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Lebanese academic Makram Rabah, a faculty member of the history department at the American University of Beirut, slammed Hizbullah and Hamas in a January 5, 2024 interview on Spot Shot online (Lebanon). He said that unlike Hizbullah, he does not want war and bloodshed, he wants peace and a two-state solution. Rabah said that top Hamas official Saleh Al-Arouri, who was recently killed in an attack attributed to Israel, wanted to become a martyr. He said: "If they go to war with Israel, they must pay the price." Rabah further criticized Hamas fighters for being in a civilian area, endangering other people. In a January 7, 2024 interview with MTV (Lebanon), Rabah said that Hizbullah has turned Lebanon into a "missile launchpad" and a center for production and export of Captagon. He said that Hamas has built 500 km of tunnels but no bomb shelters for its people, and he asked how many bomb shelters Hizbullah has built for the people of south Lebanon.
Makram Rabah: "Al-Arouri was not a poet or a sculptor. Fighting and killing was his craft. When he was wearing military fatigues and taking a picture with a gun, one assumes his goal was to be martyred. So I say to him: Inshallah, Allah will grant you martyrdom. But they should not try to persuade us that his way of life is normal. If they go to war with Israel, they must pay the price. It was only due to Allah's protection that no civilian was killed in that area. In addition, the way they are in civilian areas is unacceptable. If he claims to be a resistance fighter, he cannot be in the same place with other people, even if Hamas or Hizbullah own the building.
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"We do not want anyone to die. We do not want anyone's blood to be shed – whether Lebanese, Palestinian, or even Jewish-Israeli. I do not want to kill anyone. I am a Lebanese who does not want war in the region. I do not want war in Ukraine, I do not want war in Taiwan. This is the difference between us and them. [Hizbullah] wants to oppress people on the home front with their weapons, and militarize us against the others. We do not want war. We want everyone to live in dignity. We want a just and comprehensive peace. We want the two-state solution.
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"The Israeli military and security institutions are convinced that [Hizbullah] is capable of repeating the Al-Aqsa Flood seven times over. The Lebanese are passive partners in the Al-Aqsa Flood, by supplying Captagon pills [to Hamas]. I do not have a problem with Hamas liberating Palestine. My problem is with Hassan Nasrallah who has turned Lebanon into a missile launch pad and a center for the production and export of Captagon. He believes that he is going to liberate Palestine… The killing of Al-Arouri proves that he does not understand anything about security.
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"Hamas has built 500 kilometers of tunnels, but not a single bomb shelter. What bomb shelters has our government built for the people of south Lebanon?"
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