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Gemayel, Zaki headline reconciliation conference "People do not learn from history, but learn [in the stream of] history - through bitter trials, rather than from what is written and read concerning the past," former President Amin Gemayel said during a conference on Tuesday to mark the signing of mutual forgiveness pacts by Lebanese Christian and Palestinian leaders and commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the eruption of the 1975-1990 Civil War. An apology issued in January by Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) representative to Lebanon Abbas Zaki expressed Palestinian regrets with respect to earlier actions in Lebanon and set in motion a process that resulted in the signing of an apologetic declaration by 44 prominent Christian Lebanese figures. The "Openness and Reconciliation" conference was convened under the auspices of the Phalange Party at its Saifi headquarters in cooperation with Zaki, Walid Jumblatt's Democratic Gathering, and the Democratic Left party. In reference to the 1969 Cairo Agreement, which legalized armed PLO efforts to combat Israel, Gemayel emphasized the need to recognize Lebanese sovereignty, noting that the sometimes conflicting "logic of the state and logic of revolution" should be reconciled under the banner of a sovereign state. However, Gemayel also asseerted that "we should - rather than remember the battles and heroism that occurred between us and the Palestinians - recall the relationship between Lebanon and Palestine before the Naqba [of 1948 ] ... the social, cultural, and spiritual proximity between our two peoples that made Palestine, of all Arab states, closest to Lebanon." The former president continued to draw parallels between the Lebanese and Palestinians, adding: "If it is true that the Palestinians have lacked a state for 60 years, it is also true that we Lebanese have suffered the same for the past 40 years." Gemayel lamented the "delay in establishing a single Palestinian authority" capable of being dealt with as the representative of "the [Palestinian] Authority that governs in the Palestinian Territories," also saying that the Palestinians in Lebanon were welcome as political refugees, but that "any surrender of the right to return is a failed vision." Zaki then explained his move to apologize earlier this year, placing it within the context of a new "Palestinian [approach] in Lebanon adopted in 2006, but slowed by the July war" with Israel and the ensuing political crisis. According to Zaki, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp clashes last year between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army made it difficult to cement the notion that "our camps cannot be centers for those seeking to escape justice." "We adopted an [approach] of existence in Lebanon - we recognized the temporary nature of our presence, strive to refrain from interference in Lebanese affairs, and maintain equal distance from all internal Lebanese [factions]," said Zaki. Participants repeatedly linked reconciliation to the broader process ostensibly initiated by the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the Civil War. The Lebanese-Palestinian rapprochement was placed in a wider context reflected by the Gemayel-Jumblatt "Mukhtara Paper" settlement and the 2001 "Mountain Reconciliation" between Jumblatt and Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, broadening the scope to address the initial dynamics of the Civil War in addition to historically turbulent communal relations in Lebanon. |
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