Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday again rejected a deal struck between Israel and Lebanon and said his Iran-backed group refused to “surrender” nearly six months after war erupted with Israel.<\/p>\n
“We are against the framework agreement and call for its downfall,” Qassem said in a televised address broadcast on the group’s Al-Manar television channel.<\/p>\n
Israel and Lebanon launched US-sponsored direct talks after Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 by attacking Israel, which responded with massive strikes and a ground invasion that Lebanese authorities say have killed more than 4,300 people.<\/p>\n
At talks in late June, Lebanon and Israel signed a framework deal that calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in “pilot zones”.<\/p>\n
“The framework agreement is illegitimate, unlawful, humiliating, destructive to Lebanese sovereignty,” Qassem said.<\/p>\n
“We do not agree to the ‘pilot zones’ or to what comes from them,” he said, also rejecting any proposed verification system.<\/p>\n
After talks in Rome earlier this month, a Lebanese source told AFP that agreement was reached on a “shortlist” of countries that might oversee the implementation of the pilot zone process, namely the Lebanese army’s dismantlement of any Hezbollah infrastructure in the areas.<\/p>\n
A fresh round of talks had been planned for early September, but no date has been announced yet.<\/p>\n
Although violence has dropped since a US-Iran memorandum of understanding on the broader conflict in June and the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement later that month, Lebanon still reports regular Israeli strikes, artillery shelling and broad demolitions of civilian buildings in southern villages and towns.<\/p>\n
Israeli forces are operating inside a self-declared “security zone”, which runs around 10 kilometres (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory along the border.<\/p>\n
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency on Friday reported several Israeli airstrikes in the country’s south including on the Nabatieh area, where it has increased attacks in recent days.<\/p>\n
Qassem said his group supported the implementation of a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end a previous war with Israel.<\/p>\n
“We will keep our heads high and we will not surrender,” he vowed.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday again rejected a deal struck between Israel and Lebanon and said his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[86,85,46,88,43],"class_list":["post-599299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-hezbollah","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599299","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=599299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}