refuges and their labor force includes "as many as one million foreign workers (2001 estimate)".
It is still not clear from this data if the 3.8MM population includes the workers and refuges. The factbook also indicates that about 60% of the population is Muslim but that includes Shi'ites, Sunni, Isma'lite, Druze, Alawite and Nusayn at least some of which tend to be anti-occupation. Given that Hizb'allah is a Shi'ite organization and that 39% of the population is Christian, and that there is a huge foreign presence in county, it seems very likely that the pro-Syrian turnout was nowhere near proportional to national opinion. This is not to say that Hizb'allah is small or that there is not a significant, pro-Syrian faction. I'm just trying to put together an objective gage of how representative that huge crowd might have been.

It appears to me that in Lebanon, as in this country (The US), the forces of oppression have a disproportionate ability to rally people into the streets.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/le/popula.html

Don't know that you can extrapolate beyond the main number. I am sure you could find then number of guest workers if you look around. There were only 15K Syrian troops there though...not a massive presence. Their security service was had a similar sized presence though from what I understand.

Yup - thats the difficulty. When the population is around four million and there are upwards of one and a half million foreign nationals ... the foreign nationals are a potentially huge swing factor in the size of protests. As far as I know the foreigners don't vote therefor their opinion doesn't really count but they can sure make headlines. Regardless of the foreigners inclusion in the four million I don't think the size of street demonstrations is even remotely accurate in predicting how an actual vote would go.

There are now reports that the pro-Syrian PM is going to be re-appointed as an emotional response to the big demos!! Unbelievable.

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