Press release from the Lebanese Forces
April 12, 2000
In commemoration of "April 13, 1975" the day the Lebanese civil war started, the Political Council of the "Lebanese Forces Party" issued the following statement:

1. "April 13, 1975" is still engraved in our memory. It is the day, which marks the greatest resistance effort ever launched in the history of the Lebanese people. The day when the Lebanese Government with its weak institutions and rotted authority failed to protect its own citizens and the plan to assassinate Lebanon and erase it from the world map was crushed, thanks to the sacrifices of thousands of Lebanese martyrs and heroes.
2. Today, history is repeating itself. The Lebanese government lethargically handles its responsibilities towards its citizens, takes imminent decisions compromising intentionally Lebanon’s sovereignty. This government uses the rhetoric of war and yet would not fire one bullet in its own defense. It calls upon the world to liberate its land and yet does not make an effort to retrieve it from the occupier.
3. Lebanon has had enough demagogical speeches and enough of Palestinian military presence on its soil, which in the past has targeted Lebanon as its enemy instead of Israel. Lebanon also has had enough of the so-called "Little Wars" whose flames are not capable of burning but Lebanon and its people and make their history a tale of massacres and wars.
4. The current ruling regime in Lebanon is required to enforce Lebanese sovereignty over all of the Lebanese territory and to reclaim its occupied land from Syria and Israel within the framework of the United Nations resolutions 425, 426 and 520. Furthermore, The Lebanese government should uphold and apply the law over all of the Palestinian refugee camps and the various self-ruled areas, and work harder within the international community to guarantee the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their own land.
5. The Lebanese Forces Party appeals again to the Lebanese government to deal with the Lebanese people in South Lebanon’s security zone as their brethren who have suffered immensely in an area where the Lebanese government refused to defend its own citizens against foreign aggression and forced them to defend themselves with whatever means available to them.
6. Finally, the Lebanese people should pause and reflect on this day "April 13, 1975" and the experiences of the years of war and should make an effort towards working together in building a government anchored in freedom, dialogue and democracy. Those are the principles upon which the New World Order in based and the ones that Lebanon should finally embrace.
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