Won’t abide by Lebanon-Israel agreement: Hezbollah
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah will not abide by any agreements that may result from the direct Lebanon-Israel talks in the United States, negotiations it firmly opposes, a senior Hezbollah official said.
Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s political council, spoke on the eve of the talks expected in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the US.
It will be the first time in decades that envoys from Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, meet face-to-face in direct talks. “As for the outcomes of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not interested in or concerned with them at all,” Safa told The Associated Press. “We are not bound by what they agree to,” he added in a rare interview with international media. He spoke next to a cemetery as an Israeli drone buzzed overhead.
Lebanese officials are looking to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war in the US talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has said the goal is Hezbollah’s disarmament and a potential peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesperson for Netanyahu said Monday that there will be no ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Separately, in US-Iran peace talks held last weekend in Pakistan, Iran has sought to include Lebanon in any ceasefire deal of its own with the US-Israel and the US have insisted Lebanon would not be a part of it. Hours after Tehran and Washington announced a truce last Wednesday, Israel launched more than 100 strikes across Lebanon, including in densely packed residential and commercial areas of central Beirut.
And though the US-Iran talks broke up without an agreement, Safa said Hezbollah has been informed that Iran “was able to obtain a cessation of attacks” in the entire administrative region of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, including Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah-strong area known as Dahiyeh.
Israeli strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs have halted since Wednesday but intense fighting has continued in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s entry into the war Israel and Hezbollah have fought multiple wars since the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group was formed in the 1980s as a guerrilla force fighting against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon at the time.
The latest round began on March 2, two days after Israel and the US launched a war on Iran. Hezbollah entered the fray, firing missiles across the border into Israel. Israel responded with aerial bombardment and a ground invasion.
Since then, the war has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon and killed more than 2,000, including more than 500 women, children and medical workers.
Many Lebanese have blamed Hezbollah for pulling Lebanon into the war, accusing it of acting on behalf of its patron, Iran.
Safa said Hezbollah’s actions were preemptive because its leaders believed “Israel was preparing for a second battle with Lebanon” with the aim of destroying Hezbollah.
It was “an appropriate moment for Hezbollah ... to rebuild a new equation” and restore deterrence against Israel, he said, denying any prior deals with Tehran that Hezbollah would enter the war if Iran was attacked.
