“It’s possible that the scenario where we remove Hezbollah entirely is no longer an option. That is how we used to think about it in ’85 and ’84, in ’82 it was possible, and in ’88 it was possible… in whatever year you want, but now it’s no longer possible.
It’s no longer possible to say that… We have become a generation, we have become generations, we have become a society—you need to pay attention to that. When someone looks at a demonstration, let’s say, with thousands of people, where did these people come from? Okay, where were we in ’82? Where did our children study? If we even had children in ’82, but where did we study?
We now have generations being raised in our schools—generations. And not only that, people are coming to stay with us; we have schools that didn’t exist before. Our martyrs—now we have families of martyrs—these are an important asset within a large, broad community. We have an important atmosphere, whether at the level of our institutions or at the level of our presence. The resistance is a condition that has created an existing presence for us; it’s not as if—even if, God forbid, the resistance were to stop.
We tie our fate to the resistance. Honestly, if the resistance were to stop tomorrow, if Hezbollah were to leave… where would Hezbollah go? They’re not going to leave. Where could we, for example, leave? Or where could this presence, for example, be removed? This is a presence that has developed important and deep roots within this society; they can’t end it. Now, you can ask what the nature of your presence might be at this stage, what it could be, but this presence exists.
Some of the methods we are following in our work can be changed or reduced, but the existence itself has become inevitable. We are required to keep up with this existence. There is no longer anything called an “Islamic phenomenon”—we are not an Islamic phenomenon. A phenomenon changes, shifts, comes and goes. We are an Islamic presence that exists, that has become deeply rooted and connected, and no one can remove it anymore.
Now, all of them take Hezbollah into consideration, when they come. Our main goal is to preserve this presence; this is one of our objectives.”
I have a very limited and purely passive understanding of Lebanese Arabic, and have hence relied on technological crutches (Gemini, Chat GPT) in putting together this translation, albeit not without checking the result and making some changes to the translation received. If mistakes should remain, please bring this to my attention, for in order to assess what is said about the video it is vital to understand the video itself