Geagea slams Nasrallah over Israel threats

Lebanese politician Samir Geagea has criticized Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah for threatening to hit Israel’s infrastructure in case of war.

In his speech on Hezbollah’s Anniversary of Martyred Leaders, Nasrallah warned Tel Aviv that Lebanon would adopt a retaliation strategy if Israel staged another war against the country.

“If you hit Rafiq al-Hariri international airport in Beirut, we will hit Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv,” Nasrallah said via a live video link in Beirut’s southern suburbs on February 16. “If you hit our ports, we will bomb your ports, and if you hit our oil refineries, we will bomb your oil refineries,” he underscored.

But Geagea on Monday criticized the Hezbollah leader over the remarks and urged him to submit his defensive strategy through the party’s ministers in the cabinet.

“Some parties don’t want for the Lebanese to take a break from speaking about war,” the leader of the Lebanese Forces told a packed news conference in Maarab.

“Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech does not concern all of the Lebanese, and the Lebanese people have not granted Nasrallah the right to decide on an all-out confrontation with Israel,” Geagea added.

“Nasrallah’s speech gives the impression that Lebanon is a failed state,” he charged.

The comments come despite concerns recently expressed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who earlier warned against Israeli attempts to spark a military confrontation with Lebanon.

“We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats. We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months,” he said, highlighting Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace.

In a joint news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo in January, Hariri denounced Israel’s threats to target Hezbollah positions in the South of the country.

“We consider the Israeli threats on Lebanon to be a threat to the Lebanese government as a whole, rather than to one particular person,” he said, adding that “everywhere is under the authority of the Lebanese government.”