The Arab Council, while offering its condolences for the souls of the martyrs of the horrific Beirut explosion and wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded and rapid relief for the victims, proudly acknowledges the people’s uprising to confront the consequences of the disaster.
The Council considers what is happening today in Lebanon as a turning point in the struggle of our peoples for a political system free from corruption, oppression, incompetence, and subjugation.
When we see citizens spitting at the ruling authority in the streets and in the media, and when we see some calling for the return of old colonialism, as if it were more merciful than the tyranny of a corrupt political class that has lost all respect and honor, we realize to what depths the Arab political system has sunk, with the Lebanese system serving as nothing more than a caricature of it.
This Arab political system has committed a great crime against our peoples by forcing them, through extreme repression, humiliation, and impoverishment, into revolution with all its consequences. It then committed an even greater crime by mobilizing its remnants, with the help of foreign powers, to crush these revolutions through military coups, civil wars, corrupt media, and by forcing the victims to pay a heavy price. The system’s message has been blunt and shameless: either submit forever, or we will burn the country, as openly declared by the supporters of the regime of the greater criminal, Bashar al-Assad.
This means that the choice for our peoples, now more than ever, is either to destroy the old political system or to be destroyed by it.
The young Arab generations, who no longer see migration to the North as their last escape, are fully aware of the dangers posed by this decaying political system to their future and present.
Therefore, the Arab Council is fully confident that the old system is on the verge of death, and its end, no matter the cost, is near.
What matters today is that the revolutions of the Arab Spring continue, wave after wave, until all our peoples are liberated from the incompetent, corrupt, and subservient regimes.
More importantly, the alternatives must be ready in both minds and hearts. These alternatives are based on the project of a state governed by law and institutions, in contrast to a state run by lobbies and gangs. The authority should be seen as a societal function entrusted temporarily and under supervision, not as a war booty distributed among the corrupt. The people should be citizens, not subjects, and there should be a union of free Arab peoples that can create an economic and security space to ensure the existence of Arabs as peoples and as a nation, not as the dust of individuals or the remnants of peoples revolving around the interests of major powers and even regional states.
Despite all the pain, the dawn is very close. Let us arm ourselves with the strongest determination to complete our peaceful democratic revolutions and rebuild everything that the regimes have destroyed, which history has sentenced to death by spitting.
On behalf of the Arab Council,
Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki
President of the Arab Council
