Naim Berjawi <\/p>\n
23 June 2026\u2022Update: 23 June 2026<\/p>\n
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naem Qassem said on Tuesday Israel \u201chas no option\u201d but to withdraw from Lebanese territory under a set timetable.<\/p>\n
“The withdrawal must take place after the current ceasefire under a timetable,\u201d Qassem said in a televised speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael has no option but to withdraw completely from all Lebanese territory,” he stressed.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have repeatedly said that the army will not withdraw from territory occupied in southern Lebanon, despite a recently signed interim deal between Iran and the US, which calls for respect for Lebanon\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity.<\/p>\n
The Hezbollah chief said the Lebanese army will deploy \u201cexclusively\u201d south of the Litani River after the Israeli withdrawal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will cooperate with the Lebanese army to the fullest extent within the framework of mutual security, as we have done previously,” he added.<\/p>\n
Qassem\u2019s statements came as Israel and Lebanon held a fifth round of direct negotiations in Washington on Tuesday. The talks follow four previous rounds between the two sides that began in April as part of a track aimed at ending the Israeli war in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 4,100 people and injured over 12,000 others since March 2, according to official Lebanese figures.<\/p>\n
Israel continues to occupy areas in southern Lebanon, some held for decades and others seized during the 2023\u20132024 war.<\/p>\n
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Lebanon\u2019s government-linked National Council for Scientific Research estimated the direct cost of damage to buildings in southern Lebanon from Israeli attacks exceeded $1.38 billion, with rubble estimated at around 3.1 million cubic meters.<\/p>\n
*Writing by Serdar Dincel in Istanbul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naim Berjawi 23 June 2026\u2022Update: 23 June 2026 Hezbollah Secretary-General Naem Qassem said on Tuesday Israel \u201chas no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-507765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}