Lebanese President Joseph Aoun gave a televised address where he stressed the need for a diplomatic track, an overture which has stalled recently due to a shared perception the Lebanese state appears unwilling or unable to take serious action to disarm Hezbollah.
Speaking on the prospects for diplomatic talks, President Aoun said, “We will continue these contacts, and we will not stop until we are able to save what remains—homes that have not yet been destroyed, and our people who have not yet been displaced—and to stop this cycle of killing, destruction, and suffering.”
Aoun said, “Gaza was destroyed, and more than seventy or eighty thousand people were killed—yet in the end, they sat down and negotiated. So why are we now choosing to negotiate to stop this suffering and end the bleeding Lebanon is going through?”
“When we talked about negotiations, some people said: what will diplomacy bring us? But I say to them: what has your war brought us?”
“We now have more than 400 martyrs and over 4,000 wounded, thousands of destroyed homes, and more than 1.2 million displaced people living in extremely difficult conditions,” he stated, “Which was better? To be patient and go to negotiations, or to go to war?”
“No,” he said, “negotiation is not surrender, and diplomacy is not defeat.”
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