BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanese
Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan has criticized the devastating Saudi-led military onslaught against Yemen, weeks after the information minister prompted a diplomatic rift between Beirut and Persian Gulf states over similar comments and quit his post under pressure from Riyadh.
Hajj Haasan, in a post published on his ministry’s Tweeter page, stated that the war in Yemen must end today, no matter who would win in the end.
“No human being can see hundreds of thousands [of people] getting killed, becoming displaced and starving, and yet insist on continuation of the war,” he said.
“Regardless of who would emerge triumphant, the war must end today,” the Lebanese minister said.
On December 3, Lebanon’s Information Minister George Kordahi resigned to ease tensions with Saudi Arabia amid a pressure campaign launched by Riyadh against Beirut in response to his comments critical of the years-long war on Yemen.
Kordahi announced his resignation from the ministerial position in a press conference, saying he quit because he had decided to put Lebanon’s national interest ahead of his personal preferences.
During the interview, aired on October 25 by an online show affiliated with Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television network, Kordahi called the Saudi-led Yemen war “futile,” and said that Yemeni army forces and their allied militants from Popular Committees are defending themselves.
His comments were met with anger in Riyadh and Saudi officials immediately responded by recalling its ambassador from Beirut and banning all Lebanese imports.
The response was supported by Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s continuous bombardment of the impoverished country, Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.