✍Nasrallah's press conference: "I declare no war, but a decision of self-defence"

On the afternoon of 8 May 2008, the day after the strike on which demonstrators were shot at, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah held a press conference in which he called the night of the government's two decisions an "earthquake" equal to 14 February 2005 and a new stage: he explained that the wired telecommunications network is the "command and control" element that protected the resistance from eavesdropping in the July war, and that the Winograd report had recommended eliminating it, so touching it was "a declaration of war" meant to push the army and the security forces into confronting the resistance. He spoke of civil war having been prevented thanks to the military institution, and said: "I am not declaring a war here; I am declaring a grievance and a decision of self-defence… from today we will no longer be killed in the streets and we will not accept being shot at by anyone; whoever wants to arrest us, we will arrest him, and whoever shoots at us, we will shoot at him", recalling "the hand that reaches for the resistance's weapons, we will cut it off". He described Jumblatt as the real head of the government, "a liar, a thief and a killer by his own admission", denied that the battle was Sunni–Shia, calling it "a national resistance project against an American project", and set out the way out in two words: cancel the two decisions and return to dialogue. Within minutes of the end of the press conference street fighting broke out in West Beirut.