March 14 Urges General Prosecution to Arrest those who Threatened Tripoli's Security

The March 14 General Secretariat noted on Wednesday that the northern city of Tripoli is paying the price of the absence of the Lebanese state, demanding that no red lines be imposed against it and the army imposing their authority in preserving security in the city.

It demanded in a statement after its weekly meeting: “The General Prosecution should immediately issue arrest warrants against one of the local allies of the Syrian regime, who appeared before the media and who threatened shell the city.”

“The judicial authority must put an immediate end to the activity of the armed gang in Jabal Mohsen and take similar action against it as it did with Shaker al-Absi,” it said after the meeting it held in Tripoli.

It also demanded the formation of a crisis cell, in participation with lawmakers from Tripoli, to follow up on relief efforts for the residents of the city.

It made its remarks in reference to Arab Democratic Party leader Rifaat Ali Eid's comments on Tuesday when he said that fighters from Tripoli's Jabal Mohsen neighborhood were forced to wage a battle in the city on May 21 after the “provocations against it became unbearable.”

Clashes between the Tripoli neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen broke out on May 19.

The sectarian fighting between the two main neighborhoods stretches back four decades to Lebanon's civil war, but it has become more frequent and increasingly lethal since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. The two districts support opposite sides.

The latest round of gunbattles had been the bloodiest yet, leaving at least 31 dead and more than 200 wounded.

The March 14 General Secretariat noted that back in 2007, “Syrian regime terrorists waged for three months a war in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp to topple the Lebanese state,” adding that their efforts were encouraged by the “red lines” Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had imposed against the army at the time.

“On May 25, Nasrallah himself marked the end of the Lebanese state and all of its institutions by announcing that the party is itself the actual state,” it added.

“The party has decided to wage the battle to eliminate coexistence in Lebanon and link Lebanese minorities to the suicidal project of minorities being led by Iran,” it said.

“Nasrallah announced on Resistance and Liberation Day the transformation of the resistance into a militia that transcends borders in order to defend holy sites and alleged Sunni terrorism,” continued the March 14 forces.

“The wounds in Tripoli have not healed since the battle of Nahr al-Bared and until the ongoing battles in al-Qusayr,” they remarked.

“We reject any red lines against the authority of the state and the army in fulfilling its duties in full,” they stressed.

“Disassociating oneself from the unrest in the North is a major national sin,” they added.

The army waged between May and September 2007 battles in the Nahr al-Bared camp against militants from the Fatah al-Islam group, led by Absi.

Nasrallah had said during a speech at the time that the army's attacking of the camp is a red line.

On the Syrian crisis, Nasrallah had previously justified the group's involvement in Syria by saying they were defending Lebanese-inhabited border villages inside Syria and Shiite holy sites.

But the offensive on the mostly-Sunni town of Qusayr forced the movement to change its argument.

"Syria is the rear guard of the resistance (Hizbullah's fight with Israel), its backbone, and the resistance cannot stay with its arms folded when its rear guard is exposed," Nasrallah said on Saturday in a speech for the 13th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

"We are idiots if we do not act," he added.

Nasrallah stressed that Hizbullah will win the battle against the “United States, Israel and the takfiris just like it emerged victorious in previous wars.”