Arabic → English transcript

I mean, I gave up

on the wound inside Syria and the party’s attacks on it and so on,

I endured it and said, It is okay,

fine, we returned to Damascus and that is it, let us stop at this point.

And I did not try to make any statement that touches on the Divine,

even though I very much have that right.

But I said this would harm the Lebanese interior and

it would become a kind of polarization,

and it might push parties inside Lebanon to interpret it negatively,

to see it as Tripoli’s messages are responding to us and Beirut is responding to us,

and in some places, some parties that also represent

Christians might,

you know, possibly lean on the Syrian situation to

improve the Lebanese situation first.

I did not want the image to look like that,

we do not want anyone to be like, I tried to say that we stand at

an equal distance despite the existing wound, but I cannot

come up with a solution and go remove one and a half

million human beings and throw them into the sea, that is not how solutions work.

In the end, people must feel that they are reassured,

that everyone lives together in a shared way.

And if we want to eliminate one side at the expense of another,

I say this is not a way to build a state. We will solve a problem,

and at the same time create a very big crisis. So I need a lot of wisdom,

and the war scene is very painful,

and as I come out of it I know how harsh it is.

And the region’s challenges are not its priorities, because I am also sitting

in a very sensitive place that affects the region greatly,

and the region is in turmoil,

and still Gaza is at the doorstep,

and after Gaza we do not know what will happen in the West Bank,

and we have crises in Egypt, major economic ones, and we have crises in Iraq,

they have huge challenges, and we have

greed toward the current Syrian situation, with many parties wanting to have roles,

negative and positive.

So I say there is also an Iranian situation that has just stepped

out of the scene, but

it lost the whole axis by losing Damascus, so it has a kind of, let us say,

attempts to return one way or another. So I say there are many crises,

so it is not in the region’s interest right now for us to go and handle all these

problems in a way that takes us back.

Meaning you are reigniting the fire in the region, the region needs

to be reset on everything.

And I cannot live like that,

I am not on some isolated island, my situation is: if Iraq is not stable,

Lebanon is stable, Turkey is safe,

and Jordan is in good shape,

then I will also be affected here,

just like when Syria fell into crisis, the whole region was affected,

Captagon started going into every town in the farthest corners of the world.

All the people with negative schemes or ambitions toward

the region went into Syria in one way or another.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union,

the first region that Russia really reached was, in a way,

in the form it took, in Syria.

So Syria has a certain axis,

and the region also has a certain axis,

so we are supposed to move toward policies that promote a kind of stability,

that has to be the strategy.

All of us should push in that direction. War is the easiest thing,

war is the easiest thing,

I mean now if you have bad intentions,

the easiest thing is to go and start a war. But can you control its course?

I say no. Do you think about its other dimensions? I say no, you cannot do that.