Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil is being hammered by fellow politicians over comments he made about Israel during a television interview.
“We have no ideological dispute with Israel, and we are not against the existence of the State of Israel and its right to security,” he said in video clip that made the rounds on social media in Lebanon.
“All nations must live in peace and recognize each other,” he told the Al Mayadeen television channel in the interview aired Tuesday. “We are a people that want to live alongside others, even if they are different from us, but it will only be when the other (Israel) wants it, and it does not want it,” he said.
Subsequently Bassil’s office issued a statement saying the television station had deliberately distorted his comments through judicious editing.
“The selection of this piece is intended to undermine [the foreign minister’s] position that Israel is an aggressive entity that runs a terror state,” the foreign ministry said in the statement.
“The Lebanese position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the issue of Palestine is unchanging and in accordance with international law and the Arab peace initiative. Cutting [the minister’s] statement will not change the fact that for years the minister rejected the existence of an Israeli entity that rapes Palestinian rights and recognized that Israel is an enemy of Lebanon.”